This year, the Global Engagement Center, an agency that leads the U.S. State Department’s efforts to counter foreign disinformation, offered a $1 million grant to applicants proposing a video game “that builds cognitive resilience to authoritarianism and promotes democratic norms and values.”
The posting showed just how seriously the U.S. government takes gaming—a $455 billion global industry that, while centered on leisure, has considerable foreign-policy implications. This edition of Flash Points considers where geopolitics and video games intersect and how the industry has become caught in the crossfires of global culture wars.
Attendees play Star Wars Outlaws at Ubisoft’s Forward conference at the Belasco theater in Los Angeles.David Swanson/AFP via Getty Images
There’s No Dodge Button for Disinformation
The United States is trying to use video games to counter propaganda, Joshua Foust writes.
A screen grab from the video game Black Myth: Wukong.Game Science
‘Black Myth: Wukong’ Is Full of Monkey Magic
A blockbuster take on China’s favorite story has become a source of national pride, FP’s James Palmer writes.
Foreign Policy Illustration
How Gamers Eclipsed Spies as an Intelligence Threat
The latest leak has profound implications for counterintelligence, Jonathan Askonas and Renée DiResta write.
Participants compete at the CyberVostok 2024 Regional Tournament of the ESports week held in Vladivostok, Russia, on June 25. Guo Feizhou/Xinhua via Getty Images
Why Is My Video Game Full of Russian Propaganda?
Gamers have become unwitting agents in a global culture war, Joshua Foust writes.
A screenshot from the Expeditions: Rome video game.
A Shiny (and Wrong) Vision of Roman Imperialism
Expeditions: Rome tries to be accurate, but it’s all surface, Bret Devereaux writes.