You\u2019ve played something like this before. You\u2019re about 30 hours into the main story of your AAA checklist experience, and you discover the real villain<\/i> of the game: a shadowy organisation that\u2019s been pulling everyone\u2019s strings the whole time.<\/i> Whether it\u2019s the reveal that the CIA was backing the bad guys in Battlefield 6<\/i>, the uncovering of illuminati dealings in the Deus Ex <\/i>franchise, or even the mess of not-the-final-boss shell organisations within the shlocky Street Fighter<\/i> plotlines, it\u2019s a well worn cliche to have your game\u2019s plot hinge on at least one conspiracy. But why? Lars de Wildt has a theory: they\u2019re the same thing!<\/p>\n
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The Deus Ex franchise is a classic example of the “what if every conspiracy ever was true” genre.<\/em><\/p>\n In \u201cHidden Monsters: Conspiracy Aesthetics in Video Games\u201d (2025), de Wildt puts forward the argument that there\u2019s an \u201celective affinity\u201d between the process of uncovering a conspiracy theory and learning a game itself. When you play a game for the first time, you have to learn a system of \u201copaque rules\u201d in order to make sense of it. You don\u2019t immediately know that red barrels explode when you shoot them, but you\u2019ll learn this pretty quickly when you accidentally blow yourself up. In order to succeed, you\u2019ll have to \u201cexplore and understand the way a virtual world \u2018actually\u2019 works\u201d behind the presentation. Sound familiar?<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve been introduced to the idea of lizard people running the government through info wars dot com, you\u2019ll be following a very similar procedure. There\u2019s the world that is being presented to you, one with ostensibly real politicians that make policy decisions and make speeches and broadly participate in a representative democracy. And then there\u2019s the additional information that you\u2019ve been given – they\u2019re all conspiring together (and are lizards) – that lets you hunt for clues beneath this surface. Maybe some of these politicians meet in strange locations! Maybe there are pictures of them looking like they really <\/i>want to eat a passing fly. There\u2019s an underlying system of mechanics governing the world you see, and – like with discovering that red barrels blow up – you have the tools to learn them.<\/p>\n De Wildt positions games as a unique medium in this: only games are \u201ccapable of representing systems in a way that evades objectification\u201d. A movie wanting to depict capitalism will do it through characters or through symbolism; a game can try its hardest to simulate<\/i> capitalism, simulate market flows and profit margins and everything that causes you to make a dime while your boss makes a dollar. The process of uncovering the rules behind a system is one innately tied to games: is it any wonder that so many of them have this as an explicit part of their plots?<\/p>\n De Wildt uses the Ubisoft game \u201cThe Division\u201d as an example of this simulation, in a way reminiscent of the now-ancient discussions on ludonarrative dissonance\/harmony (or: how well do the actions the players perform support what the game is telling them?). The Division\u2019s plot centres on a virus released by various shadowy cabals (with new information creating a new enemy whenever they want). But the game itself contains multiple factions that can be allied with temporarily, and encourages players to betray each other: creating a world in which it is hard to trust anyone. Thus, the \u201cconspiracy aesthetics\u201d remain.<\/p>\n
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