The Origins of The Capital Games

The Capital Games actually started from a movie.

Or more accurately, from a question that came to me while watching a movie.

Now, depending on where you consume most of your media, your view of the world may be very different from mine.

Mine is somewhat balanced.

I can usually tell you what is happening in Africa. I pay attention to local conversations because ultimately this is where I operate from.

But when it comes to larger conversations around technology, innovation, artificial intelligence, robotics, capital, and where the world is headed, a lot of the discourse I consume tends to come from international founders, investors, researchers, media platforms, and business leaders.

If you’ve been paying attention to those conversations over the last few years, you’ll notice a recurring theme.

The discussions around AI, robots, labour and financial displacement, and Universal Basic Income.

A lot of discussions about what happens when intelligence becomes abundant, and labour becomes less valuable.

Whether people agree with the predictions or not, one thing is becoming clear, more and more people are beginning to realise that what once felt like science fiction is increasingly beginning to resemble reality.

The Hunger Games no longer feels like a movie to many people.

At the beginning of 2020, during one of Olakunle Soriyan’s foresight conferences, I remember him referencing The Hunger Games as a framework for understanding where society could eventually head if people were not proactive about their future.

At the time, I had already watched the movie once.

But after that conference, I went back and watched it again.

A few years later, I’d watch it again with my notes app open.

And as I watched, I began drafting what I would eventually come to call The Capital Games.

It wasn’t supposed to be a newsletter.

I was documenting a framework for me to play the opposite game.

Movies like The Hunger Games move people to ask, “How do we stop this?”

It made me ask:

“If this is the game, what is the best way to play to really win?”

The solution the movie presents seldom works in real life. You’ll understand what I mean as you read along.

Fans of the series focus on Katniss Everdeen.

And understandably so.

She’s the rebel, the symbol and the face of resistance.

She’s the saviour their world needed.

Last year, I wrote an episode of The Capital Games, titled From Saviours to Sovereigns.

In the episode, I highlighted why Hollywood almost always centres these types of characters.

Stories need people willing to stand up against injustice.

Stories need people willing to sacrifice themselves for a greater cause.

It is admirable.

But the thing that bothered me is making it seem as though the hero’s sacrifice leads to a safer world.

That after the revolution comes freedom.

That if the hero survives long enough, things eventually work out.

Real life is not always that generous.

In real life, people are often martyred for real.

After they are martyred, a monument is built in their name, a few cosmetic changes are introduced, and eventually the machine keeps moving.

History is full of examples.

You can do your own research and share your view with me if you oppose.

So while everybody focuses on Katniss, I became interested in the people around her.

I looked at Gale Hawthorne.

The fighter and her first love interest.

The one who couldn’t accept the system. He was determined to resist it and believed action had to be taken.

By the end of the story, he had become so consumed by the fight that he was eventually used by the very machinery he was trying to destroy.

His actions indirectly contributed to the death of Prim, the young girl he had spent years helping to protect.

He lost himself in the game.

Then there was Peeta Mellark.

Loyal almost to a fault.

A good man trying to remain a good man in a system specifically designed to corrupt people.

He read the game and knew he had no chance of winning through physical strength, so he made himself likeable.

He’d be punished and made to suffer for his loyalty, but because he was loyal to the right side at the right time, he eventually makes it out.

Haymitch Abernathy, the mentor of the victors.

He had been in the system after winning the game in his season. Forced to mentor young people into a life he opposes.

One of the few people who truly saw the system for what it was.

But seeing reality and being able to carry the weight of reality are not always the same thing.

You could almost understand why he escaped into alcohol.

Seneca Crane was an interesting character.

His story shows the cost of dissent from within a system.

The moment he showed mercy to Katniss and Peeta, he paid for it with his life.

It doesn’t justify silence, but it does explain why many people positioned close to power are often more cautious than those observing from a distance. The consequences are often far more immediate.

From the districts, it would be easy to assume that everyone in the Capitol was free.

Cinna, a Capitol citizen and celebrity stylist, was killed for styling Katniss as a symbol of resistance.

Tigris was President Snow’s own cousin. Yet even she fell out of favour and was removed from the circles of power.

Living in the Capitol was not the same thing as being in the Capitol’s power circle.

In many ways, this mirrors how people think about moving to countries of abundance today.

They assume that once they arrive, they have escaped the game. But every system has its own hierarchy, rules, and gatekeepers.

Effie Trinket was someone who found a way to enjoy the beauty, luxury, fashion, and comfort that the Capitol provided while almost completely disconnecting herself from the brutality that made those comforts possible.

And then there were the victors from previous seasons of the game.

The people who supposedly won the game.

They were to be celebrated and admired, as they were proof that the system worked.

Until you see that after they won, they weren’t free.

They were marketed as entertainment, used how the Capitol saw fit, and brought back whenever the Capitol needed a reminder of its own legitimacy.

While they had proximity to the Capitol, they were never accepted as citizens of the Capitol or treated as one of its elites.

Finnick Odair’s story was particularly revealing.

He won and became famous.

As a good-looking young man, he became desirable to members of the Capitol.

Then President Snow essentially sold access to him as a sex worker.

All the victors were presented as free people, but they were in a different form of captivity, designed to serve the Capitol.

As I watched, I realised that every character represented a different response to the system in real life.

Every character represented a different strategy for surviving.

Or failing to survive.

But there was one character that stood out to me.

Plutarch Heavensbee, the Gamemaker who took over from Seneca.

The man understood the board.

What fascinated me was how he was not hyperfixated on proving who was good or bad.

He understood everyone and their incentives.

When President Snow was in power, he knew how to move without exposing himself.

When President Coin emerged, he quickly recognised that she was not quite the liberator she claimed to be.

He understood when and where to support, retreat, speak, or remain silent.

He understood that not every truth needed to be publicly declared.

He supported Katniss’s rebellion against both Presidents without announcing himself as a rebel.

One of the details about Plutarch that I think most people miss happens at the very end.

By then, it is obvious that he admires Katniss. He had been betting on her from the beginning.

He understood her personality. He knew she was stubborn, yet driven. And he knew how to anchor her towards a common goal.

Most importantly, he knew she was one of the few people who would remain honest all the way to the end, even when honesty became costly.

When Katniss shot President Coin, she did what many people would say is morally right.

She refused to replace one version of the game with another version of the game.

Plutarch also understood that the endorsement of the masses never overrides the endorsement of the Capitol.

Whether Katniss was right or not, a president had just been assassinated in public.

A new government was about to be formed.

New alliances were being established, and new power structures were emerging.

In moments like that, perception matters as much as reality.

So while he supported Katniss, he was careful not to publicly position himself as her political ally.

He did not go to see her where she was held.

Instead, he did something far more strategic.

He helped arrange her release, ensuring she would be taken care of.

He communicated privately and reassured her that a pardon would come.

He supported her in substance rather than symbolism.

That distinction is one of the most important lessons in the entire series.

The message projected to the masses is that if you truly believe in something, you must announce your association with it even if it is at the risk of your life.

People who survive power for long periods play by different rules.

Not every act of alliance needs an audience.

Plutarch understood that self-preservation was a strategic asset.

He understood power.

He never appeared interested in becoming president.

Also, he wasn’t trying to become the face of the revolution.

He allowed each party to play their part, and support the winning side where he could.

He is the entrepreneurs, investors, operators, institution builders, and strategic thinkers that you look up to.

The people who seem to survive every administration, economic cycle, geopolitical crises, technological shift.

The people who understand power and how to navigate systems of power.

The people who understand that some battles are worth fighting and others are simply traps designed to consume your life force.

When I look at the world, I see many people being pushed towards the other characters who are consumed by The Hunger Games, fictionally and realistically.

This realisation was one of the things that moved me to start writing The Capital Games.

In real life, the labour games best captures what the movie was highlighting.

Earlier on, I called it the labour games, but I’ve learned that people receive the message more when I call it the survival games, so I made adjustments.

How do ordinary people build sovereignty in a world where power, technology, capital, and attention are becoming increasingly concentrated?

How do you build enough sovereignty that when the world changes, you are not entirely at the mercy of people who have more power than you?

How do you exit survival games, mind, soul and body intact?

In real life, the labour games best capture what the movie was highlighting.

The world people keep debating, arguing about, and forecasting is no longer some distant possibility.

It is already emerging.

The next decade will reward people who understand capital far more than people who only understand labour, just as the previous decades did.

Welcome to The Capital Games!