Even though the discourse around Serious Games never fully entered the mainstream, especially after the rise of mid-2000s AAA games, it never really disappeared. Instead, it quietly found its place in the indie game scene. With engines like Unreal, Unity, Godot, and GameMaker, solo developers and small teams could create games with a level of polish and complexity once exclusive to large studios. More importantly, these tools made it easier to tell stories that felt politically, socially, and emotionally serious.
Games like This War of Mine, Beholder, Frostpunk, and Detention are good examples. They were commercially successful, but they also asked players to sit with uncomfortable systems. These games didn’t just tell stories, they made players feel implicated in structural problems. Serious Games and game-based journalism didn’t fade away. They kept evolving, slowly but persistently.
So I started wondering: what did game-based journalism look like in South Korea during the political crisis of December 2024? At the time, the country was dealing with something unprecedented: an unconstitutional declaration of martial law, a boycott of the impeachment vote, and mass protests that lasted for weeks or months. That moment has now passed. But looking back, that period offers an important lens for thinking about games, agency, and protest.
In particular, I want to draw a parallel between player agency in Newsgames and the collective agency expressed through protests in South Korea between December 2024 and January 2025.
Player Agency in South Korean Game Jams
The first movement by developers was expressed through organized game jams as well as individual development projects. Developer Chalkseagull organized a Game Jam to memorialize the chaotic events surrounding the collective boycotting of the impeachment vote, the deployment of military and police forces to the National Assembly, and the declaration of an unconstitutional martial law. The game jam resulted in 12 submissions, with developers gathering in Yeouido Park on December 14th, the day of the impeachment vote, to collaboratively develop and play these games amidst protestors calling for justice. While not all the games were Newsgames, many sought to capture the moment creatively, using genres like roguelikes and narrative-driven games to explore and express the unfolding crisis. These games sparked discussions among players, with many expressing that the satirical themes provided a sense of catharsis, amidst the political tension.
The game jam was held in the protest location, in front of the national assembly building where the impeachment voting was ongoing. The developers illuminated and documented December 2024’s chaos in the way they knew best. Armed with laptops covered in stickers, they joined the protests in Yeouido, sitting on cold pavement alongside others calling for impeachment, crafting games as an act of resistance.
Developing and playing games often brings me back to the realization that I exist as an active participant within a system. It’s not merely about consuming stories or following rules—it’s about experiencing how my choices and actions inscribe agency, shaping the world both virtually and in reality. In this sense, games evoke the memory of standing before the National Assembly, protesting for change with intention and agency. Like the physical act of protesting, games connect actions with the will to create change.
Player Agency in South Korean Activism: Immersion and Resistance
It wasn’t just the developers. The people who participated in the protests also showed their agency within judicial and social systems, expressing their determination to challenge and reshape them, much like players do in games.
The Constitution guarantees the right to peaceful assembly, and the protests were a clear example of how citizens exercised this right. Protesters adhere to principles of nonviolence and peace, using symbolic tools like lightsticks—similar to how players in games select weapons or tools—to express their resistance. Just as the agency in games requires players to engage with the system to critically analyze and raise questions about it, protesters immerse themselves in the socio-political structure as a collective effort to challenge its flaws. However, the enforcement of martial law significantly heightened collective political engagement, especially due to its violation of constitutional principles. The unfolding of such extreme circumstances has triggered coverage from all media outlets and led to changes in daily life. On the night of martial law, most citizens struggled to sleep, with horror of what would come next. Naturally, citizens have found themselves politically engaged. Within this imposed system, they have chosen to resist the unconstitutional martial law and the structures that support it.
As described in Games: Agency as Art by C. Thi Nguyen, from the point where he discussed games as a way to inscribe our agency, “games can be a way that we collaborate in the project of developing our agency and autonomy. If games can record and transmit forms of agency, then I learn new modes of agency from a game. And you may write down a useful form of agency and pass it to me through a game.” (Nguyen, 2020, p. 18) This insight resonates with the continuity of agency seen in historical movements such as the Gwangju Democratization Movement and the 2016 Candlelight Protests. Through the agency demonstrated during the Gwangju Democratization Movement, people learned that preventing indiscriminate violent crackdowns on protesters requires large-scale collective action. Many joined the protests specifically to contribute to a collective agency that could not be ignored or easily suppressed through violence. Similarly, the 2016 Candlelight Protests illustrated how this collective agency could be expressed through symbolic tools, which enabled people to effectively convey their message without using violence. These past movements have transmitted their forms of agency and autonomy, which have now merged into the current lightstick protests. Protesters not only challenge the systems they are a part of but also inherit and adapt the agency of past struggles. The merging and adaptation of protest culture continues to evolve. During the Gwanghwamun protests, a new concept called prepaid support appeared. This allowed individuals who could not participate the protests in person to contribute by prepaying for hot packs, food, or drinks at nearby cafes and restaurants to support the protesters. This practice has now carried over into current movements. Again, at the Namtaeryeong protest, where there were no nearby stores, and police attempted to block the protesters' march into Seoul, participants were forced to spend the night on the street. In response, supporters delivered food, winter gear, and other necessities directly to the protest site. This cycle of collective support was adapted and repeated throughout the protests.
When I develop and play games, the thought that comes back to me most often is the awareness of myself as an agent within the system. It’s not simply about consuming a story or following a set of rules, but about the tangible feeling that my choices and actions are affecting the world—and can affect it. In that sense, games remind me of the moments when we stood in front of the National Assembly during the protests: choosing to be there, actively and deliberately, in order to change something. My gestures and my voice became actions, and those actions carried the will to create change. In this way, games and reality feel deeply connected.
The moment I become aware of myself as “I who act” inside a game is the moment when interaction turns into something more than control—into a meaningful act. And when those moments happen, I find myself feeling grateful: to the developers who designed game worlds where players can truly take on the role of agents, and to the players themselves, who step into those worlds and choose to act.