Ludic Prognostication: Games as Sites for Simulating the Future

Ludic Prognostication argues that video games are well suited to simulating possible futures, and that their rule-bound, systemic structure allows players to experience speculative worlds rather than simply observe them. The article examines three open-world, futuristic games, Detroit: Become Human, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, and Cyberpunk 2077, through a combined methodology of close reading, formal game analysis, and autoethnographic play journals. Its scope is interdisciplinary, drawing on game studies, science fiction studies, and simulation theory, and its conclusions are theoretical and qualitative rather than empirical.

The central finding is that all three games portray dystopian futures in which technology amplifies existing inequalities rather than producing utopian outcomes. Their geographies, including a flooded-coast Detroit, class-divided cities, and a corporation-controlled Night City, are read as plausible models of socio-political trajectories. Surveillance, economic disparity, and exploitation persist or take new forms despite technological advancement. One illustrative data point comes from a player poll in Detroit: Become Human, in which 70 percent of respondents viewed technology as a threat to humanity.

The article concludes that these prognosticated worlds tend to reinforce existing power structures rather than reshape the status quo. It identifies four broad themes, including climate-driven geographic change, transhumanist divides, and questions of identity and embodiment, through which games let players inhabit contested futures. Drawing on Suvin's cognitive estrangement and Boellstorff's view of games as societies, the author argues that technological futures will mirror present realities unless societal beliefs change. The work also suggests that boundaries between virtual and real, and between ludic and non-ludic experience, are more fluid than commonly assumed.