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by Eugen PfisterThis text originally appeared here in German.London 1918: the Spanish flu claims thousands of victims, hitting thepoorest of the city hardest. Whole neighbourhoods stand empty; communist tradeunionists and street gangs fight bloody street battles. While the upper classof the West End considers building a wall around their district, Romanianimmigrants in Whitechapel desperately fight for survival at the very bottom ofthe steep social hierarchy. Women are increasingly taking over the work of men,hundreds and thousands of whom are dying in a senseless war, whilst not gainingthe same political rights and economic opportunities as them as them. "Vampyr"(Dontnod: F 2018 / PS4 and others).Change of scene: In 1960 deep beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.Frightened, we run through the (retro-)futuristic ruins of the formermegalopolis “Rapture” and become witness to the catastrophic dissolution of autopian city-state-project, as only Ayn Rand could have dreamed of. "NoGods or Kings. Only Man" can be read on a banner at the city gates, a citywhose goal is to avoid limiting the creative expression of its inhabitants, &#160;politically, socially or culturally, and whichis now being brutally destroyed in the struggle of all against all."BioShock" (2K Boston: US 2007 / XBOX360 and others). Another change of scene: a luxurious cabin in the Rocky Mountains, 2015:Eight prototypical (not to say stereotypical) American teenagers have cometogether for a weekend to commemorate two friends who vanished the previousyear, when they successively fall victim to a mythical monster. The land onwhich the manor now stands was taken one hundred years before from an indigenoustribe. A mine was built on the site and, after a mining accident in the 1950s,the buried miners fall victim to an 'Indian curse'. When the miners are admittedto the nearby hospital, however, inquisitive scientists appear less interestedin treating them as are in observing them. "Until Dawn" (SupermassiveGames: UK 2015/PS4). Class struggle, immigration, emancipation, (neo-)liberalism, theprocessing of US "Indian politics" and unethical science: these are alltopics that we would more likely expect to find in the political pages of ourdaily newspapers, but which are, in fact, &#160;a "natural" part of horror games(and films and books of this genre). Indeed, horror narratives are by traditionpolitical (Carrol 1990), even if the gamers may not notice this at firstglance. We are too busy surviving in the face of a growing overwhelming threatin the gameplay. At the same time, these political story elements are nothidden from us, we receive them, and, in a way, we even expect them (Pfister2018a). Now, of course, we could simply claim that these are all"just" serve as window dressing, interchangeable TV tropes that areused almost arbitrarily, without any deeper meaning, especially since not everygame developer wants to convey a conscious political message like Ken Levine.But what if these set pieces were more significant? What if we’redealing with outright political statements that (co-) construct our world viewsregardless of the intentions of developers?Most relevant surveys carried out in the field of game studies now takepolitical discourses and ideological transfer processes in digital games forgranted (e.g. Fernández-Vara 2014, 131-134). Nevertheless, political-historicalor political science studies - Tobias Bevc, for example, published on thissubject several times (Bevc 2007) - are the exception today. (The recentlypublished monographs "Video Games as Culture" [Muriel 2018] and"Playstation Dreamworld" [Bown 2018] should be mentioned here as suchexceptions). One reason for this may be the vehement defensive attitude of boththe games industry and certain gamers towards the idea of political content ingames (Pfister 2018b). Another reason may be the long lived and, at times,almost institutionalized skepticism of historians towards any form of popularculture. This is ironic in that no serious researcher would question thesignificance of popular culture for our contemporary societies (cf. Huck/Zorn2007, Görgen/Nunez/Fangerau 2018 or Caso/Hamilton 2015).&#160; As early as 1998, Kevin Banhurst, forexample, used his "life history analysis" of young Americans to tracehow they drew their political identity not only from the classic news, but alsofrom pop songs, television commercials, etc. (Banhurst 1998).In the following, I will therefore examine in more detail the questionof why, based on theories and findings from the history of politics and ideas,an analysis of political ideas in digital games is not only useful but alsoallows new insights into the politics and society of immediate contemporaryhistory. In extensio, however, this can naturally also be applied to otherhistorical popular cultural mass media. So in the following paragraphs I will brieflyleave the horror aside in order to reflect on the political dimensions ofdigital games, independent of genre. When we speak of political communication, however, we need first of all todefine what is perceived as "political". Even if we all somehowassume that we understand the same thing by politics, my previous experience indiscussions has shown me that this is rarely the case. The boundaries of thepolitical are too vague. For example, if one uses the most exclusive definitionpossible: "state institutions such as governments, parliaments and firmlyregulated institutional ways of decision-making and implementation.”, then thiswould limit the search for the political in games to the representation/stagingand ludification of classical political actors. &#160;(http://politischebildung.ch/fuer-lehrpersonen/grundlagen/politik-begriff).The search for Valdimir Putin, Helmut Kohl and Ronald Reagan in games, however,would only be of very limited research interest. NGOs and political interestgroups, for example, would already have been excluded by this definition. Thepicture would remain incomplete.Nuclear War (New World Computing 1989 / MS-DOS)In political history, therefore, the term “political’ is generallyapplied as inclusively as possible. I consider Ute Frevert's concept to beparticularly helpful here, for whom the "manifold power relations [...]are constituted as political where the establishment, defense and rejection ofunequal social relations is at stake; [they discover] these power relations ina symbolic practice that both prescribes interpretations of meaning andnegotiates them communicatively. (Frevert 2006, 163) Above all, then, it concernsthe legitimization of power. We are dealing here with a basic prerequisite forour political systems to function, which create meaning primarily via culturalpower and via discursive/communicative negotiation processes.Put more simply, what is it that forces us to comply with all laws,norms and obligations on a daily basis? Why do we obey the road trafficregulations even if nobody is looking? Yet if, for example, political powerdepends to a large extent on not being questioned, then the importance of apopular cultural production of meaning is already apparent. The more oftensomething [a political problem or constellation] is confirmed for us in themedia, the less inclined we are to question its justification. Thus it seems exnegativo plausible that, for example, an increasing loss of trust in politicalfigures and institutions in popular culture is not only a mirror of a"real" political development, but also contributes to it. In otherwords: the more often we encounter incapable/corrupt/amoral politicians in filmand television, the more we are inclined to attribute this to "real"politicians.Senator Alfred Woden in Max Payne (Remedy Entertainment 2001 / Windows)Although (new) political history has not (yet) dealt with digital horrorgames, it has increasingly turned to the question of political communication,because "only through communication do meanings or formations of meaningemerge that can be brought together with social structures. (Schorn Schütte2006, 101) Fragile forms of social order only become permanent and more complexstructures "if this stability is guaranteed by the shaping ofcommunication itself" (ibid.).Let's venture a little deeper into theory: If we assume along with Niklas Luhmann that in the past centuries, first in Europe and later worldwide, we witnessed the development of an increasingly functionally differentiated society, that is, the development of highly complex societies organized on the basis of the division of labor then we must also ask ourselves how these highly specialized subsystems (Luhmann gives us as examples "Economic Production", "Political Enabling of Collectively Binding Decisions" (i.e. politics), "Legal Dispute Settlement", "Medical Care", "Education", "Scientific Research", etc.) can communicate with each other. (Luhmann 2010, 200) Who today can still claim to be able to keep track of all economic, cultural, scientific, political, etc. factors, even in a small state, and equally in all areas? Each subsystem has its own semantics, its own "language", its own values [and culture] if you like. At the same time, the subsystems are not to be understood exclusively, individuals can also be part of several subsystems. A medical doctor, for example, can also be interested in art or teach at the university. The supermarket worker may also be politically active. These subsystems must therefore continue to be compatible with each other despite all their differentiation. For this reason alone, a unifying language and common world-views must exist. But since all subsystems are also part of a common system (our society), there is also a need to enable communication between the subsystems around common value systems. For example, there must be a consensus on the form of government, monopoly of power, freedom or restriction of art and science, legal system, etc. Even if we set Luhmann's concept of the functionally differentiatedsystem aside and start simply from the premise that millions of atomizedindividuals, starting each day anew, are prepared to accept the symbolic powerof their democratic states, then the need for a constant exchange about commonvalues and taboos is clearly evident. For the police and the courts tofunction, an overwhelming majority of the population must "believe"in the rule of law. Issues of relevance to society as a whole, such as climateprotection, refugees, but also questions of scientific ethics (for example,with regard to stem cell research) or questions of gender equality must beconstantly negotiated and communicated publicly. This process of politicalnegotiation takes place, in part, naturally in familiar political environments:in parliaments, within parties, and sometimes in specialised subsystems such asscience. However, in order for the decisions made here to become binding, theymust be communicated to as many of the population as possible in democraticsocieties (as well as autocratic ones, by the way).At the same time, the above-mentioned actors and subsystems indemocratic societies must also ensure that they (act) in the interests of the majorityof the population. A similar idea can be found in Jürgen Habermas' concept ofthe public sphere: In an ideal model, so-called leading and mass media wouldtake over the role of mediating between institutionalized discourses ofpoliticians and informal everyday conversations of voters (see also the conceptof "interdiscourse" by Jürgen Link).According to Habermas, the "Öffentlichkeit" contributes todemocratic legitimacy by selecting items relevant to political decision-makingand collating reasoned statements on competing public opinions (Habermas 2008,136). However, Habermas was aware that in reality this ideal state is not beingachieved. On the one hand, the classical news media, which Habermas has inmind, reach only a limited part of the necessary overall public, and on theother hand they are partly themselves politically active in exerting influence.But what if this necessary exchange partly takes place in our popular cultureas well, albeit unconsciously? What if it is an evolutionary step forward inthe system as defined by Luhmann?This constant exchange takes place in several ways: on the one hand,consciously and selectively in democratic elections or votes, consciously andcontinuously (with a clear hierarchical divide) in news media, and increasingly(at least apparently without hierarchical divide) in the constant exchange inso-called social media and, I will argue, predominantly unconsciously andcontinuously (and with a hidden hierarchical divide) also in popular culture.Here, the communication channels mentioned differ qualitatively from eachother. Temporally and locally limited, situational political exchanges takeplace primarily in the former, while long-term and (quasi-)global issues are(also) negotiated in popular culture.Our images of history, but also questions of environmental protection orthe legitimacy of our economic model, for example, are increasingly negotiatedvia popular cultural imaginations in games, television series, graphic novelsand other media formats (see also the increased interest in public history).Here, so to speak, a fundamental semantic basis for politics is established.The idea that politics is also negotiated in digital games, cinema films andpop songs would have the advantage that for the first time we would be given aglimpse into what initially appears to be a "more democratic" processthat no longer centres on political and intellectual elites. So far, the demoshas mostly only found its way into research in the form of "publicopinion" and "election results". Often there has been acontradiction between classical politics and public opinion that has not been graspedwith the research tools used so far.The Last of Us (Naughty Dog 2013/ PS4)Of course, this model of massive and largely unconscious politicalcommunication also presents us with many scientific challenges. For example, inthe case of digital games and popular culture in general, we have to assumethat, although unconsciously, political statements are also the result of amedia logic (in the case of digital games: the influence of marketingdepartments, historical genre traditions, influence of technology, etc.), so aswith the news media, we are not dealing with a "pure" public sphere.The next problem is that our political systems are still largely national,whereas in digital games, in particular, national borders play a verysubliminal and indirect role. However, making genuinely international (albeitpredominantly Western European-American-Japanese) political ideas visible canalso help us to better understand contemporary political processes, such as theunprecedented international success of authoritarian right-wing leaders.Now it might seem as if I have moved quite far away from the object ofmy research I briefly touched on at the beginning, namely digital horror games.In fact, I never really left them behind. Digital horror games must beunderstood as one component (among many) of a popular cultural communicationand construction of meaning. This can happen deliberately, such as when KenLevine publicly decides to deconstruct Ayn Rand's hardcore liberalism in afirst-person shooter. It can also happen unconsciously, however, when someone"just wanted to make a zombie game", but at the same time transportspolitical statements about the inability of complex political systems (ourgovernments) to deal with the ‘threat’ of the foreign. Of course, I have toconstantly remind myself that digital horror games are only a small part of thepicture, and that I do not claim to cover the entirety of an ideologicaldiscourse in popular culture by way of them, as they remain limited in scope boththematically and in terms of social distribution.Vampyr (Dontnod 2018 / PS4)Nevertheless, I would argue that horror games are particularly suited asa starting point, because the "horror genre" has been well researchedin film, literature and increasingly also in digital games (e.g. in Perron 2009and Perron 2018), even though there have not yet been any specific research ondigital horror games in terms of&#160; politicalhistory. &#160;The aim of our research projectis not to prove whether politics is also partly negotiated in popular cultureand digital games, this is rather the original motivation and premise for theproject. For the time being, we shall limit the projectto producing an inventory of clearly identifiablepolitical statements and a first impression of their frequency and distributionfrom the standpoint of political history or actually the history of ideas (seefollowing blog posts). Therefore,our research project is concerned with the syn- and diachronic search forpolitical statements in a temporally limited sample that may not have beenperceived as such at first glance. The aim is to create a catalogue of dominantdiscursive statements, should one emerge. It is always exciting when, atcertain points in time, certain statements suddenly appear more frequently andcolonise other genres.Based on this catalogue - and here we come to the core of our project -the rhetorical design, the political language in horror games is to be explored.This is not a straightforward task. &#160;Onthe one hand, the communication of political content in popular culture isalmost a commonplace in science. On the other hand, from my experience, thepossible effects of political transfer processes qua popular culture are almostalways doubted by people outside the scientific community. The idea that weunconsciously come into contact with political content frightens us deeply,because it questions us as autonomously acting participants in a society. Our aimwith this project therefore, is that a manageable but at the same time conciseinsight into one aspect of popular culture can help to make such processes morecomprehensible.Literature:Tobias Bevc (Hg.),&#160;Computerspiele und Politik. Münster: LIT Verlag. 2007.Alfie Bown,&#160;The Playstation Dreamworld. Cambridge: Polity.&#160; 2018.Noel Carrol,&#160;The Philosophy of Horror. New York: Routledge 1990.Caso/Hamilton 2015: Federica Caso und Caitlin Hamilton (Hg.).&#160;Popular Culture and World Politics: Theories, Methods, Pedagogies.&#160;E-International Relations 2015.Fernández-Vara 2014: Clara Fernandez-Vara. Introduction to Video Game Analysis. New York: Routledge. 2014.Frevert 2006: Ute Frevert, „Neue Politikgeschichte“. In:&#160;Joachim Eibach, Günther Lottes (Hg.).&#160;Kompass der Geschichtswissenschaft.&#160;Göttingen: UTB. 2006.&#160; 152-164.Görgen/Nunez/Fangerau 2018: Arno Görgen, Greman Alfonso Nunez und Heiner Fangerau (Hg.).&#160;Handbook of Popular Culture and Biomedicine. Springer. 2018.Habermas 2008: Jürgen Habermas.&#160;Ach Europa. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. 2008.Huck/Zorn 2007: Christian Huck und Carsten Zorn (Hg.):&#160;Das Populäre in der Gesellschaft. Systemtheorie und Populärkultur. Springer 2007.Luhmann 2010: Niklas Luhmann, „Gesellschaftliche Struktur und Semantische Tradition“, 187-221 in:&#160;Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger,&#160;Ideengeschichte. Basistexte.&#160;Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag 2010.Pfister 2018a: Eugen Pfister, „Der Politische Mythos als diskursive Aussage im digitalen Spiel. Ein Beitrag aus der Perspektive der Politikgeschichte“. In: Thorsten Junge und Claudia Schumacher (Hg.),&#160;Digitale Spiele im Diskurs. Hagen. 2018. URL: http://www.medien-im-diskurs.dePfister 2018b: Eugen Pfister, „Keep your Politics out of my Games!“ in:&#160;Spiel-Kultur-Wissenschaften, &#60;http://spielkult.hypotheses.org/1566&#62; 08.02.2018.Schorn-Schütte 2006: Luise Schorn-Schütte:&#160;Historische Politikforschung, Eine Einführung. München: Campus. 2006.Recommended citation : Eugen Pfister, „Political Communication in Digital Horror Games" in:  Horror-Game-Politics, &#60;http://hgp.hypotheses.org/1062&#62; 11.05.2020.