Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition

Allegorithmic Politics of Game Exchange: Subversion, Ideology, and Capitalism in Strategy Games

This paper examines how the strategy games Civilization VI and Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition encode ideologies of capitalist exchange within their core mechanics.

• The paper argues that Civilization VI and Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition encode capitalist exchange ideology in their core mechanics, mapping player labour onto progress through accumulation and meritocratic reward, which limits emancipatory or speculative play.
• Civilization VI is read as reducing culture, science, and the map itself to interchangeable abstract value, with its "utopian exchange" interpreted as an allegory of capitalist accumulation and labour-value theory.
• Civilization VI's diplomatic victory condition is interpreted as preserving power hegemony rather than enabling genuine cooperation.