Stellaris isn't a game "about" fascism. But being part game, part political simulation, it alludes to some of the mechanisms that drive fascism and thus cannot help but take a stance, express something about it through its systems. Despite the carefully cultivated amorality of most strategy games, there can be no political fence-sitting. Following Ian Bogost's term of "procedural rhetoric", which is concerned with how world views are expressed not through words but systems, the question is not whether it has anything to convey about fascism, but what.

Strategy games like Stellaris, with their constantly shifting power struggles, are adept at seducing players into a lust for domination (perhaps even humiliation) of others. The ponderous beasts of the turn-based or grand strategy genus are especially good at this. The sheer length of these games builds a sense of history, of past slights. The inexorable logic of the simulation, as evident when a much stronger foe invades and there's nothing you can do, creates grudges that can be nursed for perhaps a hundred hours or more. It oscillates between fantasies of victimhood and megalomania. Victory by force in these games is, unlike in a quick match of StarCraft, not just the result of a sports-like competition, but also of a hunger for power, or of disdain for nations or ideologies that stood in your way for far too long. Of course, you can often succeed through peaceful means, but brute force always beckons in the background. They brought this on themselves, you might think. It's a necessary evil, done for the greater good. Or even: it's just numbers, just a game.