Negative Space Invaders is a piece that explores agency in video games.
The modern computer game, as born in 1970s America, is often still marked by the prevailing ideological beliefs of that period.
Cold War themes: individualism, militarism and capitalism, still permeate the majority of large scale gaming productions.
The ultimate conflict: protagonist vs antagonist, with the protagonist overcoming swarms of character-less enemies, is a well-trodden trope.
Negative Space Invaders looks to highlight and subvert these underlying themes by inverting them.
In NSI, the player controls one of many Space Invaders – the original’s enemy.
You are forced to move in the limited methods of the game’s origin villains, and points are awarded based on conformity with this idealised enemy trope, rather than your own skill or ability to defeat the antagonistic green ship.