Pay for Your Lack of Vision: The Naturalization of Imperialist Epistemology in Science Fiction Colony Sims

Even when the genre attempts to imagine far-flung futures, and despite a(n ostensible) divorce from the context of historical imperialism, contemporary science fiction (SF) colony sim games have continued to function under and reify epistemological frameworks that see capitalism, imperialism, and neoliberalism as natural laws instead of sociocultural choices that go on to color the games’ expression of race, sexuality, and gender, as well as economy, ecology, and futurity. In short, colony sims seem epistemologically unable to imagine a society of the future materially different from the society of the now, potentially foreclosing possible futures even as they imagine them.