Games as a tool in the battle for minds

3.8 billion gamers – the audience Russia should be talking to about the important matters

The 2014 release of Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed Unity game, which was set during the French Revolution, caused a bit of a stir. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a member of the European Parliament and former minister under French President Jacques Chirac, lashed out at the game, accusing it of historical inaccuracy and "counter-revolutionary narrative". Mélenchon felt the game unfairly portrayed Marie Antoinette and other aristocrats as innocent victims, revolutionaries as bloodthirsty barbarians, and Robespierre as a monster.

Setting aside the fact that it was not Ubisoft that came up with the idea of portraying Marie Antoinette as a victim, but rather the writer Stefan Zweig some 100 years ago, who clearly sympathized with his fellow Austrian, Mélenchon was not entirely off the mark in his alarmist attitude. After all, many states have long seen the gaming industry as a potential ideological battleground.

In May 2024, Vladimir Putin signed a decree called "On Approval of the Fundamentals of the State Policy of the Russian Federation in the Field of Historical Education", which defined one of its objectives as "creating control mechanisms <...> with regard to the existing market of computer games". This measure is, in general, quite pragmatic in nature. A recent study by the research company Newzoo indicates that the global gaming audience has reached an estimated 3.8 billion people. It is also the youngest among all media formats (newspapers, radio, TV, etc.). The two generations most heavily involved in gaming are Alpha (born after 2010) and Generation Z (born between 1995 and 2009), with 42% of the Alpha generation involved in gaming across the board: playing, watching, etc.

In contrast, the television audience is gradually becoming older. The global average age of TV viewers is 56, with 59% of them aged 55 and older. According to Mediascope, the average time spent watching TV in Russia is 3 hours and 26 minutes a day. This represents the lowest figure since 2015, and it will only get worse from here, given that the share of Russians who gave up watching TV has tripled since 2018. At the same time, there are 25 million active gamers in Russia alone. These are mostly people between the ages of 25 and 44 (source: a study by Sbermarketing, Check Index and Rambler & Co). And according to a survey by Qiwi, the vast majority of them play up to 50 hours a week – in the evenings and even at night.

Unsurprisingly, it is for this audience, inaccessible through other media formats, that ideological battles have long been waged.

Since the early 2000s, the PRC government has enacted laws requiring all monetized online games to obtain licenses to operate. Over time, these restrictions have only gotten tighter. A key moment came in 2018 when China imposed a freeze on the issuance of new licenses for video games, effectively stopping new products from going to market for nine months. This was due to concerns about the impact of video games on young people and the need to control game content in line with state ideology.

Today, all games released in the Chinese market are subject to strict censorship. Content that could be perceived as criticizing the government or that runs counter to socialist values is banned. For example, games must not contain scenes of cruelty, nor any religious content that could be interpreted as propaganda. Raising from the dead is also prohibited. Even a zombie apocalypse game should not have protruding bones, ribs or realistic blood. Works that "threaten public morals or national cultural traditions" and "promote cults and feudal superstitions" are also banned. But despite the strict restrictions, China's gaming market continues to grow and is expected to reach USD 90.5 bn by 2027, according to Renub Research.

The Iranian government has actively used video games as a tool to advance its agenda and promote ideological narratives, especially in recent years. These efforts are part of what Iranian authorities call a "soft war" against perceived cultural threats from the West.

Iran's gamedev was virtually non-existent before targeted game development began in earnest. In the late 2000s, the government recognized the growing influence of video games, especially among young people, and saw them as a potential battleground in the "soft war". This led to the creation of the National Computer Games Foundation in 2007 to oversee and fund the development of products that aligned with Iranian values.

The Iranian government's most aggressive intervention in the gaming industry began after the Green Movement protests in 2009, which were partially organized through social media and online platforms. Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei stated at the time that fighting the "soft power of the enemy" was a top priority, which spurred increased efforts to ideologize video games. Titles include Mir Mahna (2011), about a national Iranian hero who fends off an attack by Dutch troops, and Special Mission 85, which involves rescuing a kidnapped Iranian nuclear physicist from the U.S. military.?

In Russia, unlike Iran, the industry was established back in the 90s, but many developers of popular titles are now located outside the country. For example, last year's sensational Atomic Heart was developed by Mundfish studio, which now positions itself as a Cypriot company. Even Playrix, the developer of the internationally popular casual games Gardenscapes and Homescapes, originally from Vologda, has been headquartered in Ireland since 2013.

This, however, is not the end of the world. While it looks as if Russian gamers are stuck with Time of Troubles criticized by the gaming community, a game the government has spent more than RUB 1.26 bn on, things aren't really that bad. Russian history shows that talent and creativity have a self-reproducing quality. The most vivid example is the highly successful game Lizards Must Die from the independent studio The Bratans, which was released last September. With zero support from the state, this humorously themed game about the fight of Ancient Russia against the Reptilians not only had a lower development cost, but also received exceptionally positive reviews on Steam. Currently, there are numerous accelerators and online courses that facilitate this process.

What is really missing is a centralized system for exporting our creative products. Over the years, major publishers tried to do this with varying success, but active attempts more or less ceased with the 2008 crisis, shifting towards a more inward-looking approach with a focus on the domestic market. However, this is a small market at RUB 177.4 billion in 2021, as estimated by My.Games, which drags down studio revenues and, by extension, the development of the industry as a whole.

In this regard, Poland's approach to designing politically correct games is worthy of note. In recent years, Poland has placed a significant emphasis on the utilization of video games as an educational tool, thereby becoming the first country to incorporate video games into the official school curriculum. For example, the anti-war game This War of Mine was added to the official list of recommended literature for high school students. In total, the Polish government has invested EUR 66.7 mln in the gaming industry, and in 2022 alone, the revenue of local game studios reached EUR 1.29 bn. Poland has gained a reputation as the European capital of games, and its franchise The Witcher, imbued with national flavor, is known throughout the world.

Russia, in terms of both size and potential, has every chance of surpassing Poland's success, but this will require not only support measures similar to those in Belarus and Saudi Arabia, but also the creation of global content distribution centers, as China and South Korea are doing.

Belarus, for example, has created the High Technology Park (HTP), which provides tax incentives and access to investment for IT companies, including game studios. Companies registered in the HTP are exempt from income tax and VAT, which significantly reduces the financial burden on developers.

As part of its Vision 2030 strategy, Saudi Arabia has invested USD 38 bn in the gaming industry through the state-owned Savvy Games Group Fund with the objective of diversifying the economy. The initiative is designed to create jobs and provide support for local studios, which will eventually make the country the center of the gaming industry in the Middle East.

The experiences of China and South Korea can inform the development of a future export model for Russian games. The Chinese government provides tax incentives and subsidies for companies engaged in game exports. For example, they can receive tax breaks of up to 50% of the standard tax rate. In 2023, Chinese game companies generated USD 41 bn in revenue, with exports accounting for a significant portion of that.

In South Korea, the government allocates funds to help game studios promote their games abroad. In 2024, more than USD 50 mln was allocated for this purpose. A special state-run Korean Creative Content Agency is in charge of promoting games. The Korean game industry earned USD 8.67 bn in 2021 from exports alone.

Our domestic developers have every chance to capture not only the national market, but also the minds, hearts and wallets of 3.24 billion people in the BRICS+ countries, which collectively represent 40% of the world's population. However, if they do not endeavor to export their game products, the market will inevitably be filled by alternative offerings. It is similarly unlikely that the vacuum will be filled by something as innocuous as a loose interpretation of some of the figures of the French Revolution.