The Hidden Curriculum of Video Games

Despite decades of inflammatory rhetoric, the real risk of video games lies not in their violent imagery but in the ethical and political sensibilities they normalize.Video games reward speed, efficiency, control, and meritocratic mastery, training players to align with a technolibertarian worldview - one that celebrates individual will, technological power, and skepticism toward collective forms of governance.Rather than asking whether games produce violent individuals, we might more productively ask how they contribute to a commitment to radical capitalism and a belief in highly individualistic worldviews. In this unsettling work David Waddington traces the philosophical roots of technolibertarianism, founded on faith in technological progress and personal freedom.He identifies a darker turn in this thinking, animated by the ideals of Ayn Rand and her archetype of the “tech hero of capitalism.” Many games, Waddington argues, invite players to inhabit this archetype, treating mastery,