Conceptualizing Social and Political Conflict in Games: Hegemony, Agonism and the Post-Political in Crusader Kings II, Democracy 3 and SimCity

This paper proposes an interpretive framework for analyzing social and political conflict in strategy and simulation games, drawing on the theoretical vocabulary of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Its central argument is that games represent conflict in distinct modes, and that these modes reveal underlying ideological assumptions. The author distinguishes between agonistic conflict, in which opponents recognize each other's legitimacy and compete over interests within a shared framework, and antagonistic conflict, which divides social space into friend and enemy. The analysis also assesses whether a game's depiction of society remains genuinely political, meaning open to contestation, or has become post-political, presenting its social order as settled and beyond question. The method is close reading informed by procedural rhetoric.

Three games serve as case studies. Crusader Kings II is read as largely agonistic: wars require a legitimate casus belli and aim at specific goals, while a shared feudal order provides the hegemonic framework that makes competition possible. Religious wars and non-Christian rulers in expansion content push the game toward antagonism. Democracy 3 is characterized as strongly political, with twenty-one voter groups whose overlapping affiliations produce contingent, never-fully-fixed identities, resulting in a pluralistic field of discursivity despite its formal two-party electoral structure.

SimCity is identified as post-political. Although it resembles Democracy 3 in its budgeting and policy tasks, the author argues that its technocratic framing, reflecting neoliberal logic, marginalizes political conflict. Design choices such as the absence of mayoral elections and the detached position of the player reinforce the presentation of technocratic governance as obvious and unquestionable. The paper concludes by suggesting that the framework could be extended to game genres beyond strategy and simulation.