1 Avdeling for lærerutdanning og naturvitenskap Johannes Aschim Master thesis Playing Hitler: The representation of Nazism in Hearts of Iron IV Master of digital communication and culture 2020 2 Consent to lending by University College Library YES ☒ NO ☐ Consent to accessibility in digital archive Brage YES ☒ NO ☐ 3 Contents ABSTRACT........................................................................................................................................... 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................................. 6 1. INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................... 7 1.1 RESEARCH QUESTION ............................................................................................................... 8 1.2 RESEARCH SUBJECT: AN INTRODUCTION TO HEARTS OF IRON IV ............................................ 10 1.2.1 The focus of Hearts of Iron IV vs the focus of this thesis ............................................ 12 1.3 WHY STUDY NAZISM IN VIDEOGAMES? .................................................................................. 13 1.3.1 White supremacist terror and the HoI4 community .................................................... 15 1.4 THE NATURE OF REPRESENTATION: CECI N’EST PAS UNE NAZI DICTATORSHIP ....................... 21 1.4.1 The Representation of history ..................................................................................... 23 1.4.2 A representation of Hitler, the Nazi government, or Germany? ................................. 25 2. METHOD AND THEORY ...................................................................................................... 30 2.1 DELIMITATIONS AND CHOICE OF METHOD .............................................................................. 30 2.2 THE CASE FOR QUALITATIVE TEXTUAL ANALYSIS .................................................................. 34 2.3 CHOOSING AN APPROACH ....................................................................................................... 36 2.3.1 Considering ludology and proceduralism ................................................................... 36 2.3.2 A Third Camp: Neoformalism ..................................................................................... 37 2.4 THE APPROACH: GAME NEOFORMALISM ................................................................................ 40 2.4.1 ‘The Game as System’ ................................................................................................. 41 2.4.2 ‘Motivations of Game Devices’ ................................................................................... 43 2.5 TERMINOLOGY ....................................................................................................................... 44 2.5.1 Game terms ................................................................................................................. 45 2.5.2 Political terms ............................................................................................................. 45 4 3. NEOFORMALIST ANALYSIS OF HEARTS OF IRON IV’S AESTHETICS .................. 47 3.1 THE CORE MECHANIC ........................................................................................................... 48 3.1.1 Politics and diplomacy ............................................................................................... 50 3.1.2 Resource management................................................................................................ 70 3.1.3 Interpreting Nazism as found in the core mechanic ................................................... 83 3.2 AUDIOVISUAL STYLE ............................................................................................................ 84 3.2.1 Dimension and point of perception ............................................................................ 85 3.2.2 Visual outlook............................................................................................................. 87 3.2.3 Audiovisual Motifs ..................................................................................................... 90 3.2.4 Soundscape ................................................................................................................. 91 4. CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................ 96 4.1 FURTHER RESEARCH ............................................................................................................ 100 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................................. 102 5 Abstract Hearts of Iron IV is a strategy game set during the Second World War, and it features a representation of Nazi-Germany that some right-wing extremists online have taken interest in. This thesis seeks to analyse that representation of Nazi-Germany in order to work out what it communicates about Nazism and how much room for interpretation it leaves open to the player. To answer the research question of how the formalistic devices of Hearts of Iron IV create its representation of Nazi-Germany, this thesis employs textual analysis with a neoformalist approach. The analysis suggests that the room for interpretation left open to the player of the game is quite large, with the game making very few overt value judgements about Nazi- Germany. This means that the game itself does not contain a pro-Nazi message, but instead it serves as a blank slate representation of Nazi-Germany onto which players are able to project their ideology. Consequently, the game on its own is unlikely to contribute directly to radicalisation, as it doesn’t contain much in the way of radicalising content. However, it is probable that it is the open interpretative space that appeals to neo-Nazis, as it allows them to project their ideology onto the game. 6 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor, Associate Professor Håvard Vitebo, for his guidance and support throughout the writing of this thesis. You gave me the tools I needed to successfully undertake and complete this analysis, and your feedback has been invaluable in strengthening my work. Additionally, I would like to thank my parents, brother, and sister for their ongoing support throughout the writing process. I would also like to thank my friends, Simen Eriksen Hustoft and Mikael Christensen, for introducing me to Paradox games and always be willing to talk about them, as well as Jostein Sjaaeng, Merlin Zimmermann, Guttorm Berg Sander and many others for the happy distractions they have provided that let me rest my mind outside working on the thesis. Finally, I would like to thank Endre Opheim for being the person I always can turn to when I need to get something off my chest regarding the research I’m doing or the writing process itself, and for contributing with some valuable historical insights and sources. 7 1. Introduction In half a century, videogames have exploded from being a technological impossibility, through being a fringe activity for the specially interested, to becoming one of the most dominant forms of media in popular culture (Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Smith, & Tosca, 2016, pp. 61-120). Videogames are to a degree symbolic of the huge shifts human society has gone through around the end of the previous millennium. They are a technologically advanced form of mass communication. In the 21st century, most of Western civilization is digital, and digital culture and technology is rapidly spreading across the world. Much of modern infrastructure relies on digital technology to function, and our culture is channelled through digital media. Videogames are, in part, an expression of the digital itself. They are interactive, almost always multimodal, and unlike music, films, images, and written text, which all exist on digital platforms, videogames cannot exist outside of the digital sphere. This is exemplified in Hearts of Iron’s case by the fact that it is being adapted into a board game (Ricchiuto, 2018). Because this game is non- digital, its mechanics must fundamentally differ from the digital game it is based on. Two examples of such changes mentioned in that article is that the board game uses turns, cards, and “worker management”, which differs fundamentally from the real-time, menu-based gameplay of its digital counterpart. When a new form of media emerges, it is only natural that media researchers should seek to analyse it, deconstruct it, and understand it. While a lot of groundwork has been laid down in the last couple of decades, game studies as an academic field is still, relatively speaking, in its infancy. In 2001 Espen Aarseth staked out a direction for the study of videogames with his essay, “Computer Game Studies, Year One”, where he stressed the importance of forming a new discipline (Aarseth, 2001). When compared to the academic fields dedicated to analysing literature, theatre, dance, art and even film, it becomes clear that there remains a lot of work to be done in refining the toolset for analysing and understanding videogames. In addition to broader discussions of which analytical approaches are most fruitful in game studies, the continual refinement of the field’s toolsets also requires in-depth analysis to be performed. It is impossible to accurately gauge the usefulness of a tool before it has been put to the test