We examine how class issues, domestic terrorism, extremism, and insurrection play out in Warhammer 40,000’s Genestealer Cults, against changing British political paradigms between 1989 and 2021. Genestealer Cults are human-alien hybrid guerilla insurrectionists, concealed among the civilian population. Introduced in 1989 and rebooted in 2016, the Cults are both part of the native population and “foreign invaders”, uncanny, threatening, Others. This dichotomy allows readings of the Cult from an “enemy within” to a literal virus threatening the status quo. As an alien Other, the Cult transgresses notions of humanity (see Bökös 2019). Through Genestealer Cults, Games Workshop plays with conspiracy theory tropes; what has changed over the years is the type of conspiracy theories being examined.
Genestealer Cults incorporate a theme popular in Games Workshop’s games: a hidden enemy or corruption at the heart of the Empire. Here, power-hungry citizens make pacts with ineffable alien forces to corrupt society from within. How the Cult is depicted has changed, from limousine-driving members of high society corrupting said society from within, to the working-class rebellion built on religious extremism, labour force insurrection, and alien otherness. These themes are closely related, particularly in the context of a post-9/11 world of paranoia, propaganda, prejudice, repression, and the capitalist Empire (Hardt & Negri, REF).
Genestealer Cults provides a rich text to examine how the game and universe deal with these issues. The changing depiction of the Cults offers an insight into how WH40K plays with fascist ideologies and propaganda, where the enemy is both an internal and external threat, yet from the Cult’s viewpoint, they are the other fighting against the conformity and brutal oppression of the Imperium. Examining these offers insight into how games create a universe where war is not an ideologically righteous cause, but a complicated political avenue for storytelling.
Author bios
Ian Sturrock:
Dr Sturrock’s game design work includes several million words of tabletop RPG products. In digital games he’s worked for Sony, Ubisoft, and others. Ian has interests in motivation, game design, game studies, tabletop RPGs, and games narrative. In 2024 he spent three months at Tampere University as a Visiting Scholar.
Aasa Timonen:
Aasa Timonen is a researcher at Tampere Game Research lab. Her research is focused on the transmedia practices of analog games. Her upcoming dissertation is about the transmedia worldbuilding of Warhammer, how it has changed, and how players navigate in the game worlds, on the tabletop and outside of it.
