How the games we play and the stories we love reflect and shape the societies that produce them. Political philosophy, economics, ideology, and power — examined through the virtual worlds we choose to inhabit for hundreds of hours.
Cultural Analysis applies the tools of critical theory, political philosophy, and economic sociology to the virtual worlds we inhabit. Games are not politically neutral. The way a game economy works — who owns what, what labour is rewarded, what resources are scarce — reflects and reinforces assumptions about how the real economy should work. The way a game world is structured — who has power, who is excluded, what counts as progress — encodes specific ideological assumptions about the social order. This pillar makes those assumptions explicit and asks what they reveal.
A novel or a film represents reality through narrative. A game *simulates* reality through systems. When a game designer decides that land can be privately owned, that labour produces exchangeable value, that some characters are merchants and others are beggars and the difference is fixed at spawn — they are making political choices. The player who spends 200 hours in that system is not simply being entertained. They are being trained in the intuitions of a specific economic and social philosophy. Cultural Analysis is the project of making those intuitions visible.