Seeing Like A State: Why Strategy Games Make Us Think and Behave Like Brutal Psychopaths

Now that I think about it, I can be pretty thoughtless and cruel to my units in strategy games. Sometimes I will take care of my units’ lives, name them, and mourn their deaths, but other times I will simply use them as disposable cannon fodder. In real life, I am a Quaker, and it is disturbing to think that perhaps being placed in charge of a country can have a similar effect on your psychology as being placed in charge of units in strategy games.