Globally, more than three billion people are estimated to play video games on a regular basis by 2023 – from Pokémon GO on smartphones to League of Legends on PCs to the soccer simulation FIFA on consoles. In addition, there is a huge number of people actively watching - in the U.S., for example, 47 million a month - on streaming platforms such as Twitch, which broadcast video games live and in many places have already overtaken linear television in terms of reach.
In terms of communicating foreign policy to society, not only to young target groups, video games hold great potential and enable international dialogue, not least in times of corona lockdown, zoom fatigue, and climate change. Due to their reach, video games are a perfect medium for transporting political narratives to society. However, which world views are conveyed in video games currently depends solely on demand and supply in the private games industry - and on the interests of states such as China and Russia, which for years have systematically relied on video games to disseminate their world views in the West.
In addition, video games are drivers of technical innovation and a considerable economic factor: artificial intelligence, cloud computing and virtual reality are being massively driven by the video game industry. In times of hybrid warfare, video games also pose a security risk when artificial intelligence can be enabled to carry out cyberattacks on critical infrastructure using off-the-shelf video strategy games such as StarCraft II.
The opportunities and risks associated with gaming as an instrument of foreign policy are still greatly underestimated in Germany. With analysis, policy advice and mediation in the field of "Gaming and Foreign Policy", we want to connect the gaming community and the foreign policy community, expand the gaming expertise of foreign policy decision-makers and drive policy innovations in this field. In doing so, we use synergies with other DGAP thematic priorities to test use cases for gaming approaches in our own work.