Lifting the Fog of War: Militarism, Colonialism and Encyclopedic Pleasures in Digital Play

This paper examines the design concept of fog of war (FOW), the limiting of visible information in strategy and exploration games, and argues that its meaning has shifted from a representation of military risk and uncertainty to a source of exploratory pleasure in entertainment gaming. Tracing the concept from early computer wargames of the 1970s and 1980s through contemporary titles such as Civilization V, StarCraft II, and Hollow Knight, the authors contend that the obscured map has been reframed as "unfinished business," an invitation for the player to uncover knowledge about the game world. The analysis draws on militarism and postcolonial scholarship, and the paper's scope is conceptual and theoretical rather than empirical, drawing on a broad range of secondary literature and specific game examples rather than survey data or a systematic sample.

The central thesis is that "lifting the fog" in contemporary videogames enacts a colonial fantasy in which unexplored terrain is cast as terra incognita, a space of untapped potential to be mapped and possessed. The authors argue that framing exploration as the romantic pursuit of knowledge for its own sake obscures the violence of colonial cartography, and that this framing parallels the goal of military simulation: eliminating friction and uncertainty through play. Fog-as-fun thus becomes a sympathetic vehicle for the militaristic desire for a "closed world" that can be fully known and controlled.

The authors conclude that this affective overlap between colonial discovery and militaristic certainty may serve as a recruitment vector for players and designers into the expanding wargaming industry and the broader military domain. They position this as evidence of a further militarization of digital play, and they suggest that the implications of this shift for how games construct knowledge and pleasure across other media remain an open area for future inquiry.