Each presidential campaign has its editorial innovations. In this game, France Info and Clément Viktorovitch, the political scientist specializing in rhetoric struck a blow. They offer on Twitch a series of tabletop role-playing games which reproduces an electoral campaign. The goal ? The show, of course, with in particular renowned French streamers and streamers. But also to transmit information and data on the themes of the campaign which the candidates for one evening have to debate, with the participation of a journalist from the station.
The first episode took place at the beginning of Januarywith a streamer victory Mister MV in the guise of “Paul-Jacques Charenton” of the “La France en fait” party. Next meeting on February 23 at 8 p.m. on Clément Viktorovitch’s Twitch channel with an enticing lineup: Right angle, Anthony Daniel and Attic Player. The political scientist came back with 20 minutes on the political lessons of this first episode, which goes beyond the simple game.
What is a tabletop role-playing game?
To put it simply, it’s fiction, interactive storytelling, in which a game master, who is actually the narrator, tells a story. Traditionally, it’s more stories ofheroic fantasy, fantasy or science fiction. Players around the table embody characters, make decisions, act, speak. And it is from this interaction – both of the players among themselves and of the players with the game master – and these dice rolls – which materialize destiny – that a narrative is gradually constructed. That’s exactly what we do with Game of roles, the two towers. The only difference is that we are telling a political adventure which is that of an electoral campaign.
In the game, the four players embody different political positions, and win – or lose – different categories of voters as the game progresses…
In the system imagined by Fiber Tigre, the creator of the game and the narrator, the electorate has been divided into categories, with all the simplification that this entails, of course. As players, we are in competition for this electorate. The justice of the peace, who will decide the success or failure of our undertakings, is first of all the master of the game himself who is there to estimate whether our actions are appropriate or not, whether it seems to him to be nature to bring us votes or not.
But the most important thing, since it is a simulation of an electoral campaign, it is the viewers who are in front of their screens and who vote many times to decide the outcome of an event or a debate. This is how at the end of the evening, after three hours of confrontation all the same, one of the players becomes the president.
On the first evening, you played a candidate who promotes the referendum on everything, and you were able to explore the difficulty of being “single subject” in a presidential campaign…
I have been working for a very long time on participatory and deliberative democracy and I wondered, as a researcher and citizen, how far a candidate whose proposal would be radical democrat could go: a referendum on each subject. Obviously, we cannot estimate that what happened in the game would certainly happen in reality, but we have some answers. Because I observed that, in the game, my positioning, at the very beginning of the evening, is worrying for the other candidates. And he convinces! I win the first vote.
The problem is that, gradually, having to react to thematic debates while being limited to this ideological requirement to say “I’m not taking a position, it’s the people who must do it”, we realize that my proposal becomes purring and then ends up being ridiculous. At the end of the evening, when I open my mouth, someone around the table cuts me off saying: “Yes, we know you are going to propose a referendum. My proposals are then taken by derision and I finish last on all all the votes of the voters.
This is where you draw a parallel with what happened to François Asselineau during the debate of the 12 candidates in 2017…
François Asselineau was a single-subject candidate since he told him “everything starts with Frexit”, France’s exit from the European Union. His rhetorical tactic, on this evening when he had little cumulative speaking time, was to bring the other candidates to the fact that they did not master the European debate. To demonstrate that he had mastered it, he was keen to support each of his positions with references to the European treaties. At the beginning of the evening, when he begins to quote the treaties to the article, we felt a form of concern among the others. We saw vague looks, a silence greeted his positions… There was something performative that was effective.
But gradually, by dint of quoting the articles of the treaties each time he took the floor, it becomes purring. And then it becomes the object of ridicule. At the end, the cutaways on the other candidates no longer show worried looks, but mocking smiles. And for him, it’s obviously terrible. So we can clearly see how difficult it is to stand out in a debate when we are talking about a single subject. The television spectacle – because a debate, however serious it may be, is always a form of spectacle, which is what keeps us in front of the television for hours on end – requires a form of self-renewal.
Another point that you highlighted during the game is the difficulty of taking blows and the bad news, especially as fatigue accumulates…
We analysts tend sometimes to neglect the human aspect of the political game and to interpret everything in terms of positioning, strategy, calculation. And when we talk about errors, we are talking about tactical errors. We neglect that there is also a human aspect and that as such, political figures are also victims of psychological shocks. In the game, I win the first vote, and while everything is done, in the game, for me not to win, I can’t help – and this is interesting – from dreaming of victory. The game gives rise to a form of natural competition, which is obviously found in electoral competition. I therefore engage headlong into the second debate where I have the impression of being rather impactful. But at the time of the vote, I finish last.
And there, there is still a sting of ego. Immediately a form of inner ratiocination is triggered [une réflexion intense], that is to say that we are a bit in a loop internally: “What happened? Can I rectify the shot? To speak like on Twitch, I’m “stunned”, I’m a little shocked.
However, this is where I am taken by the game master on an adventure where I make a strategic error. It’s a very classic case of a factory about to close. I come to see the mobilized workers, I give them a speech and the master of the game asks me if I want to meet the boss of the factory. As I didn’t exactly understand the situation and I don’t want to make a mistake, I refuse. As a result, I pass for a coward. I miss the adventure. Around the table and in the chat, everyone is wondering why I didn’t go. It was the most basic strategic solution but I am unable to find it because I am still in the internal management of the bad news that I have just had just before.
Again, this is not a totally fictional event…
These are things that we see: political leaders who are stunned and who, as a result, react in an unsuitable way. One can think of the number of times a punchline is so violently received by a politician during a debate that, behind, the response is far below what should have been. The perfect example is Nicolas Sarokzy’s response to François Hollande’s “Me, president” tirade in 2012. It is not at all up to the height he has just taken. In addition, on the fact of managing fatigue, of managing mental resources, there is an anecdote which was told by the actor himself: Benoît Hamon.
In March 2017, he went on to a big meeting at Bercy and the five-party debate on TF1 the next day. The meeting is a real success, the speech is excellent in terms of discursive technique, it was probably one of the best speeches, if not the best speech of 2017. The problem is that Benoît Hamon arrives the next day in this famous tired debate from the day before. It is he who tells it: he did not have time to prepare it well. During the debate, he is not good, he does not have the right punchlines and he does not even have the psychological, cognitive resource to be attentive. He himself says that there were times when he watched the ball pass by being a spectator of the debate and even more of an actor. He was on the ropes, like me in Game of roles.