The game in which democracy is defined by a roll of dice

Trump himself is never mentioned, though his tweets from that day, urging his supporters to march up Pennsylvania Avenue, flash on screen. My team’s stated aim is to break into the Capitol and stop that Republican turncoat Pence from certifying the results of the 2020 election. All our cards are on the table, including one that allows me to use “the Second Amendment solution”. As cans of lager and bags of crisps are passed around, I decide to open fire. What could go wrong? This is a game without consequences – after all, a presidential pardon awaits me.

McElroen and Wilkinson conceived the game in February 2023, when news broke that FBI agents had arrested Jesse James Rumson, better known as “Sedition Panda”. When he breached the Capitol doors, Rumson was costumed as a bamboo-munching bear. He was joined by “QAnon Shaman”, the Viking warlord who posed for selfies on the House Speaker’s podium, and a ball of green yard in a red Maga hat – presumably, a creature of the swamp Trump promised to drain.

Many online commentators pointed out that the 6 January riot looked like a Larp, or Live Action Role Play, with participants dressed up like Comic-Con attendees. There’s reason to believe that some rioters actually saw it that way too: many were adherents of QAnon, the far-right conspiracy theory that a group of “deep state” Satanic, child-molesting cannibals, led by Hillary Clinton, control the US government. The movement originated in 2017 with anonymous “drops” of supposedly classified information on 4chan, a messaging board often referred to as the “asshole of the internet”, where readers were encouraged to play “the game”.

In a 2023 study, Daniël de Zeeuw and Alex Gekker, media researchers at the University of Amsterdam, found that spikes in QAnon-related activity online often involved the language of gaming. “Supercharged by the ability to participate in the online ‘world’ of social media, QAnon is an instance of online interpretive play that demands deep engagement above all,” they wrote.

Eventually, this lunatic fringe migrated from the darker recesses of the web to your mum’s Facebook feed, a process they call “normification”. This seems in full effect at Stone Nest as we play McElroen and Wilkinson’s insurrectionist Monopoly. Spurred on by my teammates, I find myself chanting, improbably, “Hang Mike Pence!”

The creators initially planned to launch their game on 6 January 2025, but Trump’s re-election left them feeling queasy. (Both are Democrats who voted for Biden in 2020.) After the election, there was little appetite for seditionist role play in liberal Brooklyn, where they’re based. That was also part of the reason for visiting London.

“I think we needed the critical distance of an ocean,” admits McElroen. “It has been a difficult sell to institutional funds.”

The American Vicarious has received donations from the National Endowment for the Arts for previous projects, including a re-enactment of the 1965 Cambridge Union debate between James Baldwin and William F Buckley, though not in this case. Instead, they’ve relied on individual donors to fund the ambitious production. So far, most have come from their side of the aisle.

“One of the ideas has always been to take this to places where the politics are mixed and see what conversations arise,” McElroen says. “It’s politically dangerous, but that’s the goal.”

McElroen and Wilkinson’s aim appears to be in line with what NYU Game Center professor Naomi Clark calls “complicity gaming”, a way of putting yourself in your opponent’s shoes. In Fight for America!, it’s a twisted form of catharsis for disaffected liberals. I’ll admit, it’s fun to be on the winning team for a change: when we finally manage to break into the Capitol – flattening my boyfriend’s orderly rows of DC police in the process – I feel a sense of elation. Moments later, lifting a box near the Senate gallery, I find Pence. Confetti cannons rain down on our victory parade.

At this point, we’re given a choice: hang the vice-president or let him live another day. I can’t bring myself to order his execution because the constitution has no provision for what comes next. Still, my teammates are hungry for blood; the die is cast.

“I think the Republicans are playing a finite game where they are just trying to win and collect victories – own the ‘libs’, if you will – and consolidate power,” McElroen tells me. “And so, if you’re playing two different games, one side is going to get demolished. It’s no longer about moving a civilised society forward. It’s no longer about helping people. It’s about crushing your enemy at all costs.”

It’s hard for me not to take the implications of this seriously while US Marines are patrolling the streets of my hometown, Los Angeles. Earlier in the day, House Speaker Mike Johnson was pressed on the double standard in Trump’s treatment of the protesters in LA compared with the pardoned 6 January rioters.

“There’s a very clear distinction between the two,” he said. “The people who broke the law and destroyed property [on 6 January] were met with the proper consequences [despite later being pardoned].” Which is to say, the seditionists were told that their real-world hurt could be magicked away.

Fight for America! ultimately can’t resolve the nauseating contradiction that democracy is gamified for some and not others. The pain is very real for immigrant families being broken apart by militarised ICE raids. Both sides of the political divide have a differential investment in the facts. The playing field is far from level.

Before we depart, I’m handed another card that reads “commuted”. (Pardoned for his role in the riots, my character, Tarrio, is currently suing the federal government to the tune of $100m for infringing on his constitutional rights by investigating him.) The room falls eerily silent as we watch real bodycam footage from Capitol police officers being crushed beneath a stampede of raging bodies chanting the name of the current US president. But for now, I can breathe a sigh of relief that this game is over.

Fight for America! is on until 7 July

Photographs by Ellie Kurttz