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The Dark Souls of Politics: Gaming for Change
7 Plays20 hours ago
On this episode of Player Driven, Lewis and Greg are joined by Joost Vervoort, Associate Professor at Utrecht University (in the Netherlands) and Science/Impact Director at Speculative Agency. We dive into the "imagination factory" of the games industry and explore how video games can move beyond simple escapism to become tools for systemic societal change and climate activism.
🎙️ Episode Highlights & Timestamps
- [00:50] Introducing Joost Vervoort: Background in ecology, political science, and 10 years of "action research" at the intersection of games and sustainability.
- [04:13] Formative Gaming: How the labyrinths of Doom and the emergent storytelling of Vampire: The Masquerade shaped Joost’s view of games as "imagination factories".
- [09:00] Project STRATEGIES: An EU-funded initiative exploring how the game industry can decarbonize while using games as a cultural phenomenon to influence societal discourse.
- [12:34] "All Will Rise" Deep Dive: A courtroom deck-builder inspired by Ace Attorney where you take billionaires to court for environmental destruction.
- [24:57] The "Dark Souls of Politics": Why high-difficulty games like Hollow Knight: Silksong and Elden Ring teach "perceived self-efficacy"—the belief that you can tackle messy, complex real-world challenges.
- [37:21] Examples of Excellence: Discussing Wolfenstein’s explicit anti-fascism and Citizen Sleeper’s focus on community resilience.
- [50:00] What’s Next for 2026?: The All Will Rise Kickstarter, visiting schools to promote game literacy, and Joost’s new research into "infrastructures of mystery".
🧠 Key Themes & Learnings
⚖️ The Power of the "Speculative"
- Moving Beyond "Goody Two-Shoes" Design: Joost argues that games about climate change often fail because they are "too polite." All Will Rise embraces a "wild, poetic, and slightly naughty" vibe to make activism feel dangerous and exciting rather than like a lecture.
- Local Over Global: Instead of abstract "climate change," the game focuses on a burning river in a fictionalized South India (Kerala) to make the stakes concrete and personal.
🛠️ Games as "Action Research"
- Self-Efficacy through Play: Beating a difficult boss in Dark Souls or Silksong can fundamentally change a player's relationship with reality, giving them the confidence to engage with "messy" politics in real life.
- Culture Building: Change doesn't happen through information alone; it happens by creating a gaming culture that normalizes new identities and standards.
🏗️ Challenging the Industry
- The Publisher Paradox: Publishers often avoid "politically threatening" or narrative-heavy games for fear of backlash, driving innovative, "courageous" projects toward platforms like Kickstarter.
🔗 Related Links
- Join the Community: Jump into our Discord to discuss the episode!
- Speculative Agency: Check out the upcoming All Will Rise Kickstarter.
- Project STRATEGIES: Learn about sustainable transition in the game industry.
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Transcript
Introduction and Background
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello everybody, this is Lewis Ward. I'm player-driven contributor and today I'm happy to have as a guest, along with Greg, Joost Vervoort, who is an associate professor at Utrecht University, who's done lot of work in and around games and will certainly get into it. But he's also working at Speculative Agency, which is working on a game, All Will Rise, which will also get into the deals with environmentalism. Thrilled to have Joost as a guest today. You want to introduce yourself and say hi, Greg, as well?
00:00:31
Speaker
hi Hi, everyone. Greg here. And yes, we got to meet at PGC at London, and it was fantastic. Although because of me, we did not get enough time together. um But I'm looking forward to the next one. And first of all, let's hear a little bit about yourself. How was your PGC London?
00:00:46
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks guys. I, um, yeah, so I'm a, I'm an associate professor at Utrecht university. My background is originally in ecology and sustainability, but I'm at a political science group now and focus much more on societal societal relationships with the future and how do we make a better future. Um, and for the last, I guess already at least 10 years, I've been working on, uh, working on games and how games can play a role in that sort of change process. working on games, also working on the music sector and sort of creative sectors more generally. At the at pocket Pocket Gamer Connects, I was ah on a panel with a bunch of folks talking about um how do we make games for change, essentially, and a really interesting conversation there.
Gaming and Policy Influences
00:01:30
Speaker
It was sort it sort of started, I think, as a mobile games kind conference, but now has the ambition to be more ah generally sort of the big games thing in in the UK, I guess, next to, ah what is it, Develop? um
00:01:43
Speaker
And yeah, it was very commercial, I would say. Lots of biz dev kind of folks. But but interesting to talk to. And, you know, there is ah a very nice pub around the corner, the Rugged Hair, where most people spent quite a bit of time.
00:01:58
Speaker
And it was very fun to meet to to meet Lots of folks there. And shout out also to ah Not at PGC, which was an alternative event that was organized um on the second night of the of the conference for people who couldn't go to the conference or who just wanted to go to an alternative event, which is very nice. So...
00:02:19
Speaker
yeah the Yeah, we bumped into each other all too often at that bar, but again, never got to hang out enough. But we we we did share a few conversations. with So my question i want to kick things off was, when did you start first thinking about video game studios in the community and how they could become part of a solution of kind of the environmental destruction and climate change challenges that you guys are tackling so much?
00:02:39
Speaker
i so I've always been interested in in games. I've played games my whole life. really remember what it was like when my yeah my ah ah parents got 486, you know, PC, and we were certainly able to play Doom and doing two and stuff like that. And my mind was just blown. I remember not being able to sleep all night, just seeing labyrinths from Doom, you know, after sort of, you know, that was my first video game experience.
00:03:07
Speaker
Scary as hell. And, and I was like, why is there a chainsaw? Is that like open doors? Yeah. BFG, BFG. Exactly. Yeah. So so that that's sort of like, you know, formative stuff for me. um the other The other sort of influence next to video games was I was really blown away by the power of tabletop role playing games. Just sitting around a table with some friends, played Vampire the Masquerade.
00:03:32
Speaker
with some friends that I actually still play with now. we've restart We've restarted and I'm seeing it tomorrow actually to play a vampire story. But yeah, that that was the other part, which was maybe in in a way more impactful because that was really, you know, tabletop role playing games, the sky is the limit, right? Your imagination is all that holds you back. And I was just kind completely blown away by what happens if you just put a few people around the table and start telling these emergent stories. And I think that was maybe the biggest influence on where my own work went, where where I started working. I have worked all around the world with policymakers using future scenarios to guide their planning processes. and that's kind of like playing a tabletop role playing game in a way. It's a bit more structured than that, but it's not too far off. And
00:04:18
Speaker
I, at some point, that but that is a world that is, you know, we were doing really great work. I was working at the University of Oxford at the time, worked there for seven years, leading this big global scenarios project. But at at some point, i was like,
00:04:32
Speaker
This is a little bit limiting in terms of the what can be done in the space of policy, because actually there's a huge society out there. And, you know, what people vote, how they think about politics, what the mainstream media is doing and so on, sort of shapes of policymakers can even do. Right. And so, I mean, you see it in current times where lots of people have been working on climate change issues for decades, suddenly ah their funding's gone, right? Or their their institutes closed or something like that.
00:05:00
Speaker
And that's because of political shifts that often have very little to do with climate change. They have to do with with ah other other issues, right? that That generate sort of reactionary politics and so on. And so that sort of, I got more and more interested in that space of societal issues societal imagination and how that impacts good and bad futures.
Games Industry and Societal Change
00:05:21
Speaker
Obviously, there are some people, ah you know, on the far right and so on who are very good at this ah at at this sort of like engagement with mainstream myth making and so on, and and often progressive, I think progressive folks are have been lagging a little bit in the past. So I've been interested in that.
00:05:40
Speaker
um I worked first on games in a sort of policy and serious gaming context. But then over time, and also as I got more funding for it to do more fun things, I i sort of really really realized that's that's great, but that's a little bit like messing around in the margin when there' this there's this massive industry out there that that is constantly constantly um helping people imagine all kinds of things. And sometimes it's very superficial, sometimes it's deep, but it's a huge imagination factory, right? The games industry. And so what what can we do there? And so that's that's what brought me that's what brought me to where I am today, I would say.
00:06:18
Speaker
yeah Yeah, that's great. Great context. I really appreciate that. You said so much there that it's hard to know where to go. But I do have a question that I think flows from this, which is I'm aware of something you're working on that you put under the the banner of strategies. You mentioned your work at Oxford and some other things. But I believe that I know you've worked with orgs like Sustainable Games Alliance, the EU and even the UN. n And I believe it's all related to something that you have described as strategies in our in our in our conversation before this. So maybe the next question is, what is strategies? How do you fit into it?
00:06:52
Speaker
And does it basically do what you just said, which is you wanted to move beyond, let's say, narrow political understanding of how games might affect public policies to thinking about games as a means of affecting entire societies or solving the climate change, not from a political perspective.
00:07:09
Speaker
point of view of changing public policy, but rather can you connect directly to the gamers in those communities and get them to do grassroots change in order to affect it, if I if i understood your general thrust right.
00:07:21
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. and ah So Strategies is ah is ah a project that's funded by the EU. ah it's ah It's a multi-year project ah funded by their Horizon program. And it involves a bunch of ah universities from throughout Europe and a bunch of sort of studios. And there's, for instance, there's an incubator from Cologne, you know, where Gamescom is. Spielfabrik is involved. And so people like that. And yeah,
00:07:49
Speaker
Yeah, what we're doing is essentially looking at two things and the Sustainable Games Alliance, who who look at ah how can how can the game the industry itself be more sustainable in terms of its footprint and emissions, is involved as a partner in in strategies as well. So there's sort of two parts to it. There's multiple lots lots of parts to it, but but two parts to it to keep it simple is one of them is about that, is about how can we make get the game industry more sustainable? which I think is very important, but it's not my topic, you know?
00:08:16
Speaker
And the other one is how can how can we work with games as a as a cultural phenomenon that influences the culture and how people talk about societal issues? And that's the thing that I'm more interested in. And so there's lots lots of work going on there, lots of work with game studios, understanding what they're doing, um you know, help helping to make tools for people to get more insight into. Because because often I think ah lot ah people who are in the in the games industry,
00:08:43
Speaker
uh there's a lot of lots of people who are interested in working with more sort of like themes about a better future and sort of sustainability and so on but who don't have a background in it because it's just not their background so to help people understand these issues a bit more and i think specifically and that's the challenge also when i'm teaching game design students um i think the challenge is really how do you how do you help help people think strategically about What should these games be about? Because you can tell them, oh, this is climate change. This is blah, blah, blah. But it doesn't still doesn't say anything about, but how can how can you make a good game about that, right? And so so i'm interested I'm more interested in talking about, hey, you know politics can be an interesting topic, right? Just like if you look at... ah if you look at
00:09:27
Speaker
series or films or something like that. There's lots of stuff that's about political tensions and all kinds of corruption and, you know, this kind of stuff. And that can be just as interesting in a game as well. Right. And that's an example. I think when, when people think about, Oh, games and climate change or games and sustainability, that it has a boring connotation of wanting to make something that's very nice and that's very polite. And that just tells you to be a good little human.
00:09:52
Speaker
And, you know, and I think this is really a little bit out of step with what is happening ah in the real world. And ah and fighting for a better future is hard and it's dangerous and it's hilarious. And it's, ah you know, you you might go end up in jail and, you know, things like that. So it's a very different it's a very different thing. And great games can be made about that, you know.
00:10:13
Speaker
That's a really cool point because last summer, Lewis and I went to Games for Change in New York, and there are lots of cool games there that we're talking about, the good of humanity and how to protect the earth and environment. And the problem was time and time again, that amazing games, but they just weren't fun to engage, right? They're good educational tools, but there's a fine line between educational tool and education.
00:10:37
Speaker
experience I want to come play more and
Developing 'All Will Rise'
00:10:39
Speaker
more again. And now you're building all will rise, as you were mentioning, right, which sounds like a really cool concept. And I'm curious, you kind of mentioned how it connects to the strategies work that you're working on. But what like can you kind of tell us a little bit about the game? How how do you what's that core loop that's going to hook the player?
00:10:53
Speaker
yeah Yeah, for sure. So All Will Rise is a game that I came up with this with this concept for this game when I was actually involved, because it's a game about taking billionaires and corporations to court for destroying the planet. And I came up with this idea when I was actually involved in a real preparation of an actual court case against one of the world's biggest pension funds, the Dutch pension fund for or for civil servants. Somehow it's gigantic. And I'm also one of the one of the people who ah as ah you know as a university professor as part of the pension fund. And I was like, cool, you know I'm getting involved with this action group. And actually there were so they were so much better and so much professional than I had imagined. And and um and I was at their first meeting where there was starting it was like 100 people starting to organize this lawsuit. And I was like, what can we do with games to raise awareness and you know attend get get attention to this?
00:11:44
Speaker
And then I thought, yeah, Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney, like that's already a very successful court. play gameplay, could sort of game series. People love it, right? Millions of players. It's hilarious. It's absurd. It's over the top.
00:11:57
Speaker
It's wild. Cool. So I said that. I said that in a meeting. I said, you know, there's this game series, Ace Attorney series. And there was like a 16 year old kid there from one of these Fridays for Futures who jumped up and shouted, Phoenix Wright is amazing. And then everyone's like, okay, these two people know what they're talking about. Maybe we don't, but they' he's connecting to the youth somehow, you know, and then, um and then i ah sort of pitched that idea. And then Niels, who is our our producer came on board, who is ex-Guerrilla Games from Amsterdam, you know, and a a whole lot of amazing people came on board afterwards.
00:12:31
Speaker
ah And so we have this team of wonderful indie folks and and sort of XAAA people um coming together. And this idea of building essentially a sort of like court court drama, but based on climate change shifted over time a little bit.
00:12:47
Speaker
ah The location of the game shifted from the Netherlands to the south of India ah because ah because Meghna Jayanth, our narrative director who has worked on games like 80 Days and Sable and other games, ah And you know we wanted we wanted to get so for to her to have an opportunity to write from sort of that like location. and And we also thought that would be super cool to do and to have a different world and so on. We decided to make the game more speculative. So the game is set in a slightly different world from our own, but there's lots of overlap. All these movements were to make to make it less straightforwardly just a game about a societal problem and to make it more exciting and interesting as a world to dive into. And why ah sort of that move?
00:13:33
Speaker
well, because we think that there's a real dearth of games looking at these topics that um are wild and poetic and a bit mystical and mysterious and adventurous and you know a bit sexy and so on. like This sort of vibe is really missing from um from games around this topic. There's a book called Bad Environmentalism that argues that people should be making more you know, sort of like bad, bad environmentalism things that are sort of naughty, you know, like, sort of like wild and crazy, and, and not just this sort of goody two shoes crap. So and that that's the idea. And yeah, it's your your ah team, your team of of people led by a led by eco lawyer, Kuyili. And ah we also decided not to focus on climate change, actually, but the focus on the destruction of a river.
00:14:22
Speaker
Because we realized and we talked we interviewed a lot of climate activists and lawyers who said, we start with concrete cases that are local because people get that much more easily than this big abstract climate change thing. So the game starts and the focuses on a river being on fire, which is nice and dramatic and happens in real life. and The river Pariyar in the city of Muziris, a city that does not exist anymore in in Kerala, in the south of India, but in our story still does.
00:14:49
Speaker
And, ah yeah, and the I mean, the final thing to say about it, I mean, in terms of in terms of gameplay, it is a sort of a strategic role playing game with deck builder mechanics. um So we're using deck building to or simulate difficult conversations and the court battles. So you're talking to someone, you have a whole set of cards that are like your repertoire of strategies of how to talk to them, and you're trying to get them to open up, or you're trying to get them on your side, or you're intimidating them, or you're doing something with them. You have all these different strategies. You can...
00:15:23
Speaker
sort of affect their different emotional states. And that's the that's a core gameplay and that's one of the core gameplay elements. And the other one is to manage your team. You have a team of activists that you have to set on missions, you go on missions, you get more cards. So you get cards from missions and from your team that that you then use to unlock more of the evidence and the sort of case. And, you know, trying to take this ah local branch of a corporation to court, essentially.
00:15:47
Speaker
You know, we often talk about finding your niche, right? And you might think your niche is just people who want to save the earth, environmentalists, right? But like, you're also niching down in there, right? You're finding, hey, we're specifically finding local problems that people can connect with, right? Because even though we might think environmentalism is like a small percentage of people, there's so many topics in there, right? And when you connect to something that's like...
00:16:09
Speaker
personally affects me, right? When you're talking about the rivers in India, if I'm around there, like those hit close to home, I'm going to check that out. And I think it's just super cool how you decided to kind of narrow that down once you're there to kind of find that specific core audience and build off of that.
00:16:23
Speaker
Yeah, I think in terms of audience, we are very much explicitly trying to build a game that's that's just engaging as hell in the first place, right? And just an exciting story. um So, you know, I think of a Disco Elysium or something like like Norco, which is a little bit too narrative for my taste. And our game is more gameplay focused than Norco, which is very, very sort of a lot of just a lot of reading, even though it's a great world.
00:16:48
Speaker
um you know citizen sleeper games like that so we want we want to make a game that is that attracts that kind of audience that's probably a little bit more accessible than those games a little bit a little bit lighter in touch um that's also a goal but deep in gameplay so it's also attractive to people who like deck builders who like strategic sort of like yeah these sort of emotional battles and uh And so we're hoping to attract a bunch of sort of like sub audiences of indie games players. And I don't think you have to be primarily into this environmental ah sort of like focus to be interested in the game. and And that's another thing in terms of the audience. We decided pretty early on that we wanted to make it very clear that this is a game about the powerless fighting the powerful, about that the billionaires destroying our future. It's not just the environment, right? It's our our our livelihoods and our our way of being. and
00:17:38
Speaker
And we wanted to get away from this idea that this is like a climate activism game or something, because that is certainly like an audience, but it's not very big. and in And in these times when we're way too busy getting crushed by fascism and all kinds of and and AI and all kinds of stuff,
00:17:54
Speaker
having a slightly wider lens where we say, no, this is about power and, you know, justice and power indifference, we thought was much more powerful. and and And that is ultimately what it's really about, right? Climate change and the environment and so on are just a symptom of this wider sort of like Yeah, you know predatory capitalism, ah sort of bit billionaire elite and so on, all the stuff that you know, right? so and and And I think that makes the game much more exciting.
Funding Challenges and Strategies
00:18:22
Speaker
It makes the game more angry. It makes the game less, ah you know, it's not talking down to anyone. And I've played this game with ah high school students. I've do not done a little tour taking the demo to, because it's a demo, we're in the middle of building it, to high school students across the Netherlands as part of an educational program. And
00:18:41
Speaker
Yeah, the students feel like it feels a lot like a Persona 5, which I thought was very funny to hear, um ah but um in in terms of the vibe. but But also with those students, for instance, we're not trying to get convince them to care about the climate or something. What we do hope to do is to make people excited about getting messy with politics and getting messy with societal issues in general, that that's fun, that that's interesting.
00:19:04
Speaker
Right. yeah Cool. And you are um funding, and I know you mentioned Kickstarter, but just to be clear on this, the the strategies work that you're doing, the UN n stuff is not paying for the game. You are either funding it through private circles, private friends and Kickstarter and whatnot, and B, and maybe there's no answer to this. Do you have anything in terms of the release timeframe, at least, or is that, is that ah youre you're saving your your powder in terms of when it will release. We are aiming for end of the year. It depends a bit on on all kinds of things. We are launching a Kickstarter in a few weeks. um That is partly partly because we feel like this is a kind of game that
00:19:49
Speaker
ah really benefits from community support with this kind of topic. you know ah We have talked to publishers before, but it's a difficult time to ah to get anything funded that even smells of narrative because All Will Rise is not ah it's not a narrative-only game by any means. It's quite systems-heavy in a way, but there is the narrative is also important and it is a role-playing game in that sense. And we don't want to, and there's a lot of publishers who say, who, you know, who say we are really hesitant with funding games that have a narrative heavy focus because it's just, it's just unpredictable, you know, and, and the, and, and we have also heard from publishers who have been, you know, kind of honest, very honest with us that they found the politics of the game to be scary and threatening, and they don't want to be like attacked and doxxed by,
00:20:35
Speaker
you know big streamers. um there' certainly We've certainly heard some stories about that where people really you were very you know very threatened by that. So so that's also something we realized that publishers have to play it safe. but They have to play it safe politically.
00:20:51
Speaker
They cannot afford to be courageous, it seems like. They cannot afford to be courageous in terms of genre. So we are going for Kickstarter. Part of the game is supported by our our producer who has been been able to sort of pre-finance some of the development. But, yeah, we hope the Kickstarter helps us ah make the game larger, better, more complete and so on. So that's happening and we we're very excited about that. We'll see how it goes. it's It's scary, but it's cool, you know.
00:21:17
Speaker
Hey, good luck. that's That sounds like game dev in general. It is. Yeah. it I mean, that's my sense. So, I mean, one thing to say about that is that basically as a researcher in the world of games and the games industry, being fairly new to this space and really walking around in the games industry for the last five years or something only,
00:21:33
Speaker
um And making all will rise for me is also like a test case, you know, I mean, obviously, for for the rest of the team, it's not they've been ah around for a long time. But for me, it's also like a sort of ah action research, sort of what is it like to try to make a successful game? What can I learn from that as a researcher that other people can benefit from by trying to do it instead of looking from the sidelines, you know?
00:21:53
Speaker
Yeah, it makes a ton of sense. You know, you're doing a lot of cool things and you mentioned a whole bunch of games and I want to lighten up the mode mood for a moment here. yeah And I heard this really good question from someone at PGC that I figured I want to start putting more into the podcast of I need you to name three games for me. I want two of them to be what got you really hungry to be part of the gaming industry when you were younger.
00:22:17
Speaker
And what's the game you're playing today? Yeah, so let me think. So ah other than than Vampire the Masquerade, which of course is not a video game, but the games that the games games that I've really always loved, um and there's there's too many to to name, but I think something like... i think something like a Planescape Torment like Disco Elysium kind of game that really goes deep into this into these narratives. i thought i've i've thought that that was really amazing.
00:22:45
Speaker
um And and you know the other series that I'm really in love with is is the Souls series, Dark Souls and the and from software games. like i I remember being really afraid to play them because I thought they would take up a lot of time. And ah and now I'm like, yeah, I mean, yes, you're right.
00:23:04
Speaker
But but just just amazing depth and and really resonant games and and just incredible. What I'm playing right now is Silksong. And that's, of course, ah and a logical evolution coming out of Dark Souls. Silksong has driven me up the wall. Hollow Knight Silksong is far more difficult than any of the Souls games, I think, at least for me as someone who doesn't play that many platformers.
Games as Catalysts for Engagement
00:23:27
Speaker
And the i I have been shocked at how difficult it was in the beginning, even though I did play Hollow Knight. And now I'm like, no, it's just getting used to it. You know, you just have to get get it in your fingers, get the muscle memory and and and it's it better. But yeah, it's ah it's a hard game. I remember it's ah dreading going to the first the Act One boss in Silksong and someone told me, ah ah you know, you can just go to there's like an an alternative first act boss that you can go to.
00:23:54
Speaker
and And you can, but it took me 10 hours to get there. And I was like, okay thanks for that advice. But it's an amazing game. you know It's small studio, works for seven years on a game, does ba barely any marketing. Of course, they had the benefit of Hollow Knight and then just breaks all the platforms at release. It's crazy. Yeah, very cool.
00:24:11
Speaker
you You like torturing yourself there, huh? I do. I do. i I once played, I once finished Dark Souls one on Soul level one, which you know means no leveling. And it felt like I had it like it was like an extra job, you know, it's just my job was to try to beat Dark Souls without leveling.
00:24:28
Speaker
And I did it, you know, yeah. I guess I'm going to darken the mood again and go back toward, you know, all will rise in some of your more professional and, you know, darken the mood from dark souls. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. But you know, there's 3 billion gamers out there. um yeah You know, obviously there's a big climate change challenge that everybody's facing, as you said, not just about destruction of the environment or turtles or whatever, but eventually potentially our own, you know, kids is in our future, you know, as a species on the planet. So, I mean, those are two huge,
00:24:59
Speaker
things, right? A huge amount of gamers and then a huge ah issue around saving the planet from potentially cooking ourselves or whatever, whatever better description of it that you have. And I guess I'm trying to, you know, not necessarily look at all will rise, although you're, you're happy to go through that lens, if that makes sense. But like, how do you connect in your mind or through what, you know all the experiences you had get people to actually want to engage, whether it's politics, maybe it's not even the, ah the climate change issue, but engage in politics in a grassroots way, right? Engender that feeling in gamers that yes, it's okay to take risks and not be afraid of a blowback from some people who may, may view you in a a certain way for, for engaging in this stuff. But how do you, how can video games help unlock that feeling or sentiment or activity in the real world? Or is it,
00:25:52
Speaker
Is it very, very hard to do and you're not sure yourself? No, i think I think it is hard to do for sure. Right. But I think i think the way I think about games and changes, is I think about games as part of ah part of culture.
00:26:04
Speaker
ah So they they are are they are a site where culture is being reproduced and being expressed and being created. So um I think there's a but there's a bunch of pathways into this, but but games normalize certain cultural ideas. right if they're If they're in all the games, it just becomes sort of this sense of a cultural norm. um i think ah but but But the thing that that I'm most interested in, I'm less interested in games telling people giving people information. I don't think that works at all. right I think that the the way that people change through games is by...
00:26:42
Speaker
changing their relationships with themselves, for instance. Like I i have been fundamentally changed, I feel like, fueled by Silksong because Silksong demands such precision and such moment to moment attention to detail and to movement and react reactivity that I noticed myself going to my kickboxing class and sparring with people and and having a silksong brain and suddenly seeing more windows of attack, you know, stuff like that. So ah yeah, I did the research with ah with a master's student about the Dark Souls and Disco Elysium and just asking people to talk freely about what they feel has changed in their lives because of these games. And often these types of stories and also with other games are a lot more about how people see themselves and how they see their general relationship with reality, how they think about their own capacities, right? So something like Dark Souls, for instance, gives people a general trust, not always, of course, but often in their ability to do things that they've never done before.
00:27:34
Speaker
So they but they what is called self-efficacy, perceived self-efficacy. Can I do this? And and ah quite a few people say, yeah, because of Dark Souls, i'll I'll often have to do something hard. And I think, well, I beat Dark Souls.
00:27:45
Speaker
I could probably do this. Right. And so we want to be in in a way the dark souls of politics. Right. So to be like, oh, i well, I beat all will rise. and Maybe I should actually get involved with this stuff because I think I have a brain for thinking about how to organize, how to talk to people, how to, you know, frame issues and so on. So it's, it's maybe you made it seem fun in a way the actual in real life activity may not be fun, but at least they'll go into it with the idea that not only could I do it, but it might actually be fun, which could be deceiving again, but maybe that's part of the, uh, part of winning them over.
00:28:19
Speaker
Exactly. And one of the interesting things is that um um ah i talked I spoke with with a lawyer in India, ah as well you know as a bunch of we were talking to a bunch of people, but a lawyer who said, if you want to be a lawyer in India, you have to have a great appetite and enthusiasm for chaos. because the system is really chaotic. You have to like this, otherwise you won't last, you know? And so this is inspiring for us because I feel like getting giving people some more appetite for chaos and for, we don't want to pretend that doing politics and and trying to fight sort of ah much more powerful people,
00:28:53
Speaker
is easy, it's messy, it's hard, it's difficult, it can be boring sometimes, and we want all these things to be part of the game. But if I talk to real activists and real sort of people involved in these cases, it's very meaningful work. and And I was only involved with this one case for a while ah before it was actually ah um ah an unexpected success. the The The pension fund decided even before the case was fully, like it was announced and so on, but it wasn't like initiated. and They decided to take 15 billion euros out of fossil fuels and put it in renewables. And I was there in the meeting. You have to imagine this was during COVID. In the meeting online when this was announced and people and there were like 60 people working on that case. And everyone was like, what the hell? They just did it?
00:29:35
Speaker
They were thinking that they were gonna be working on this for years, you know? And that was such an incredible like dopamine sort of moment. cathar yeah um you got your You got your IRL payoff, the emotional payoff happened in real life.
00:29:50
Speaker
and exactly, you know, and i think and I think that that's real, right? People working on stuff that that really matters to them have an experience that, you know, I think they once asked Gandhi, ah you know, what how what is it like to be so altruistic? And I think he said something, maybe I'm completely misquoting him, but he said something like, no, no, no, I'm doing this for myself. This is really fun, you know? Like, I think there couldn't be anything more fun in the world that I could be doing than this. And I think that that that that's...
00:30:18
Speaker
Yeah, that's something want to see. Maybe the self-discovery. You mentioned self-discovery earlier. And yes, it's fun. But if you learn something about yourself, even through that painful process, you may still reflect on that as being important to where you want to go as a human being because you learned that painful lesson.
00:30:34
Speaker
It's ah' ah it's ah it's the the pain the pain of joy the pain of joy and the joy and the pain all connected and learning and stretching yourself, right? And really stretch. And it's and it's interesting to me because I think a lot of people in AAA sort of like traditionally thought, no, we have to like spoon feed the gamers. We have to take them by the hand and everything has to be easy. And then Elden Ring is a massive success. Baldur's Gate 3 is a massive success. Silksong is a massive success. right And and the ah Team Cherry who made Silksong said, and also about Hollow Knight, they said, you know if we make the game too easy, people won't be talking about it. we need We want to make the game so hard that people start talking to each other about how to to do it.
00:31:16
Speaker
Now, I don't think All Will Rise will be quite that difficult. it won't but the like difficulty In that sense, it won't be our sort of like focus, but definitely sort of the messy complexity of dealing with all this stuff. you know and And having a lot of replayability. So we want the game to be replayable enough so that you could talk to your friends and be like, did you find that card? Did you do that mission? No, i you know wore out my team and they all had a burnout. Okay, well, I sort took care of my team and we went on this weekend trip. And you know that those kinds of conversations, because it's it's a single player game. but um a lot of A lot of wonderful single player games have great communities around them, right? And and and the the social media communities and the cultures around games is, I think, where a lot of the work happens, actually.
00:31:57
Speaker
You know, you you mentioned a lot of games there again, right? And they're all for a good mission. But do you have an example of a studio that you think is doing this right? You know, when you're looking at how effective they're working with their community and their bigger goal overall, is there like a studio you want to emulate?
00:32:13
Speaker
Yeah, that's ah that's a really good question. um It's not super easy. I mean, in in in terms of sort of like work ethics and and the way that they're doing things, I'm very appreciative of Supergiant Games with Hades and so on. I think that that's a great way to work. I think working on...
00:32:32
Speaker
Well, I mean, i think i I would say that the that the Gareth Damien Martin with Citizen Sleeper 1 and 2 is definitely an example for us. um You know, and and i think I think that they're really addressing, you know, the the first Citizen Sleeper was inspired by Anand Singh's book, The Mushroom at the End of the World, which is a really cool anthropological study of people making a living sort of collecting Matsutake mushrooms sort of on the edge of society.
00:33:05
Speaker
And that you really see that, and especially in the first Citizen Sleeper.
Inspirations and Cultural Impact
00:33:08
Speaker
And I think that's a really wonderful example of a deep and meaningful game that really tries to say so say something about community and community resilience. And it's really interesting and narratively strong and the way that's built and everything.
00:33:20
Speaker
Yeah, I think that that's that's definitely an example. And and I've met at Gareth Damian Martin and we've spoken about All Will Rise and they're they're very interested in it. So that's that's very nice, you know, to be able to make that connection.
00:33:31
Speaker
I know Saibo Games, I believe, is the subway surfer folks up in the yeah in the Nordic, I forget where they're based, but I believe, I know for Games for Change, they seem to be a studio that across multiple games is involved in environmental cases and whatnot. environmental That's right. Yeah, and there's there's more examples like that, but I but i guess for All Will Rise, I'm sort of looking at the people who are a little bit in the same in the same genre, you know?
00:33:54
Speaker
but But I also think ah in the same way, I also think that what we are trying to do with All Will Rise to really be explicitly this political and so on while making a wild, imaginative, soulful, et cetera game is a little bit unprecedented. And we are also trying to prove that it's possible. you know ah So if All Will Rise succeeds, then maybe other people can do this. And there can be there's ah a there can be other games in the mold of this sort of like...
00:34:19
Speaker
You know, because it's one thing to sprinkle some environmental themes on your game or to have it be in the background or under the surface. But we are very like, oh, I know what my example is, actually. It's actually the wolf the new Wolfenstein series. Well, new, I mean newish, but the Wolfenstein, the New Order and the New Colossus.
00:34:35
Speaker
are games that they're big games, right? The triple A games made by machine games, or at least double A. And they are very explicit about anti-fascism.
00:34:46
Speaker
But in a way that's in and this is a sort of like ah a thing for us in a way that's both deeply humorous and playful and deeply serious, especially Wolfenstein, The New Colossus is about fascism in America, and it speaks about a long history of structural racism and so on.
00:35:02
Speaker
um it's It's amazing. you know on the one The one moment you're talking about that, and then the next moment you're on a you're on a Nazi UFO flying to Venus to make a you know to pretend to be an actor who wants to star in Hitler's new movie that's actually about you. And you know to be able to sort of walk that tightrope of sort of deep serious hilarious and very serious things I think is amazing. So yeah, machine games might be the might be the example, actually.
00:35:33
Speaker
And there's a new Wolfsang game coming, I believe. so we'll We'll see what they do with it. um Yeah, that that's great. um I know you were you wrote a chapter for the 2024 book, Ego Games. And so I think you've kind of already addressed this, but I'd like to quote you, and I guess perhaps ah your your co-authors might have written part of this so i don't want to put it all in your mouth. But I'd like to ask a couple of questions about that. But one is, quote, games that have been designed specifically for the purpose of encouraging behavioral change have yet to have an impact at scale.
00:36:05
Speaker
The opportunities to combine commercial success with effective engagement with the planetary crisis are only beginning to be explored. And I know we've kind of touched on this already, but I don't know since that point, have you had any other thoughts as your thinking evolved? Have you given, you know, do you have any more specific examples of where that has been done successfully beyond the ones we've already brought up?
00:36:28
Speaker
I think the examples are still or far between, I would say. you know there's There's great work being done by playing for the planet who are doing this green game jam, which involves ah putting these green activations in existing games. And I think that's really cool. you know ah but But my favorite sort of version of this is the type of stuff that we're doing with All Will Rise or the stuff that I was mentioning about Wolfenstein before. um And I don't think there are that many examples of that yet. And my thinking has evolved in the sense that i think i've I think I believe more now than even then, although it it is in the chapter, that we have to build a culture, right? We have to build a gaming culture that, just like just like the alt-right has done once upon a time, that is about identities and standards and norms and and what people love. I mean, one one thing that I have been more convinced by, and among ah among ah other people, by the work of my PhD student, Niva Kay, who,
00:37:26
Speaker
ah Thank you. sort of works on this idea that people need more positive futures to even be able to imagine them. you know you If you don't know what a better future could be like, right then you can't imagine it. and you You have no reference point. So whereas my my focus and the focus with All Will Rise has been a lot on how do we make the struggle to get there interesting and make that sort of a dynamic epic story that you can engage with. This idea of presenting worlds that people can imagine they want we want to live in
00:37:57
Speaker
I think is very powerful and it has also shifted for us in all rights where we don't just want to talk about the struggle. We also want to show in our version of Kerala South India that that there is a better world possible. Kerala in our game, although there is a river on fire and so on, is a little bit utopian in the sense that the politics are very communitarian. ah There are all kinds of experiments going on which does happen in the real kerala but here even more and so on so we want to show a little bit like what is possible in a inner world that has a few more possibilities than ours so that that i would say more and even more emphasis on culture and more emphasis on the need for believable inspirational positive alternatives very good and and you may be your own best example of this but i i'll do another quote here so
00:38:42
Speaker
ah You know, you talk about Activision activism and what's effective activism. And you write that, quote, games that take the idea of utopian development further further and activate and motivate people to get out there, to organize, to get involved in politics. Game that stir up the trouble needed for systemic change and specifically games focused on tearing down the existing structures and systems.
00:39:05
Speaker
So, you know, utopian development may be a concept that's in the academic services I'm unfamiliar with, but maybe a little bit of color on that would be helpful. And then, again, you go back to the most impactful part of that. And, you know, how how can how can it be realized, I guess, is what I'm looking for.
00:39:23
Speaker
Yeah, a utopian development. I mean, i think what I sort of like point that there is that the utopia is not a state. It's not like a like ah a special society that just exists somewhere out there.
00:39:36
Speaker
It's a process, right? Processes can be utopian. The way that we organize politics can be utopian in themselves. The way that we organize resistance and soci societal movements and so on can be utopian. So the utopia as process, utopia as method, as the title of a famous book about utopias by Ruth Levitas goes, is I think um what I'm very interested in representing in games and giving people access to, because I also think that that's a way that people can can get um you know get the tools and the skills and the strategies that they need to to actually to actually do it.
00:40:09
Speaker
and Yeah, I think i think that's ah that's a you know an important thing that's kind of missing. There's just ah a paper that just came out this week by Karine Mosdorf, who's one of the authors on the on the chapter, who is one of my PhD students, where she looked at a lot of games and how they deal with caring for the future, especially around climate change. And what she found is that a lot of games communicate something about how it's important to care for the future and so on and what could go wrong, but they don't really give people the skills they need to actually do it to go out and do it. right And I think ah that's important. I think games by themselves as sort of like products can't do that by themselves. I think we need a culture in which those games can land. So ah one thing that I'm very excited about is ah going to schools and essentially teaching schools game literacy. you know ah ah if if you you know I, as a child, grew up with, I guess, lots of diverse games because I'm 43 and I grew up in a time where games were, there weren't less less like just one game dominating everything. right So I played lots of different games. So my game literacy sort of naturally became quite great. ah But i speak to a lot of younger people now and they you know don't know most games, like games like Elden Ring and Baldur's Gate 3 that I know.
00:41:26
Speaker
and I think are huge. But for many people, they just play Fortnite or they just play FIFA or something. Right. And so going to a school and and helping people appreciate the medium of games in the same way that they're essentially being forced to appreciate literature or film.
00:41:42
Speaker
ah i was talking to a bunch of high school students the other day when I was coming around with All Will Rise and I told them like, you know, do you get any classes about games, right? And learning to understand games are like, yeah, nothing. And I was like, why do you think that is? And they're like, well, games are not, you know, people think games are escapism and so on. And I was like, yeah. And is that fair? And they were like, no, I don't think that's fair. Right. And then people started talking about some of the students had played more in-depth games,
00:42:08
Speaker
And I think we need also a culture that is able to learn something from games. We can't just make deep games. You also have to be able to, like if I read a classic, if I read War and Peace or something, the mindset that I take to go into War and Peace is like, this is like one of the great books of the canon. This is something that says something about you the human experience. And it's my my favorite book. Very yeah and non-exciting choice, maybe, but it's a great book.
00:42:33
Speaker
But I once played, when I when i played Planescape Torment, I was like, I'm going to play this like it's a holy text because it kind of is, you know, it's such a classic game. And, you know, if you if you play like that, you get a very different experience from just thinking about this constantly, like I'm just escaping into a reality. I should be reading a book or something. So I think creating a society where important meaning making can happen around games. And the thing is, it does, right? So if you if you look at Gamergate and the All Right and stuff like that, part of the reason why people make such strong identities around games is because they're in a way rebelling against mainstream culture or their perceptions of mainstream culture that tells them that games are shit and and culturally worthless.
Societal Themes and Future Visions
00:43:16
Speaker
um And then it becomes kind of a mark of...
00:43:19
Speaker
on earth to be like, we're gamers, you know, and that creates identities. You might overcome unlike other media, like a novel, whatever. I'll last one ask one last question and then turn over to Greg to to close us out. But from the same chapter, you wrote, this need for radical change is further exacerbated by inequalities, power imbalances, and injustices that only become more pressing as time goes on. And I guess I'm curious about the relationship between the inequality that we experience in the real world, these power imbalances that you point to ah and, you know,
00:43:50
Speaker
ah the the global crises we face. It seems like you were drawing some sort of a relationship there that as things get less unequal, the threat gets larger, which i which feels right to me, but I don't want to put words in your mouth again on that that last one.
00:44:03
Speaker
i think I think that the inequality and power imbalances, ah you know, i think I think the radical form of capitalism that we currently inhabit only serves the very richest people, you know. We we might pretend, we might fool ourselves that it's benefiting everyone. I'm not talking about like I'm not talking about free markets, right? Free markets, you know, whatever, fine, you know, that can work. But capitalism as an ideology, the idea that profit and capital rules everything and and taken to the extreme that it's now being taken, right? In a way that influences politics, where politics becomes becomes entirely undemocratic because of the influence of money and technology.
00:44:42
Speaker
Yeah, that's destabilizing. And the people the people who are in the positions to use that power to ah to to get to gain more money, have, you know, the the people who are in those positions are often in those positions because they they miss some some sort of ethical compass and they are able to step over other people.
00:45:03
Speaker
They are also molded by their environments into thinking that they're better than others. Right. There's a lot of research that shows that if you have ah ah a huge amount of money and power, you gradually just start to think that you're just different from other people, you know. So you just get you just start to develop a psychology of exceptionalism And and I think in unreality, I think in a way I pity billionaires because they are living in a really surreal world, right? And it's a hallucination.
00:45:32
Speaker
And ah people who are hallucinating all these strange things, who have so much power to wield, they are not in touch with what it means to be a person. And and and that' sort of those are sort of the minds. And i'm I don't want to put too much agency with these people because capitalist systems are also...
00:45:49
Speaker
you know, and they're just like a force by itself that no one really controls that much and in some ways is it's very destructive. It's like a disease. It's a disease that that that that some people are very ill with and and a lots of other people, you know, bear the brunt of. and i think i think it's I think more equality, more freedom, more autonomy, um you know, benefits all of us and would probably also lead to better environmental outcomes, you know.
00:46:19
Speaker
Agreed. I know we were on a heavy note, Greg. I'll let you close it off. But for me, I've been talking about this stuff all day. So it's not heavy for me, you know? Okay. It's funny you mentioned kind of the ah the reality check for Billionaires. I think a few years ago, there was an interview with Bill Gates. And I think they were just like,
00:46:35
Speaker
What's the price of this? And I think at one point it was like a banana and he was just like $7. It's just like, you just don't know. Right. And again, you know, it's just, they don't have to do their shopping. Right. You don't know what you don't know, but the truth is when you, when you don't know the perspective of someone else, like when I came to London and saw you, and it really hit me when I went to the Midwest here in the States, like,
00:46:56
Speaker
even though we're in the same country, we live very different lives. And I was explaining to these guys, like, I live outside of New York. You're here in the Midwest. Like, we don't live the same type of life. Even they were confused. Like, what do you mean? We're we're both...
00:47:08
Speaker
fathers, we're both doing this. I'm like, yeah, but like my day to day activities are completely different yours because I live right outside of the city and my supermarket's right down the street from me where they got to drive 30 minutes to get there. And my relationship with my peers and my others, right? Because we're all there. Like you're molded by the experiences and what you live through. and And it's just fascinating when you start thinking like that, like this person says no idea. It's not that they like me or dislike me or whatever. It's just that we live two different lives and you need to understand that people have different experiences. Yeah.
00:47:36
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And, and I think that there is a ah a, very concerning worship of psychopathic tendencies in society that seem cool, but are not great for any of us. um and And that, and that, that is a problem, right? And that's, yeah, that's a culture, that's a cultural and a moral problem that we need to face.
00:47:57
Speaker
Yeah. And let's end with a a more positive note. All of this is positive, Yos. What's next for you in 2026? You're launching a game. We saw each other at Pocket Gamers. So what events will we bounce into each other at? But what do you got planned for the rest of the year?
00:48:11
Speaker
Yeah, so definitely um definitely that All Will Rise Kickstarter and the eventual launch of the game. I'm going to be visiting a lot of schools with the game as well. um I am working on a very strange topic. ah To some people, I'm working on this concept of infrastructures of mystery, which is a question of if we can try to restore some sense of the world being a mysterious, wonderful, you know sacred, whatever that means, a place to people as a counterforce to...
00:48:40
Speaker
treating the world as something you feed into an algorithm, then um what infrastructural support do we need for that? So, for instance, if people need more time by themselves to to be in in silence or if they need to be able to go out into nature or if it's about maintaining certain like, you know, longstanding nightclubs, right, or anything like that or funeral practices or or more traditional spiritual spaces.
00:49:05
Speaker
um How do we build an infrastructure for a world that that ah that recognizes and that allows people to recognize that life is a very special thing and it's not just replaceable by AI, for instance? um that's That's my project now. And, ah you know, it's ah' ah it's definitely something that takes me into an unusual direction as a sustainability person.
00:49:27
Speaker
But I think it's it's more fundamental and I think it's crucial. And lots of people are responding well to it. so So I'm excited about to see where that will go. And that also does connect to games because I think i think games, there are one underexplored question when it comes to ah thinking about what is the cultural value of games is can games be a sacred experience to people? you know Can can it be ah yeah can it be like like I was saying, a sacred text? And I think when I hear people talk about Dark Souls, for instance,
00:49:56
Speaker
and the experiences that they've had with that, um you know, it comes pretty close. But our Silent Hill 2 is another really interesting example that I hear a lot of people talk about. And so I'm i'm curious about that. Like what's the what's the interface between games and spirituality, games in the sacred, games and mystery and and sort of existential perspectives. And I think a lot more is possible because suddenly, a burst because certainly with films and with books, we can see this everywhere, right? There's lots of books that talk about the sacred and that people feel has has has some kind of spiritual experience in them. Movies, same thing. And games, you know, it's definitely possible. So I'm interested in that as well.
00:50:33
Speaker
Yeah. That's a ah deep talk topic. And on that note, Associate Professor Joost Verwort, We'll let you go and really appreciate your time. That was great. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Really appreciate it.
00:50:45
Speaker
Yeah, we'll have links to all of your stuff. Louis, thank you for taking the reins on this one. Anyone that has any questions, jump into our Discord. We'll have a link to it in the show notes. We'll links to all of your stuff and to everything. So thank you both for a great conversation. Good luck with everything and look forward to bumping into you guys elsewhere.