Liberty for Androids
Player Choice, Politics, and Populism in Detroit: Become Human
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6187979 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sophia Schubert (0000-0002-8878-7375, corresponding author), Stefan Schubert (0000-0003-2938-4696) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Publication date | 2021-09-07 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | European Journal of American Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1991-9336 • E-ISSN: 1991-9336 |
| Publisher | OpenEdition (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.4000/ejas.17360 |
| OpenAlex | W3200441779 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 15 |
In this article, I analyze the 2018 video game Detroit: Become Human as a potentially political text from the perspective of literary and cultural studies. I argue that it features and presents narrative choices in a way that encourages players to make decisions not solely for personal or empathetic reasons but also through a political contemplation, and I contend that the manner in which the game narratively presents individual agency and populist imaginations of “the people” complicates this political project. To do so, I first present an approach to narrative, agency, and politics in video games more generally, before then discussing questions of agency and politics in Detroit: Become Human on three levels: in its narrative presentation, in how the gameplay politicizes player choice, and in how both the narrative and the ludic elements in the game complicate its interest in politics. This contribution thus suggests ways of both studying the connections of agency and politics in video games and culturally contextualizing this particular way of representing (a)political choices
Aesthetics · Agency (philosophy · Art · Contemplation · Epistemology · Literature · Media studies · Multimedia · Narrative · Perspective (graphical · Political science · Politics · Populism · Social science · Sociology · Video game · Visual arts · Computer Science · Digital Games and Media · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Sexuality, Behavior, and Technology · Law · Philosophy
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,67 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2026 (4) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |