FIFA: Positive Propaganda

In this week’s article, the author wrote about video games as a tool for political propaganda. It referred to video games such as America’s Army and Kuma/War and seemed to attach propaganda to them with a negative connotation. However, does propaganda have to be used with such a negative connotation? I will demonstrate the use of educational propaganda in the beloved video game, FIFA.

FIFA is a soccer video game that is released every year to all audiences worldwide. Arguably one of the most well-known sport video games, FIFA has a reputation for causing its players to be completely immersed in the game play. Just as one would be shaped by the propaganda in video games such as America’s Army, or my example of Grand Theft Auto, FIFA has the same effect.

Especially for actual soccer players, FIFA is a game that can create ideologies of how to play the game. It can be used as a learning tool, and when I was a child, coaches encouraged me to play due to the learning aspect. Tactically speaking, a player can learn how to move off the ball, defensive shape, and individual creativity.

The lessons learned from playing FIFA are engrained in the mind of the player and shapes a perception of how to play the game. This is even stronger for people that do not play soccer. If one goes into the game without knowing how to play the game at all, FIFA, in a way, manipulates the player into learning through the video game. This then creates a response of direct behavior when they go out to kick the ball around to play as they did in the video game. This is also known as identification.

As one can see, the only difference in the propaganda incorporated with FIFA is that it is positive. For a small paragraph the readings spoke of how this may be considered educational, instead of propaganda. However, I find this difficult to argue due to the fact that FIFA creates a “systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist” (pg. 93). The sports video game does this through the same mechanisms of effectiveness as other war video games: immersion, intense engagement, identification, and interactivity.

From my own personal experience, when playing FIFA, one is completely immersed in the game. If someone simply walks in front of the screen for a split second, the player can and will react angrily, backing the mechanism of intense engagement. In fact, there is a list of FIFA "Ten Commandments” that includes rules such as no texting during the game, no walking in front of the screen, etc. The full list is to the left.

The last mechanism of effectiveness to be touched on is interactivity. In the article for this week’s readings, the rewards and consequences described from the cybernetic feedback loop, which the article highlights, are all negative. The author mentions shooting opponents as a success and shooting civilians or walking off a cliff as a failure.

This alone gives the reader of this article a negative connotation with propaganda. If instead a success was a good attack resulting in a goal, and a failure being a defensive breakdown that leads to a goal against you, the connotation behind propaganda could change. Along with this, the educational aspect of learning how to tactically prevent a defensive breakdown is beneficial to the video game player.