Brexit and Wetherspoons, Brexit and fashion, Brexit and bananas … It seems as if so much of our everyday lives will be affected by Brexit – and if you play video games, you can certainly expect changes. The British video games industry adds £5bn to the economy and employs more than 12,000 people, 35% of whom are EU citizens.

While the industry has been campaigning for a Brexit least likely to wreck the status quo, some indie developers have responded with pro-remain games. Tim Constant’s Not Tonight offers a peek into a dystopian Britain obsessed with migration status: European citizens are segregated if they wish to continue living in the UK and constantly subject to document checks. The claustrophobic, pixelated setting suggests that post-Brexit Britain would succumb to paranoia.

Bloomberg News, dabbling in more novel forms of news presentation, has created Pick Your Own Brexit, a negotiation simulator based on likely outcomes. (‘‘Brexit is tricky. Theresa May is giving it her best shot, but could you do better?’’) The player is presented with multiple-choice questions, each answer carrying the story forward. While Pick Your Own Brexit allows you to pursue a range of options, Not Tonight would no doubt have been condemned as part of “Project Fear” had it been released before the referendum. It is intended to preach to the converted.

Overtly political games are not a new phenomenon: Lucas Pope’s Papers, Please, about a border control officer in a totalitarian state, was widely played, and the very British Corbyn Run was released just before the 2017 election. But while Corbyn Run was able to capitalise on the novelty of such games to make a point and even changed some voters’ minds, it remains to be seen whether such viral tricks can work again.

Over the past year, industry bodies have been pressuring the government to implement exclusive opt-outs for gaming companies, and siding with the People’s Vote in arguing for a second referendum. Soon after the Brexit result, United Kingdom Interactive Entertainment released a report detailing how, with access to high-skilled worker visas and company tax cuts, the British games industry should just about survive. However, it now looks as if the government is unwilling to engage with industries separately and is heading for a Brexit that will almost certainly end some migration freedoms and increase tariffs.

An image from Bloomberg’s Pick Your Own Brexit. Photograph: Bloomberg

Last month saw the launch of Games4EU, an explicitly pro-European movement involving many industry veterans. Its aims are to “support peaceful, meaningful action to remain within the EU; demonstrate the harm that Brexit will do to our sector; contribute to the wider movement to stop, or limit the damage of, a hard or no-deal Brexit.’’

In an opinion piece on politics.co.uk, organiser George Osborn argued that Brexit will sabotage the UK’s video games industry, throwing its workers under the bus and bringing everyday business with international players and storefronts to a standstill. “Video game culture is international,” he wrote, “and Brexit chafes against that open and tolerant nature.” Such arguments might have been more useful if expressed more than six months before the exit date.

Concerns for the status of thousands of EU nationals who work in the UK games industry are a big part of Games4EU’s motivation for opposing Brexit. But it is worth pointing out that, even now, the industry in Britain and elsewhere is not a workers’ paradise. Increasing anger over working conditions, “crunch” overtime, sexual harassment, a lack of diversity, outsourcing and the casualisation of work are all driving a push for unionisation in the US and the UK. These are issues that existed long before the 2016 vote and are not going to be solved by simply staying in the EU. A push to shore up games industry workers’ rights across the board from the company executives driving the Brexit resistance would be welcomed.

Games4EU’s emphasis on its “highly skilled” workforce, meanwhile, risks perpetuating the Brexiters’ notion of “deserving” versus “undeserving” migrants. If the industry is serious about challenging the causes as well as the consequences of the Brexit vote, it must dispel any doubt that it is only looking to protect migrants who are useful to its apparatus. Material conditions largely contributed to the result of the referendum, and only by addressing those will the mood begin to shift.

Games4EU, the UK video games industry’s anti-Brexit campaign. Photograph: Game4EU.com

The polls are not moving – it is not guaranteed that remain would win even if a second referendum were to happen. It is possible that games, like the rest of the creative industries, could be a powerful tool for political change, but only if they could find a way to reach out to the population that voted for Brexit.

The content here matters less than methods of distribution. Political video game creators and activists must think innovatively about reaching audiences whose views could be challenged. Billboard ads in Basildon? Flyering Steam codes in Thurrock? Publishing the game via a Brexit-supporting media outlet? It may be too late to reverse Brexit, but inventing creative ways to challenge the everyday has always been the best art can offer.

• Marijam Didžgalvytė writes about the intersection between politics and gaming.