The Potential for Survival Games as a Research Medium in Political Science: Investigating the Hobbesian and Lockean State of Nature in Rust

Political science has long suffered from the limited ability to conduct experiments and observations in a controlled environment due to its subject matter – groups of people and societies. In this article, the authors explore the potential of survival games as a research tool and setting in political science, weighing their advantages and disadvantages. In the following parts of the article, they conduct an observation of violent and non-violent behaviour of players in the game Rust. This was done to not only prove the utility of games as research medium, but also to obtain new data and insight into the state of nature, a fundamental question of political science posed by Hobbes and Locke. The results show that in a totally anarchic environment of the game, which in certain aspects encourages violence by lowering the stakes, players nonetheless favour non-violent behaviour and defensive violence, rather than offensive violence.