Mapping Game Biopolitics

Abstract

This article advances a framework for the analysis of digital game biopolitics that addresses 1) how games represent the governance of life, 2) how games, themselves, govern life, and 3) how games enable forms of player-driven biopolitics. I define two concepts — biopolitical markers and biopolitical paradigms — and provide a set of research questions to help identify and classify various game elements that indicate specific categories of biopolitics: biopower, thanatopolitics, community, and veillance. Ultimately, rather than produce a separate theory of game biopolitics, this article builds on work in other fields to construct a method for studying the governance of life in, by, and through games.