In early April 2020, Singaporean journalist and activist Kirsten Han bought a Nintendo Switch Lite just days before Singapore entered its era of “circuit breakers,” a blocking reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic. “I started betting Animal Crossing: New Horizons because I saw a lot of other people talking about it and posting screenshots and gave me FOMO,” Han wrote in an email. “I’m glad I did, because it was a comforting thing and a laugh when I was trapped inside.”
Han wasn’t alone. New Horizons was a blessing to the pandemic, offering a peaceful environment to interact with friends, an artistic outing in the ghost of the physical area and moments of joyful respite. But the popularity of New Horizons has also revealed how it can be used as a tool to express political ideas. In countries with more liberal legislation on freedom of explicitness and explicitness, that would not be a problem. Singapore is another story.
Like many others around the world, Singaporeans have enthusiastically embraced New Horizons that it has a marketing trick. The local hotel island Sentosa has created a corporate logo crusade around an ACNH edition of itself, and the only independent cinema in the country has used the game to do Instagram promotions fairly. On Facebook, Singaporeans have posted replicas of iconic national pop culture outfits, adding the 90 VR Man superhero and Singapore Tourist Office Mascot Merli.
Han has temporarily become a fan of the game’s artistic tools, which Hong Kong protesters had used to pursue their pro-democracy art. One of his attempts, an undeniable black sweatshirt expressing his opposition to the Singapore National Security Act, a decree designed to protect the country from threats to national security. In 1966, the ISA used Chia Thye Poh, a moulding deputy who was imprisoned for 23 years under suspicion of communism, as the notoriety. Earlier this year, the ISA used to stop a 17-year-old who allegedly became radicalized through social media and “foreign online contact.” The law also applies to threats to national security in the form of publications, entertainment and exhibitions.
Han, already known as a radical voice in Singapore’s strictly controlled media landscape, has developed a sense of humor around his activism. “I think it would be a laugh to express what I had done, and I joked that on my island there is no law about law and order that saves us from uniting. So why not, right?” he said, referring to the Public Order Act of 2018, which prohibits public meetings without a police license. That’s why he invited his friends to his island and posted screenshots on social media.
“I didn’t see it as a serious activism,” Han says. “I mean, what effect can some avatars run around a virtual island on politics and human rights in Singapore have? However, I think it is vital to also be able to laugh with activism and politics, and to normalize expression in all its aspects. of life.”
Singapore’s july general election may be the top online elections the geographic region has ever seen, with an unprecedented number of election memes, as well as virtual re-enacts of party logos and cross-cutting fabrics in New Horizons. The historic result: the opposition Workers’ Party won a record 10 seats in parliament, the highest number of opposition seats since the first general election in 1968. And while the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) has once again won a parliamentary supermame, it has experienced historic low times in popular support.
When we contacted Tan for development, he clarified that he doesn’t play video games, but he sees his son play. “[Online games] have the ability to influence and shape political discourse in a very sophisticated way, especially for an impressionable group,” he says. “OverallArray … online gaming as a tool for foreign interference would possibly seem exaggerated. But that’s the subliminal message: influencing other people’s opinions, ratings, and values in sophisticated tactics when people least expect it.”
However, Tan is reluctant to jump to conclusions about the law of video games because “we are still in the early stages and we will have to not get ahead”. He adds that “from a belief point of view, it would not create an intelligent impression of Singapore if the government took strong action against those games and platforms. This can seem seamlessly to be authoritarian and restrict freedom of expression. On the other hand, how do [we] impose a ban on such games and platforms? “
He also referred to “the amplification of feelings,” which the government describes as “the planned attempt to artificially inflate the spread and prominence of narratives that are useful to the foreign actor’s calendar.” Tan states that through the intelligent use of a narrative, online gaming lends themselves to the destructive calendar of a foreign actor. Such amplification can come simply with the use of misinformation, creating a false impression of public opinion, spreading incendiary to be sown. social discord.”
Concern for games as a spy vehicle goes hand in hand with the ancient militarization of games. U.S. It has been around for a long time: the U.S. Army series explicitly designed as a recruiting tool. The U.S. Army He has used insidious broadcasting systems to recruit e-sports players through Twitch. Games like ARMA, Call of Duty and the Rainbow Six series give players a fighting flavor in a military setting, but the link between real-world violence and shooters remains a questionable topic of discussion. In the United States, the cry of “violence in games” remains popular rhetoric for politicians who should avoid constructively addressing the “weapons” component of gun violence. The Israel Defense Forces have just unveiled a new tank running on Microsoft’s “friendly and familiar” Xbox generation with a game-trained AI.
It is therefore ironic that video games have met Singapore’s national security goals for years, reflecting a non-unusual global tendency by army agencies and police to use games for recruitment and training. A 2005 Singapore Air Force article points to how army game modifications were developed through Nanyang Polytechnic academics. Last April, the Defense Science and Technology Agency announced a new naval facility founded on “e-sports platforms, with video games, discussion and analysis forums,” the latter operating as an autopsy raid through World of Warcraft. There is nothing sophisticated or subliminal about the way the state uses games, which includes “Total Defense” card games distributed to high school 2 (ninth grade) students.
Of course, Singapore is not the only one who fears interference from foreign elections, especially since the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal. At the end of the day, it is a challenge that affects all nations that need loose and fair elections. But it turns out that Singapore’s classic status quo still subscribes to a painfully archaic and limited view of what games are and what games can do.
“What has involved me over the years Array … is that many localized [government] examples of foreign interference have a tendency to point out to activists and critics of Singapore’s PAP that the transparent efforts of other state actors to disrupt and influence Singapore. politics,” kirsten Han says. “We’ve heard a lot more about how some Singaporeans, myself included, can potentially be agents of foreign influence.”
Tan’s explanation also invites a closer look at the obtuse confusion of the game’s designed narratives and player expressions in the game. World of Warcraft missions have nothing to do with what players talk about in advertising chat. “If I give a percentage of a screenshot of my ACNH avatar that supports climate strikes, what else did I tweet in favor of climate strikes?” Han asks.
There’s also the fact that games aren’t a monolith: there are as many other genres and forms of games as movies, books and art. Independent games are forms of expression for vulnerable communities. You can create a game on Twine, Twitter or a Google document. Games can exist in the form of site-specific installations or on a sheet of paper. In recent years, we’ve noticed games that invite players to interact with genres, identities, and other marginalized people from other cultures. Games can be thoughtful and empathetic explorations of what it means to be human.
Charles Yeo, chairman of the Singapore Reform Party, is a defense attorney and enthusiast of 2 and World of Warcraft; it has become so popular in the 2020 election that it has a fan-run subreddit. Yeo, which plays about 4 hours a day, has 17 characters maximum point in WoW; when we spoke on the night of Singapore’s National Day, I had just come out of an internet café.
Yeo believes that politically susceptible players would not play with influencers as a credible source of political messages and that it would be very difficult to integrate political messages into the games cited. “In Dota 2, the only way to convey a political message is through your username,” he laughs. As for games like Animal Crossing, many other people play it to relieve stress. Overall, Yeo discovers that players are sometimes politically apathetic and comments that those interested in the policy “would not be players as an authoritative source [of political information]”.
The ultimate heinous challenge is the government’s arrangement of “sentiment amplification” with foreign interference, which lessens the valid fears of Singapore’s youth and minority groups. There is a misperception that the fear of “awakening” gender equality, the intersectional cultural complaint, and the universal fundamental source of income (which Singapore does not have) are Western sentiments. Understanding the “amplification of feelings” in a Singapore context means examining what the government considers undesirable or subversive. For example, homosexuality in Singapore remains illegal and The Netflix rate with LGBTQ representation has an R21 rating because it has an effect on “community values.”
“I recently wrote an article in which I said that foreign influence was used to reject many lawsuits, such as protests over LGBT rights and many other issues,” Yeo says. “[This discussion] will have to be noted in Singapore’s broader socio-political history, where the claim of foreign influence has been used. Array… the concept that when someone tries to protect other people who are not exalted through the ideology of the PAP state, then state ideology would respond with this label of foreign influence.”
In the end, Yeo believes that the government’s fear of gambling is exaggerated and “ridiculous.” USgamer’s attempts to invite Redditors to express their percentage views on the factor have been ridiculed. A reaction to our message assumed we belonged to the Department of Homeland Security. Yeo believes that this kind of apathy and mockery is more prevalent in Singapore, “but that is also true all over the world.”
This is not the first time politics and games have crossed paths in Singapore. At a 2014 factor in Arcade Review, artist Krish Raghav discussed the independent game PAP 2048 and its position in the cultural and political context of Singapore. PAP 2048 was a short-lived mod of the popular puzzle game 2048, but instead of moving numbered chips, players had to mix chips with photographs of PAP politicians. Raghav recalls that it was made anonymously using the traditional 2048 game generator and was shared on the local online forum HardwareZone.
Raghav, who has directed a zine called e: ‘On the history of the game in Southeast Asia, believes that the most productive examples of new media – adding books, videos and games – are ‘necessarily, fiercely local’. He adds: “A game like PAP 2048 showed nothing but a deep and fun love for the politics of your country. It’s a shame that the government’s interest can deter local developers from addressing local problems or, worse, even from seeing them. as opportunities. Address. “
Rascality, which can manifest in satire and ironic parody, can be detrimental in sociopolitical paradigms that limit freedom of expression and expression. Perhaps satire is still perceived as a threat, either because others do not perceive it or because of its uncomfortable but critical role in a healthy democracy. Paranoia about the effects of satire and subliminal messages is not new. We already live with subliminal messages in advertising, television, movies and algorithmic prejudices, and their expansion into games is just a new form of ethical panic.
Games in Singapore are not going anywhere, however, the pandemic has placed more emphasis on online activities as we move more and more towards virtual spaces. Singapore has a strong history of local networked games that continues to describe training reports for local players, adding that it has an effect on its mandatory military service in male player racing. Sport is a very lucrative industry, an industry that the government, however, must support. However, any business in Singapore is accompanied by a great awareness of the country’s prospects for censorship and freedom of expression.
What is transparent is that the government sees online games as incredibly opaque and complete with potential security threats without fully understanding the culture of the game. Today, the law remains hypothetical. Given the speed and speed with which legislation is passed in the city-state, it is difficult to say whether, how and when possible legislation on video games may emerge, especially in a country that has already been criticized for its abolition of freedom of expression. “The article [The New Paper] was the first indication that the government has turned its attention to games,” Han says, “but I’d like to see what they’re going to offer.”