Key Principle
Video games materialize Deleuzian control-society modulation — dividual profiling, continuous modulation, habit formation. Neoliberalism promises sovereignty (rational self-optimization, consumer choice), but actual subjects under control-society modulation are not sovereign: they are modulated dividuals, continuously adapted to shifting rules. The gap between the promise and the condition is the site of subjection. Belief in sovereignty is part of the mechanism of control. Games that enact nonsovereignty formally — not as theme, but as designed condition — expose this gap by making players inhabit the loss of control.
Why This Matters
Without the concept of nonsovereignty, experimental games can only thematize critique (empathy games, political allegory) while leaving the player's sovereign relationship to the interface intact. The critique remains at the level of content, not form. (Chapter 4: Control) Nonsovereignty must be engineered into the mechanics themselves — through formal frustration, algorithmic disorientation, or erotic excess — so that players experience what is otherwise disavowed.
This connects directly to consent as a design problem. Standard video game consent is binary and static: click "play," accept all terms. Games that change rules without warning, refuse legible objectives, or deprive players of fair conditions demand renegotiation of consent at every moment. The kink framework (Mattie Brice) reframes this: the player-designer contract is always already a consent relation, mirroring what Lauren Berlant identifies as hegemony operating through desirable forms of attachment. (Chapter 4: Control)
Good Examples
- Dys4ia (Anna Anthropy, 2012): Formal frustration as the route to nonsovereignty. The mechanics are deliberately mismatched to player expectations, producing the sensation of inhabiting a system that refuses to accommodate you — the condition of navigating healthcare and social systems as a trans person. Nonsovereignty here is medium-specific: it cannot be achieved by narrating the same content.
- Problem Attic (Liz Ryerson, 2013): Algorithmic disorientation — shifting gravity, unfair rules, no legible objectives. The player has "little power but is still implicated in the system." (Emily Short, Chapter 4: Control) This is structurally different from an empathy game: the player is not walking sympathetically in another's shoes; they are inside an inhospitable system, implicated without agency. The formal third-person platformer perspective — player sees avatar as simultaneously object and self — can be articulated to Du Bois's double consciousness: "always looking at one's self through the eyes of others."
- Luxuria Superbia (Tale of Tales, 2013): Erotic abandon as the third route to nonsovereignty. The touchscreen requires ten fingers, physically departing from sovereign "thumb control." The game rewards duration and relational attentiveness over goal completion. Lauren Berlant and Lee Edelman: "sex is not a thing of truth but a scene where one discovers potentiality in the abandon that's on the other side of abandonment." (Chapter 4: Control) Nonsovereignty can be reached through excess and flow, not only deprivation.
Counterpoints
- Four-step mechanism of nonsovereignty as counter-design: (1) Neoliberalism promises sovereignty. (2) Control-society subjects are modulated dividuals, not sovereign selves. (3) The gap between promise and condition is the site of subjection. (4) Games that formally enact nonsovereignty stage this gap as lived experience. Without all four steps, the formal choice risks re-instrumentalization as another empathy exercise. (Chapter 4: Control)
- Empathy games without formal nonsovereignty: Games that ask players to sympathize with a precarious character while leaving the sovereign player-interface relationship intact critique at the level of content while reinforcing the sovereign form. The shell and the engine contradict.
- Consent as static contract: Gamification's operant conditioning installs a one-time consent structure that naturalizes the terms of engagement. This forecloses the ongoing renegotiation that Mattie Brice's kink framework identifies as necessary for honest player-designer relations. Without it, the concept of affective difficulty has no foundation. (Chapter 4: Control)
Key Quotes
"Little power but is still implicated in the system." — Emily Short on Problem Attic, Chapter 4: Control
"Sex is not a thing of truth but a scene where one discovers potentiality in the abandon that's on the other side of abandonment." — Lauren Berlant and Lee Edelman, cited in Chapter 4: Control
Rules of Thumb
- Nonsovereignty must be enacted at the level of mechanics, not narrated at the level of content — the player must inhabit the loss of control, not observe it.
- Identify which of three routes a game uses: formal frustration (Dys4ia), algorithmic disorientation (Problem Attic), or erotic/flow excess (Luxuria Superbia).
- Treat the player-designer relationship as a consent relation: games that change rules without warning are making a formal claim about power, not just difficulty.
- When priming modulates an open environment, it produces the conditions for nonsovereignty — the situation is shaped so that specific tendencies (frustration, surrender, absorption) become available.
Related References
- Affective Choice vs. Rational Choice - Priming as the mechanism connecting affective choice to control-society modulation
- The Tripartite Taxonomy of Difficulty - Affective difficulty as what nonsovereignty produces when it is irresolvable and relational