FINAL BOSS: Videogame as a Technology of Geopolitical Cultural Power

Abstract

This paper examines video games as a geopolitical and symbolic field marked by inequality between the Global North and the Global South, dominated by the hegemony of the United States, Japan, and Western Europe. From a decolonial perspective, it seeks to reconnect with the philosophy of technology in order to problematize the technicist and determinist discourses that sustain the exclusion of subalternized voices, in particular the work of Martin Heidegger and his influence in gaming companies and big techs. Northern hegemony imposes a communicational "cacophony" that silences local productions and promotes the reproduction of foreign imaginaries, disconnected to Global South realities—a dynamic akin to the concept of technocoloniality. As such, the paper contributes to the DiGRA community by offering a framework for understanding how geopolitical and technological structures shape gaming experiences, especially in Brazil, and by suggesting pathways for more inclusive video games production that amplifies subalternized voices.