2022 Video Games Critique Capitalism Through Cosmic Dystopias

Three notable 2022 video games—Citizen Sleeper, Hardspace: Shipbreaker, and Signalis—presented cosmic dystopias that critically examined economic hardship and capitalist exploitation. Citizen Sleeper, developed by Gareth Damian Martin, uses dice-roll mechanics aboard a corporate-controlled space station to explore precarity, debt, and survival. Hardspace: Shipbreaker transforms indentured servitude into an elegant puzzle game where players dismantle spaceships to pay off billion-dollar debts, while also depicting unionization efforts. Signalis employs a cyberpunk aesthetic and survival horror elements to portray interstellar late-stage capitalism as an existential nightmare. These games emerged alongside industry consolidation, including Microsoft's $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard and a total deal value exceeding $102 billion. In September 2022, Anemone Hug, a support studio for Hardspace: Shipbreaker, became the second Canadian video game studio to unionize, reflecting real-world labor movements at companies like Raven Software and Microsoft Zenimax. Other 2022 titles like Norco and Somerville addressed economic injustice and apocalyptic themes, while Horizon Forbidden West and Elden Ring offered visually stunning, wonder-filled experiences. The Federal Trade Commission filed an antitrust case in December 2022 to block the Microsoft-Activision deal, pending review in March 2023.