Beyond the Analysis from Neoliberal Subjectification? The Accelerationist Short-circuiting of Gaming Pleasure in Total War: Warhammer II & III

This paper examines whether the optimizing play style that emerges from acquiring gaming literacy in Total War: Warhammer II and III (Creative Assembly, 2017 and 2022) reproduces the neoliberal subjectivity described by Foucauldian governmentality theory, or whether its intensification produces a failure condition that exposes the limits of neoliberal rationality. Drawing on the work of content creators who pursue game-breaking exploits such as early confederations and infinite gold, the author argues that the process of mastering a game's mechanics treats the fantasy world as a decipherable mathematical system, and that this instrumental approach can undermine the narrative immersion that originally attracted players.

The argument unfolds along two possible trajectories. In the first, players find their expertise tedious and cannot return to an earlier, less analytical mode of play, a condition the author links to the "short-circuiting of power gamer subjectivity" described by Silverman and Simon. In the second, accelerationist intensification does not dismantle capitalist relations but reinforces them, as players take pleasure in maximization and in sharing discoveries within a community. The paper treats this enjoyment as a challenge to Foucault's suggestion that bodies and pleasures can be deployed against power, since the pleasures of gaming a system already resemble the pursuits of financial elites.

The study's scope is conceptual and theoretical, grounded in close analysis of publicly available content creator strategies for two commercial strategy titles rather than in a systematic survey or sample of players. Its methodological framework draws on theories of gaming literacy, habit, and governmentality, situating the games within broader debates in critical theory and game studies. The paper is presented as a contribution to the Proceedings of DiGRA 2023 and aims to theorize the experiential dimension of optimizing play rather than to establish empirical prevalence.