Gaming the system: Semiotic indeterminacy and political circulation in the new age of revolution

I compare the context-based discursive strategies of Otpor! - the Serbian student Resistance movement - as they unfolded in real-time, with the ways those strategies were represented through a widely circulating video game, A Force More Powerful, used to train activists in non-violent revolution. What made Otpor's discursive practices effective in Serbia was a semiotic indeterminacy that allowed activists to rally a broad and diverse coalition of citizens and politicians. This indeterminacy was difficult to translate within the procedural and causal logic of the game's programming and design. I argue that the logics encoded in the game circulated as a global pedagogy of non-violent revolution and democratization as much because of their specific pragmatic features as their powerful ideological and institutional backing.