Faster than society gathers wisdom: Video games and/as speculative Fiction

(McFarland, Studies in Gaming Series)

 Editor:

 Marc A. Ouellette, Old Dominion University (mouellet@odu.edu)

While video games are not at all underexplored as dystopic works, they have not as yet been considered in terms of their speculative visions of a dystopian future. Still, games offer plenty of instances of the corrupt national leaders, divisions, sexism, and rank profiteering one finds in novels like Atwood’s ubiquitous tale, games afford players an opportunity to enact and participate in the rebuttal. Thus, the panel seeks to look at games as predictive, speculative versions of dystopian fiction, while offering a means of demonstrating that video games, current and past, are indeed a substantial part of the present and the future of literature. For example, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, a video game released in 2004 is not only a dystopic fiction, its game world, its story, its characters, and its in-game cultural productions can be read quite easily as anticipating and predicting the first (and indeed the second) Trump-eras. Not only are there anti-immigrant screeds, the game also includes Russia owning the president, deep racial divisions, and comments used by verbatim by contemporary conservative politicians. Brabazon, Redhead, and Chivaura (2018) cite the need for consumers to refer to previous iterations of dystopic fiction as a means of making sense of a “dystopic present” (2). They cite the rise of popularity of Orwell’s 1984 (1949), Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here (1935), and of course Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985). Intriguingly, just before Atwood was preparing to release a sequel, Classics scholar Michael Zimm (13 Aug. 2019) proclaimed that video games were finally worthy of study alongside historical texts like the Illiad and the Odyssey. Here, an under-examined point highlights the ways games, like original recitations (and unlike film remakes) of Greek epics, make the audience participants as well as witnesses. The rise of populism, “forever wars,” and authoritarianism has inspired commentators to seek literary works for analogues, but not yet video games.

Thus, the peer-reviewed collection will provide an opportunity for scholars to turn to two frequently disregarded forms, video games and spec fiction, to make sense of a “cataclysmic present.”  While games offer plenty of instances of the corrupt national leaders, divisions, sexism, and rank profiteering one finds in novels like Atwood’s tale, games afford players an opportunity to enact and participate in the rebuttal. Thus, the collections seeks to look at games as predictive, speculative versions of dystopian fiction, while offering a means of demonstrating that video games, current and past, are indeed a substantial part of the present and the future of literature. As a corollary, then, the volume will offer other games that quite clearly resonate as depictions of dystopic literature that predict and help us make sense of later events and outcomes. Indeed, the fact that games allow players to participate in these outcomes makes them a powerful literary form to add to the roster of speculative fiction and predictive dystopic texts.

Suggested Topics and Lines of Inquiry

We invite proposals for chapters that address video games as speculative fiction, dystopic literature, or predictive texts. Possible topics include (but are not limited to): 

• Political Simulation: Corruption, failed governments, or populist demagoguery in games and series
• Media and Spectacle: Analysis of in-game media, news broadcasts, or propaganda
• Fantasy sports and sporting fantasies
• Racial and Social Division: How games simulate, critique, or perpetuate racial, class, or ethnic divisions
• Adaptations and alterations of classic, medievalist, or other period pieces
• Techno-Libertarianism/Randian Critique: Critical readings of games that address objectivism, tech oligarchs, or utopian experiments gone wrong.
• Gender and Sexism: Speculative visions of gender roles, reproductive politics, or institutional sexism in dystopian game worlds.
• Player Agency and Rebuttal: The ways ludic participation (e.g., player choice, procedural rhetoric) allows players to resist or enact dystopian systems.
• The Speculative Past: Chapters addressing how historical fiction games function as speculative fiction (e.g., alternative histories & steampunk worlds)
• Post-Apocalyptic Games: Analyzing games as commentaries on environmental collapse, resource wars, and social breakdown.

We invite scholars from multiple disciplines to submit abstracts (300-500 words by 18 Dec. 2026, with completed papers due 15 May 2027. Please send abstracts and inquiries to mouellet@odu.