April 2003 | 25.3

Cyber-Utopias: The Politics and Ideology of Computer Games

In his Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, Paul Ricoeur argues that utopia’s “most basic function” is its “development of new, alternative perspectives” (16).  In his view, “Utopia introduces imaginative variations on the topics of society, power, government, family, religion.”  These variations, he suggests, have “a constitutive role in helping us rethink the nature of our social life”:  “Is not utopia – this leap outside – the way in which we radically rethink what is family, what is consumption, what is authority, what is religion, and so on?  Does not the fantasy of an alternative society and its exteriorization ‘nowhere’ work as one of the most formidable contestations of what is?” (16; Ricoeur’s emphasis).  If Ricoeur is correct, then utopia’s function is essentially subversive:  utopia challenges the social order by positing an alternative to it.  Rather than “legitimate a system of authority” as ideology does, utopia contests it, addressing “the problem of power itself”:  “What is ultimately at stake in utopia is not so much consumption, family, or religion but the use of power in all these institutions” (17).  Utopia subverts the social order by exposing its arbitrariness in distributing, exercising, and legitimating power.  It can only transform the social order, however, when it presents a realistic alternative to it.  For this reason Ricoeur privileges “practical” utopias, like the socialist utopias of Henri de Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier, over those that are “merely literary,” since the latter are “mere dreams outside reality” (309).  Utopian fictions, he suggests, do not have the power to effect social change.

Ricoeur, of course, never played PC-based strategy games.  Had he considered the utopian fictions represented in games such as SimCity, Civilization, and Alpha Centauri, he might have taken a different position on the power of such fictions to affect the real world.  Like traditional literary utopias, these cyber-utopias develop alternative realities that, in addition to providing entertainment, offer social commentary.  Unlike literary utopias, however, cyber-utopias are interactive texts to the extent that they respond directly to user input; players feel as if they are constructing their own worlds, or “personal utopias,” even though these utopias are largely computer generated.  Rather than simply provide escape, cyber-utopias induce players to rethink the nature of their social lives as they play out alternative social realities.

Cyber-utopias do not allow free play, however.  The parameters of the personal utopias player can create in games such as SimCity, Civilization, and Alpha Centauri are limited by the games’ structures, structures that reflect the beliefs and values of the games’ designers just as much as The Republic reflects Plato’s.  In cyber-utopias, though, ideological biases are not as evident since what happens in the games results at least in part from decisions made by the player.  Players make choices throughout the game without necessarily realizing that their choices are constrained.  Well-designed cyber-utopias thus create the illusion of free play, even though play is governed by the game’s design.  In SimCity, for example, one of the first widely popular utopian computer games, players develop uninhabited terrain into complex metropolises by building infrastructure, making zoning decisions, and providing services and recreation for inhabitants, among other things.  There are rules, of course – players cannot build stadiums in lakes or roads through buildings – but the game has no winner or loser or even a predetermined ending.  Indeed, in an interview with Richard Rouse, designer Will Wright indicates that he considers SimCity to be more a “toy” than a “game” since players set their own goals (439).  According to him, it is this type of open-endedness that made the game unique, at least when it was first published in 1989:  “What it really does is it forces you to determine the goals.  So when you start SimCity, one of the most interesting things that happens is that you have to decide, ‘What do I want to make? Do I want to make the biggest possible city, or the city with the happiest residents, or most parks, or the lowest crime?’  Every time you have to idealize it in your head, ‘What does the ideal city mean to me?’” (440-442).  To the extent that players do indeed determine what “the ideal city” means to them, SimCity appears to be “utopian,” at least in Ricoeur’s sense of the term since it induces players to rethink the nature of social life.  How one goes about creating this ideal city is governed by what Ted Friedman refers to as the designer’s “baseline assumptions,” however.  In SimCity, these assumptions are very clear, as Friedman suggests:  “SimCity has been criticized from both the left and right for its economic model.  It assumes that low taxes will encourage growth while high taxes will hasten recessions.  It discourages nuclear power, while rewarding investment in mass transit.  And most fundamentally, it rests on the empiricist, technophilic fantasy that the complex dynamics of city development can be abstracted, quantified, simulated, and micromanaged” (2).  Such assumptions make the game’s didactic function evident.  As Rusel DeMaria and Rebecca Michelle Hines note, SimCity is “an educational product disguised as a really cool game” (4).  Players are, of course, free to ignore the game’s baseline assumptions, but these assumptions govern play nonetheless, ultimately limiting the types of cities that may be built.  As a result, although SimCity induces players to create personal utopias, it is ultimately “ideological” rather than “utopian” since it constrains choice so as to affirm the existing social order as it is represented by the game’s designer.  Indeed, one could argue that SimCity became so popular for this very reason:  it reassures players that American civilization is basically sound, despite all of its evident problems.  In effect, the game tells players exactly what their elected officials do --that with careful planning, capital investment, and technological advancement, we can, in the words of Rusel DeMaria, author of the official strategy guide for SimCity 3000, build “nice, ordered cit[ies] with low crime, low pollution, plenty of water, great health care, thriving business, and lots of good recreation”  (294).

There are other reasons why SimCity was so widely popular, of course:  it is easy to learn, its graphics are as good if not better than those of other games on the market in the late 1980s, and it is open-ended--it never plays the same way twice.  It is also a very challenging game, particularly at its later stages when the player must manage a complex metropolis.  It is the game’s ideological function that distinguished it from other PC-based strategy games of the 1980s such as Pirates!, Strategic Conquest, and Populous, however.  SimCity made people feel good, in the same way that television sitcoms like The Cosby Show and Family Ties did:  it is a “comfort” game.  With this in mind, it should not be surprising that SimCity had a number of successful spin-offs, including SimAnt, SimTown, SimCity 2000, and SimCity 3000.  The game also had considerable influence upon later games, including Sid Meier’s Civilization, perhaps the best-selling PC-based strategy game of all time, and its unofficial sequel, Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri.  Like SimCity, these games allow players to construct personal utopias that, ultimately, are constrained by the games’ design.  Unlike SimCity, however, Civilization and Alpha Centauri can be won or lost, an element that, as we shall see, enhances their ideological impact.

As Bruce Shelley indicates in the Manual for Sid Meier’s Civilization, “Civilization casts you in the role of the ruler of an entire civilization through many generations from the founding of the world’s first cities 6,000 years in the past to the imminent colonization of space.  It combines the forces that shaped history and the evolution of technology in a competitive environment.  You have a great flexibility in your plans and strategies, but to survive, you must successfully respond to the forces that historically shaped the past.”  As the above passage suggests, Civilization presents itself as an historical game rather than a utopian one:  it offers players an opportunity to replay history, to see what would happen if the Aztecs had developed firearms before the Spanish or if the Romans had survived into the twentieth century.  It also gives players the chance to play god as they try to develop a primitive settlement into a space-faring civilization.  As in SimCity, players can--in theory, at least--experiment with their own ideas and social theories as they construct increasingly complex societies.  Civilization is not open-ended in the way that SimCity is, however.  Rather than develop a society in isolation, players build civilizations that compete with others for territory and resources.  Players win the game by either eliminating all other civilizations or by having accumulated the most “civilization points” when the first human colonists reach Alpha Centauri; they lose by having their cities conquered or eliminated.  At the game’s end, players are assigned a score that they can compare to their previous scores and to those of other players.

Even though Civilization is not open-ended, it does afford players considerable freedom.  They choose when and where to build cities, which technologies to develop, how to acquire and allocate resources, and how to best defend their territory.  Players also can make important decisions about the character of their civilization:  they can be militarists, pacifists, environmentalists, or isolationists, among other things.  As one might expect, some strategies work better than others, particularly when it comes to winning.  The player’s manual is very explicit about this:  “The fundamental concepts for a successful civilization are the expansion and growth of your cities, and acquiring new technology.  In a word, you must grow.  In this dynamic world environment, surrounded by rivals in unknown corners, there is no future in complacency and stagnation.  You must press forward on all three fronts:  spread your cities out to claim a significant share of the world, increase the size and production of each city, and strive to acquire the latest technology.”  Players must also take care to preserve the environment.  Too many large, polluting cities, for example, can lead to ecological disasters, ranging from the destruction of local environments to global warming.  Pollution also affects the players’ final score:  players lose “civilization points” for every square of polluted terrain.  Such features have led some to conclude that the game has an environmental message.  Others have criticized the game for its cultural bias.  Justin Hall, for example, remarks that the game reflects the “high technology late capitalist mindset of America.”  Carl-Magnus Dumell makes a similar observation:  “My strongest criticism against Civilization is that the fixed set of rules are biased and reflect a conservative American interpretation of the world.  Cities have to be equipped with temples and cathedrals to make people prosperous, the discovery of communism enables the building of police stations and so on.  [The] Wall Street Journal is said to once have pointed out the fact that in Civilization market economy and low taxation leads to growth.”

Because, as Dumell suggests, free play is limited by fixed rules that reflect the beliefs and biases of the game’s designers, Civilization is not “utopian,” at least in Ricouer’s terms.  It does have utopian elements, however, since players are able to test their own ideas in what amounts to a sophisticated, though biased, simulation of the real world.  Players can, for example, experiment with pacifism by beginning the game in near isolation in North America or sub-Saharan Africa so that they can develop a powerful civilization before encountering others and thereby deter attack through strength.  Or they can allocate most of their resources to research in the hope that a technological advantage can offset military or economic power.  Testing ideas in such a manner is difficult, however, since the game clearly privileges balance over extremism.  As the player’s manual suggests, in order to succeed players must endeavor to keep their civilization “growing in every area”:  “More and larger cities, better technology, and better armies mean survival.  Each city must be planned, managed, and protected so that it contributes to the power and glory of your civilization. . . . By maintaining this pattern of growth over the years, you have the best chance of avoiding the fate of Hittites and Montezuma.”  It is, of course, possible to win the game in a variety ways.  One is more likely to win, however--and acquire a high score--by playing the game the way its designers intended it to be played.

The ideological content of Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri is even more pronounced than that of Civilization.  Published in 1999--ten years after SimCity and eight years after the original Civilization game--Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri immediately became a best seller, in part because gamers recognized it as a sequel to Civilization.  Unlike Civilization which, as we have seen, is a historical game with utopian elements, Alpha Centauri was conceived of as a utopian enterprise, something which the game’s lead designer, Brian Reynolds, makes clear in the “Designer’s Notes” appended to the game’s player’s manual:  “From the beginning, Alpha Centauri set out to capture the whole sweep of humanity’s future.  Not just technology and futuristic warfare but social and economic development, the future of the human condition, spirituality and philosophy” (237).  The game is more than just a story abut possible futures, however; as Reynolds notes, the designers “tried to challenge players to imagine the future for themselves--to create their own future utopias and try them out against other competing visions” (237-38).  As we shall see, however, the types of utopias players can construct are limited by the game’s parameters--the rules that determine how the game is played--and by its victory conditions, which allow players to win through conquest, diplomacy, economic domination, or Transcendence, which is described as being “the next step in the evolution of humanity” (143-144).  Although it is indeed possible to build a variety of societies and to win in a number of ways, in order to achieve Transcendence as “the highest form of victory,” the player must construct a utopia that conforms to the game designers’ ideas of a perfect society.  In particular, the player must develop a society that perfectly balances technological, environmental, and social concerns, maximizing productivity, military strength, industrial power, individual liberties, and material prosperity.

As I mentioned earlier, the game starts about where Sid Meier’s highly-popular Civilization leaves off:  according to the player’s manual, in an effort to create “a new outpost for mankind,” the United Nations sends a large colony ship to Chiron, an earth-like planet circling Alpha Centauri (2).  Upon reaching Chiron, however, the ship loses contact with Earth and the mission falls “into chaos” as various factions emerge among the colonists (3).  Seven of these factions make it safely to the planet surface:  Gaia’s Stepdaughters, environmentalists with pacifistic tendencies who form symbiotic relationships with indigenous life forms; the Human Hive, authoritarian-led collectivists who appear to be modeled on Chinese communists; the Lord’s Believers, religious zealots expert in Holy Wars; the University of Planet, technologists committed to “the free exchange of information”; Morgan Industries, laissez-faire capitalists interested only in the accumulation of wealth; the Spartan Federation, aggressive militarists who have no need of luxury; and the U.N. Peacekeepers, idealistic bureaucrats who use force to advance their agenda.  Players choose one of these factions and begin exploring the world, building cities and competing against other societies for territories, resources, and political dominance.  As the game progresses, players acquire new technologies, master the ecology of Chiron, and develop powerful civilizations that vie for world domination.

The first, and arguably most important, decision players have to make is which faction to lead.  Although players choose from any of the seven factions, the manual encourages players to choose factions whose beliefs are consistent with their own:  “You’re likely to find the game more enjoyable if you pick a faction you can empathize with (even if you don’t necessarily agree with everything they profess)” (11).  Enjoyment is one thing and winning the game is another.  Although real-life religious zealots might well enjoy razing the cities of unbelievers, for example, or ordering their Angels of Light to make suicide attacks upon an entrenched enemy, it is extremely unlikely that the Lord’s Believers will ever achieve Transcendence--or even a victory by conquest--especially at the game’s more difficult settings.  The Believers rarely do well, it seems, because, as the manual states, their “suspicion of secular science retards their research efforts, and their belief that Planet is their promised land sometimes interferes with their ecological sensitivity” (13).  The disadvantages that the designers have assigned to factions like the Believers reveal their own ideological biases:  they have little sympathy for members of the Christian right and their religious extremism.  And it is not just religious zealots that come under attack; the designers do not seem to approve of laissez-faire capitalists, environmental extremists, or militarists, either.

The advantages some factions enjoy tell us about the designers’ biases as well.  Both the Gaians and Peacekeepers have a reasonable chance of winning, the Gaians because they adapt themselves to the environment efficiently and the Peacekeepers because their idealism “attracts an intellectual elite” that stimulates research and economic development.  It is the University, however, that seems to be most privileged, at least as potential victors.  Although its free-wheeling attitude towards the exchange of information makes it vulnerable to technology-stealing probe teams, this disadvantage is more than offset by the speed with which it acquires crucial technologies, technologies that make the University difficult to beat once it has established itself.    In my experience, everything else being equal, it is the University that is most likely to win, whether by conquest, diplomacy, economic domination, or Transcendence.

One does not have to choose the University in order to win, of course, so long as one devotes enough resources to research and contains the University.  Developing new technologies does seem to be a key to victory, however, as evidenced by the fact that so many features of the game also privilege it.  In order to complete Secret Projects, for example--wonders of the world that can be acquired and exploited by one faction only--a society must develop requisite technologies: Gene Splicing for the Human Genome Project, for example, or Industrial Nanorobotics for the Nano Factory.  Societies that develop their research capabilities are the ones most likely to acquire the technology necessary for Secret Projects first and therefore gain a permanent advantage over other factions.

Focusing on research has other benefits as well.  Virtually every problem the game presents has a technological solution.  Morale can be improved through the development of Social Psychology and the creation of Recreation Commons; environmental problems can be addressed with recyclotrons and advanced terraforming techniques; and efficiency can be increased by building Children’s Creches or developing Cybernetic Consciousness.  Even a faction’s fundamental disadvantages can be offset by technological developments.  The University, for example, can overcome its vulnerability to espionage by developing Self-Aware Machines or constructing the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm Secret Project, and the Believers can improve their research capabilities by building Supercolliders or the Network Backbone.

Technology is just one of several things that the game seems to privilege.  Democracy, environmental sensitivity, and material prosperity are also presented as crucial elements of a successful utopia, as are vigilant defenses, free trade, and national honor.  That these elements are the very ones that a successful U.S. presidential candidate might likely focus upon is not coincidental:  Alpha Centauri is a very American game, affirming the belief that the best way is the American way.  Indeed, celebrating the American way of life seems to be one of the game’s primary ideological functions.  The concluding sections of Brian Reynolds’s “Designer’s Notes” reveal as much.  Although he claims that “the deeper message that Alpha Centauri hopes to convey” is that “we [must] claim the planets and stars” in order to “ensure the long-term survival of our species” (243), Reynolds’ rhetoric makes clear his belief that it is up to Americans to lead the way:  “If Alpha Centauri inspires a few young scientists and astronauts; if it convinces a few more citizens to write to their congressmen and work to rejuvenate our space program, humanity’s space program, that will surely be its greatest and most lasting accomplishment” (244).  As Reynolds’ use of the word “our” suggests, the game was designed for Americans by Americans.

Having sketched Alpha Centauri’s basic structure, highlighting its ideological content, I want to now turn to the unique medium through which the game’s ideology is conveyed--the PC-based strategy game--focusing on how that medium augments the game’s ideological impact.  Ultimately, I will argue that the game naturalizes ideology by presenting it through an interactive medium, one that creates an experiential basis for accepting beliefs as truths.  In this respect, at least, cyber-utopias have more in common with board games than books since like board games they require active participation.  In Monopoly, for example, people must make decisions about which properties to buy, when to build houses, and whether to use their get-out-of-jail-free card.  Eventually players discover that St. James Place is a better property than Tennessee Avenue, that the utilities are hardly worth owning, and that going to jail can be a good thing, especially when someone else owns the Broadway monopoly.  Players also learn about American capitalism, or at least Monopoly’s version of it.  In particular, they learn to acquire and develop properties, maintain liquid assets, and prevent others from doing likewise.  Players who put such knowledge into practice are more likely to win the game, and thus the game’s lessons are reinforced.

There are, of course, important differences between board games and computer games, particularly in the way they are learned and played.  Board games such as Monopoly, Diplomacy, and Axis & Allies are generally learned in one of two ways:  the learner either studies the rules until he or she “gets it” or s/he is tutored by an experienced player.  The latter, of course, is an interactive experience.  Typically the instructor explains, demonstrates, corrects, and advises until the learner exhibits a basic understanding of the game.   In some cases, the instructor might team up with the learner and play together against another opponent or opponents.  In other cases the instructor may play against the learner in a practice game.  Either way, learning the game is essentially a social experience:  the instructor guides the learner, conveying his or her understanding of the game, until the learner becomes proficient.

In computer games social interaction is largely absent.  Rather than learn the game from tutors, computer gamers use tutorials, sub programs that provide the novice with guidance, advice, and even correction.  However, tutorials do not provide an intermediary’s understanding of the game; there is no tutor to act as a go-between.  On the contrary, tutorial programs are created by the game designers in an effort to convey their understanding of their own game.  Consequently, it should not be surprising that computerized tutorials tend to highlight things that the designers think are important.  Alpha Centauri’s tutorial, for example, reminds learners to expand quickly, defend cities, develop resources, invest in technology, and keep the populace happy--effectively synthesizing Manifest Destiny, the Monroe Doctrine, Kennedy’s space program speech, and the preamble to the Constitution into one long, interactive text.

Not all players learn the game through tutorials, of course.  Some use tutorials just long enough to learn the game interface and others ignore them entirely, jumping right into the game.  Whether one reads the manual, works one’s way carefully through the tutorial, or jumps right in, at some point players achieve a basic proficiency and proceed to learn the game’s finer points through trial and error, playing against the program’s supposed “artificial intelligence.”  It is at this point that PC-based strategy games have the greatest ideological impact since it is here that the player learns experientially through unmediated contact with a system of fixed rules.  In Alpha Centauri, some rules seem to be based on natural laws, or least common understanding of such laws.  Solar collectors, for example, are more effective when they are placed at higher elevations, and farms are more productive in areas where moisture is plentiful.  Other rules seem to be entirely arbitrary.  Indigenous life forms are much stronger on attack than defense, for example, and success in research is related directly to energy production.  Whether arbitrary or not, fixed rules like those listed above are learned by trial and error.  “Correct” play is rewarded with an increase in energy, minerals, and food production, among other things, while “incorrect” play is punished with shortages and the like.  In effect, players are conditioned to build solar collectors at higher altitudes and build research facilities in energy-rich cities.  As a result, even the game’s most arbitrary rules become “naturalized.”  Players learn to seize the initiative in their encounters with mind worms for the same reason that in their real lives that they use oven mitts when handling a hot baking sheet:  they learn through experience that there is a proper way of doing things.

The same holds true when it comes to the rules that govern societal development.  Players learn by trial and error that raising taxes decreases productivity, that democratic societies will not tolerate extended wars, that Evangelical Christians cannot be trusted, that communism does not work, and that technology can solve any problem.  All of these beliefs are simply that—beliefs--at least in the real world.  In Alpha Centauri, however, these beliefs function as rules and the players learn them as such.  In effect, the player develops an experiential basis for accepting such beliefs as truths.  The American way really seems to be the best way, since it is virtually the only means of achieving Transcendence, “the highest form of victory.”

So far I have argued that cyber-utopias are distinct from literary utopias because, as interactive texts, they provide an experiential basis for the beliefs and values that their design conveys.  Although they are generally not “utopian,” in Ricouer’s sense of the term since they tend to affirm the social order rather than contest it, games such as Civilization and Alpha Centauri provide a medium through which players can rethink how power is distributed, exercised, and legitimated.  Unlike literary utopias, which Ricoeur describes as “mere dreams outside reality” (309), cyber-utopias engage with reality in a way that is potentially subversive since they allow players to experiment, albeit in a limited way, with alternative social realities.

I want to close by noting one more difference between cyber-utopias and literary ones.  Most people would agree that the most memorable literary utopias are actually dystopias: works like Brave New World, 1984, and A Clockwork Orange.  Even true utopias or near utopias have a dark side: Oz with its wicked witches, and Willie Wonka’s Chocolate Factory with its mayhem and Oompa-Loompa slaves.  The reason we prefer dystopias to utopias, at least as entertainment, is obvious:  other people’s utopias are boring.  Ever since Eve walked out of Eden, it seems, people have rejected other people’s heavens on Earth.  Utopias are only utopian to the person making the rules.  Cyber-utopias have an advantage over literary utopias in that they afford players the illusion that they are the ones making the rules.  Even though users are constrained by parameters set by the game’s designers--parameters that, as we have seen, reflect the beliefs and values of the programmers--users are allowed to certain choices within these parameters, choices which make the on-screen utopias within appear to be “their own” (238).  Thus cyber-utopias are able to accomplish something that literary utopias generally cannot:  they are able to present positive, utopian visions of the future in a compelling manner, thereby enhancing their ideological impact.

Tom Henthorne

Department of English

Pace University

New York City Campus

1 Pace Plaza

New York, NY 10038-1598

WORKS CITED

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Friedman, Ted.  “Semiotics of SimCity.”  First Monday:  Peer-Reviewed Journal on the

Internet.  Issue 4. 1999.  http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue4_4/friedman/.

Hall, Justin.  “Sid Meier’s Civilization.”  15 March 2002. 

http://www.links.net/dox/warez/games/micropose/civilization/.

Ricoeur, Paul.  Lectures on Ideology and Utopia.  Ed. George H. Taylor. New York:

Columbia UP, 1986.

Rouse, Richard.  Game Design:  Theory and Practice.  New York:  Wordware, 2001.

Shelley, Bruce.  Manual for Sid Meier’s Civilization.  Hunt Valley, MD: MicroProse, 1991.