The ability to co-opt, persuade and attract others to assist in one’s goals is a desirable trait. States now do so through video games.

John is a 19-year-old living in Illinois, USA. John studies computer science at a local university but in his free time he’s an avid console gamer. His gaming console of choice is the Nintendo Switch. Every single day he comes back home from his university lectures to find himself in front of his Switch, this is his escape from the real world and primary recreation. Apart from games, he also loves watching anime. He finds the distinct animation and storytelling style of Japanese anime better than any other media form. As a result of this indulgence in Nintendo games and anime, John is quite involved in Japanese pop culture and holds the country in high regard with an aim to relocate there some day. John’s grandfather was a World War 2 veteran. He spent his entire life holding a grudge against the Japanese, and he blamed them for the horrors he had witnessed. He finds John’s indulgence perverted and horrifying. The thought of his own grandson indulging and one day relocating with the ‘enemy’ repulses him to his core. 

The ability to co-opt, persuade and attract others to assist in one’s goals is a desirable trait. It is quite possibly the most desirable trait, as it, compared to other methods, is the most resource friendly. International relations views power projection in two main domains, soft power and hard power. Hard power is the more violent and assertive of the two, as it employs military and economic methods to force others into subordination. Essentially; coercion. This also makes it quite a resource-intensive method of power projection as compared to soft power.  

Soft power relies on social and cultural methods of persuasion. The nature of this also makes it more of a long-term strategy that takes decades of work. In recent years, various scholars have been eager to point out how certain forms of media are subtly injected with a narrative. This narrative is often one that paints a state’s enemies in a bad light while showcasing the good nature of the state itself. A common target of this analysis are the James Bond movies, and almost every other Hollywood action movie. 

The efficacy of this method is hard to determine as it is not the sole factor at play, however, the subtlety of its narrative building makes for impeccable propaganda. 

Consider how in almost every other disaster or apocalyptic movie, it is the United States that figures out a way to save the world. An alien invasion? The US will save the world by defeating them. A zombie pandemic? The US will figure out a way to stop the spread, no matter how ironic that might be, considering their handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. Not to mention the fact that the US government and Hollywood have had close cooperation on varying topics in the past. You can read more about this topic 

This is where video games come into play. Going back to John from Illinois, this is nothing but Japanese video game soft power. Of course, Anime and the Japanese anime industry are also big factors, but people often skip over the importance of the video game industry in matters of soft power. 

Japan’s history is one filled with imperialism, war crimes, genocides like the Nanjing massacre and other atrocities that send a shiver down one's spine. In the past 60 or so years however, Japan has been able to rewrite its image in the minds of people by employing soft power. This is perhaps the country's greatest foreign policy accomplishment. 

 The video game industry is now bigger than the entire music and movie industry combined. Estimates claim that almost 3.24 billion people in the world regularly indulge in this recreational activity, while the movie industry shrinks due to the boom in OTT platforms.  

The most interesting aspect of this however is that globally, there’s a level playing field for all countries in the video game industry. China with Tencent, Japan with Nintendo and a varying number of big names in the US. There are numerous companies in the video game industry that dominate their respective regions. Tencent, a Chinese company, is the largest video games publisher in the world. It owns stakes in some big names like Riot Games, Supercell, Epic Games, Turtle Rock, Garena, Activision Blizzard and many more, with some being 100% or majority owned by Tencent. This does wonders for Chinese soft power projection, a good example of this is the Blitzchung controversy. 

In 2019, Blitzchung, an Esports player of the video game Hearthstone expressed his support for the Hong Kong protests of the same year. Being from Hong Kong, he sympathized with the cause and wore a mask commonly worn by the protesters and said “Liberate Hong Kong” during an official stream by Activision Blizzard, the company behind Hearthstone. Tencent owns a stake in Activision Blizzard. The retaliation of this online protest earned the player a yearlong ban from the Esports Tournament that the streaming event was for and a forfeit of all prize money. For some odd reason, the two livestream presenters who were interviewing Blitzchung were also terminated.  

The following community wide protests ended up with the ban being lowered to 6 months for both Blitzchung and the presenters and his winnings were reinstated. This however did not stop the unrest, with hashtag #boycottblizzard trending on twitter for weeks afterwards. 

What is truly intriguing here is that Tencent owns a measly 5% of Activision Blizzard. Furthermore, Tencent and the Chinese government were likely unaware of this event in the first place. It’s speculated that Activision Blizzard was acting on its own accord here, and that it chose to protect Chinese sentiments regardless of whether it was asked to or not. This is indicative of video games being an integral part of Chinese soft power. 

Going back to the level playing field, it makes complete sense why a country like China or Japan for that matter would indulge heavily in the video game industry. The profits are one big reason, but a smaller yet useful resource is that this is one of the only few domains in the sphere of soft power that is not overshadowed by the United States. Hollywood has long dominated the movie industry and Chinese media is unable to escape its own online ecosystem easily. This gives other countries an opportunity to gain an edge against the superpower as other domains are highly asymmetric for them.  

Video games are also effective domestic propaganda. Take the United States for example. The U.S. Army Esports is an official sponsored competitive gaming team of the U.S. Army. It is part of a public outreach program by the Army marketing and engagement team. The U.S. army uses video games as a recruitment tool, and this is not news. It has been doing so since 2002 with its own first-person shooter game ‘America’s Army’.  

Since then, this recruitment strategy has evolved. The U.S. Army Esports is involved in games like Call of Duty, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, etc. Mostly first-person shooter games that simulate military warfare to some extent. Their goal is to recruit young gamers who have a fascination for the military and indulge in these games by offering them the opportunity to do all of it in the real world. Disregarding the moral and ethical considerations of that, the U.S. army has only increased its involvement in video games and esports as a recruitment drive.  

To conclude, video games are often an ignored aspect of soft power projection. The utility they possess, however, is not ruled by this ignorance. The global south has been quick to harness their capabilities while the global north seems to have lost some footing in the domain in the past decade. Regardless of the contemporary realities, video games will only grow as an industry and become vital aspects of soft power diplomacy. The ability to rebuild a nation’s image in the cosmically small amount of time of one generation is a greatly beneficial power that every nation state would love to possess.  

The Soft Power Projection of Video Games

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