EA's latest push to turn videogames into being more of a product than art got me wondering in what ways videogames will be further monetized to hell, and what kind of role videogames might have in a future dystopia. For the record, I'm not necessarily asking about videogames depicting a dystopia, but what videogames would be like under a dystopia, even if videogames themselves mess around with that idea.
For example, in the Half-Life 2 Beta citizens would line up in a place called the Manhack Arcade where they would control a manhack and try to kill enemies for points for fun while, unbeknownst to them, they are controlling actual manhacks and killing actual people with them. Here we have videogames being used to control the population to an almost literal extent. Most dystopian literature doesn't really take videogames into account, though there's a lot of examples using virtual reality, which might be more relevant to videogames given the VR push as of late. I'm kind of disappointed that most videogames which do depict dystopias only treat videogames within the universe as 'just fun' as if it never changed, or don't mention at all as if there's no such thing as videogames, which is rather ironic if you think about it.
What would you imagine the role of videogames being in a dystopia? Do you think that the greatest innovation a videogame can see in the future is in terms of marketing, or do you think videogames will only be another propaganda tool?