Frostpunk and the Way of Authoritarianism: A Reception Study of a Post-Apocalyptic Video Game
Authors
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Carlos Moreno-Azqueta
Universidad de Castilla La Mancha
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5771-3069
Abstract
This paper explores political learnings from a sample of Frostpunk players, aiming to understand the way in which videogames work as political socialization tools. Frostpunk is a city-builder videogame settled in a postapocalyptic scenario, in which the player leads a group of refugees and participates in a process of scalation of state authoritarianism. With an analysis of interviews and open questionnaires we observe that the expressions of affection and care towards the virtual citizens identified at the start of the game mutate into a justification of the authoritarian scalation, as a result of player frustration and citizen infantilization. Therefore, results indicate that Frostpunk works as a political socialization tool, generating authoritarian political learnings that are worrying in a context of democratic degradation.
Keywords:
Frostpunk, Democracy, Political Socialization, Authoritarianism, Game Studies, Reception StudiesReferences
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