How Games Reveal Our Beliefs: Exploring Video Games as Philosophical Tools

There is a saying that the games a person plays can roughly indicate what they believe; while exaggerated, the claim has merit. Games provide maps, rules, factions, and moral frameworks that sometimes articulate values more clearly than reality.

Ian Bogost’s concept of procedural rhetoric argues that games convey ideas not only through dialogue and story but also through their underlying rules, shaping players each time they press a button.

1. Honor of Kings: Electronic Mythology and Team Cooperation

The official lore describes a post‑apocalyptic Earth evolving into a “Kingdom Continent” over three thousand years, yet most players ignore this background, focusing on victory and skill.

From a values perspective, the game emphasizes teamwork and rapid competition. Scholar Dong Chenyu notes an evolution from mythic heroes to assassin‑style individualism, culminating in a focus on positional division and cooperation. The V5 matchmaking structure forces success to depend on coordinated goal alignment rather than individual prowess.

Historical figure skins (Li Bai, Zhu Ge‑Liang, Wang Zhao‑Jun) are chosen for commercial aesthetics rather than serious historical narrative, reflecting a “light background, heavy mechanics” design compromise typical of mobile games.

2. League of Legends: A World Without Absolute Justice

Runeterra is deliberately designed as a moral gray zone. Each region presents distinct cultural logics—Piltover’s technocratic elite versus Zaun’s underclass, Demacia’s façade of order masking magical persecution, Bandle City’s carefree Yordles.

When Riot rebooted the lore in 2014, it removed the simplistic “magic court summons heroes” framework and hired a Warhammer‑style writer, resulting in a world where every faction has both justifiable reasons and indefensible sins.

The animated series Arcane dramatizes this tension through the divergent paths of sisters Vi and Jinx, illustrating a mature narrative that resists binary good‑vs‑evil simplifications.

3. Genshin Impact: Seven Nations, Seven Beliefs

Teyvat’s seven nations each champion a core ideal—Mondstadt (freedom), Liyue (contracts), Inazuma (eternity), Sumeru (wisdom), Fontaine (justice), etc.—creating a multicultural framework that accommodates diverse player backgrounds while embedding recognizable value narratives.

Liyue exemplifies a shift from divine rule to human governance: Geo Archon Zhongli relinquishes authority to mortals, emphasizing contracts and labor, reflecting collectivist, people‑centered storytelling that contrasts with Western “chosen one” tropes.

Although Genshin is a cultural export listed by China’s Ministry of Commerce, its global reception includes both enthusiastic cultural learning and criticism over character design, self‑censorship, and cultural appropriation.

4. Black Myth: Wukong and the “Anti‑Heroic” Narrative

Black Myth: Wukong (2024) became the first Chinese game widely recognized as a AAA title by Western media. While drawing from Journey‑to‑the‑West, it subverts the hero’s perspective: players control a “Destined One” who investigates after the Monkey King’s death, collecting relics and uncovering truth.

The world’s tone is one of “failure”: heroes die, order collapses, and players piece together fragments, contrasting Western heroic arcs of triumph. The narrative aligns with Buddhist notions of suffering and attachment.

5. Dark Souls Series: Existentialism in Repeated Death

FromSoftware’s Souls games are frequently labeled existential, nihilist, and absurdist. The core worldview is a cyclical universe of fire igniting, flourishing, waning, and extinguishing, prompting players to choose between perpetuating the cycle or embracing darkness.

Scholars interpret this as existential: without divine purpose, players define value through choice. The mechanic of repeated death and rebirth itself becomes a philosophical expression, echoing Kierkegaard’s notion of “the self being flattened.”

Elden Ring adds a “defy fate” dimension, with quests like Ranni’s rebellion against a higher will and Fia’s challenge to mortality, deconstructing Campbell’s hero’s journey by questioning why the world needs saving.

6. The Last of Us: Love as a Philosophical Dilemma

Naughty Dog’s 2013 title forces players to embody a morally ambiguous protagonist, Joel, who kills a medical team to save Ellie and lies to her. The game offers no moral judgment.

Scholars apply Kantian ethics (“treat humanity as an end”) and utilitarianism (“one life for many”) to analyze Joel’s decision, highlighting the game’s “narrative‑mechanic unity”: players experience the moral weight through Joel’s hands and fears.

When players understand “why,” moral judgment becomes complex; the final interactive moment is a silent dialogue, emphasizing relational values over binary right‑or‑wrong judgments.

7. Papers, Please: Bureaucracy vs. Conscience

The game places players in an immigration checkpoint, deciding who to admit. Mistakes cost money, endangering the player’s family.

Max Weber’s “iron cage” concept is used to analyze how bureaucratic rules override conscience; players can act morally (admit a refugee) but suffer material penalties, illustrating the tension between personal ethics and systemic constraints.

With over twenty endings, researchers note that all “successful” outcomes involve compromise, never a pristine moral victory.

8. Minecraft: A Sandbox for Constructed Meaning

Minecraft’s world lacks a prescribed narrative, offering tools and space for players to assign meaning.

Designer Notch (Markus Persson) created a game that sold over 300 million copies; its “rule‑bound freedom” combines consistent physics, limited resources, and survival planning, turning constraints into creative boundaries.

From a philosophical angle, Minecraft embodies a minimalist “constructivism”: meaning is built, not given, which aligns with educational philosophies that view learning as exploration.

9. Civilization Series: Can History Be Rewritten?

Sid Meier’s Civilization lets players guide a society from the Stone Age to space, embodying an optimistic historical determinism: sufficient resources and decisions lead any civilization to greatness.

Critics argue the victory conditions—technology, culture, military conquest—reflect a Western modernist view of progress, abstracting diverse cultures into a single development path, thus acting as an “algorithmic cultural hegemony.”

Nevertheless, the series allows subversive play, such as Gandhi wielding nuclear weapons, challenging mainstream narratives.

10. Undertale: Killing as an Optional Mechanic

Undertale, created by a single developer, presents a core choice: combat (kill) or pacifism (dialogue, empathy, escape).

This mechanic forces players to question why they kill—because the game demands it or for experience points—turning a default RPG action into a moral decision.

Designer Toby Fox builds a “peace route” where understanding each monster’s feelings is required, emphasizing that empathy, though more effortful, yields a distinct world and ending, promoting the value that understanding is feasible.

Conclusion: What Do Game Worlds Reflect?

Placing these ten games together reveals a spectrum: competitive titles (Honor of Kings, League of Legends) prioritize mechanics and teamwork; narrative‑driven games (The Last of Us, Papers, Please, Undertale) embed values through story‑mechanic integration; middle‑ground titles (Genshin Impact, Black Myth, Civilization) use worldbuilding as cultural carriers.

Academic research in 2024 argues that games become philosophical tools precisely because they let players not only read a viewpoint but also feel its weight through interaction—an experience that books or films struggle to replicate.