Building upon current interest in studies of how popular culture relates to global politics, this article examines one hitherto overlooked aspect of popular culture: computer games. Although not prominent in the field of International Relations (IR), historical strategy computer games should be of particular interest to the discipline since they are explicitly designed to allow players to simulate global politics. This article highlights five major IR-related assumptions built into most single-player historical strategy games (the assumption of perfect information, the assumption of perfect control, the assumption of radical otherness, the assumption of perpetual conflict, and the assumption of environmental stasis) and contrasts them with IR scholarship about how these assumptions manifest themselves in the “real world.” This article concludes by making two arguments: first, we can use computer games as a mirror to critically reflect on the nature of contemporary global politics, and second, these games have important constitutive effects on understandings of global politics, effects that deserve to be examined empirically in a deeper manner.

中文翻译：

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我们在玩什么吗？历史战略计算机游戏中的全球政治

基于当前对流行文化与全球政治之间关系的研究兴趣，本文研究了流行文化迄今被忽视的一个方面：计算机游戏。尽管历史策略计算机游戏在国际关系（IR）领域中并不突出，但是历史策略计算机游戏应特别受到该学科的关注，因为它们被明确设计为允许玩家模仿全球政治。本文重点介绍了大多数单人历史策略游戏中内置的与IR相关的五个主要假设（完美信息假设，完美控制假设，极端其他假设，永久冲突假设和环境停滞假设）并将它们与IR学者进行对比，以了解这些假设如何在“现实世界”中体现出来。