Auswärtsspiel

In light of the current political world events, foreign policy issues and developments are of the highest relevance. Nevertheless, public debates often give the impression that the general public knows little about the actual foundations of German foreign policy.

At the same time, many games challenge their players to deal with the meaning of self and foreign interests, different value systems and partnerships within their virtual game worlds: Players solve conflicts, enter alliances and act strategically and politically – always within the respective game logics, of course. Can the involving mechanics of digital games, then, also serve to provide a deeper understanding of the workings and mechanisms of foreign policy practice and issues beyond fictional game worlds? And at the same time, how might one reach a (critical) sensitization towards political narratives and images within games?

It is precisely these questions to which the project ‘Auswärtsspiel’ of the Foundation for Digital Games Culture, funded by the German Federal Foreign Office, is dedicated. It aims to explore the role of digital games as media for conveying narratives and topics of foreign policy. Furthermore, ‘Auswärtsspiel’ seeks to develop an initial approach to the use of games in public diplomacy. At the same time, the interdisciplinary formats of the project allow it to anchor the initiated theoretical impulses regarding digital games and foreign policy more firmly within the public discourse, leading to an interdisciplinary questionnaire as a practical result of the project. The latter seeks to enable all those interested in digital games to become more reflectively aware of games content related to foreign policy and to engage with it in a critical and learning manner.

To this purpose, an interdisciplinary panel of experts from academia, the gaming industry as well as civil and foreign policy institutions developed a catalogue of 10 guiding questions. The latter seeks to enable all those interested in digital games to become more reflectively aware of games content related to foreign policy and to engage with it in a critical and learning manner.

Furthermore, the conference “Gaming and Foreign Policy” took place to deepen the discourse along the touching points of digital games and topics as well as practices of foreign policy in Berlin on June 13^th 2023. The conference was held in German. You can find a short summary of the event in English here.

To initiate a practical application of the experts’ results, ‘Auswärtsspiel’ also includes a barcamp with a modding competition taking place in Berlin from November 9^th to 11^th 2023.  These events will serve as praxis-oriented formats where the topic of foreign policy and games can be approached through the impulses and creative works from the participants themselves (e.g. in form of developed MODs). The project will conclude with a final publication providing the final transfer of the topic into a societal discourse in order to make the project results accessible to as broad a public as possible.

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