Songfacts®:

• This defiant song finds Skillet vocalist John Cooper singing about enduring the hardships thrown at him by the COVID pandemic. Rather than giving in to fear in these unprecedented times, his faith and confidence is in Christ.
  
  Cooper said: "This song brings a feeling of survival; you have to do what you need to do in order to get your life back; a defiance against fear and the things that want to hold you down. For so many, that's depression, isolation, loneliness, suicidal thoughts, etc. This song is about becoming the person you are meant to be and coming out on the other side of all the madness."
• This is the first single released by Skillet after their 2019 Victorious album. Its theme of standing up to the powers of darkness and surviving the storms of life is a continuation of the fight songs on that record. Many of the tracks on Victorious offer encouragement that, with God's help, we can battle through our trials.
• The song features alternating male/female vocals between John Cooper and drummer Jen Ledger.
• Kevin Churko (Ozzy Osbourne, Papa Roach, Disturbed) produced the track with additional production by his son Kane Churko. The pair previously produced "Out Of Hell" and "Undefeated" on Skillet's 2016 Unleashed album.
• Skillet recorded "Surving The Game" for Dominion, releasing it as its lead single on September 15, 2021. John Cooper told New Release Today that the song's theme of defiance is repeated throughout the album. "Defiance towards many things, including fear." he said. "Fear doesn't just manipulate you. But makes you think irrationally and forget things that you know. I have found that in my own life.
  
  Literal things like pandemics and lockdowns, and spiritual things like depression, alcoholism, and suicidal thoughts and actions. Our anchor is Christ. He will set you free when you are close to the prince of peace. Without Him, I don't know how people get by.
  
  This record is defiance against groupthink, and people having to compromise what they believe. It is also defiance against a secular influence taking over culture and even the church, which is feeling less biblical in many ways."
• COVID scuttled Cooper's initial plans to collaborate in person with Churko and they were initially reluctant to write together on Zoom. "We were both like, 'This is just so weird and so sterile,'" he told Billboard, "but it just went really good and 'Surviving The Game' just kind of exploded out of us."
  
  They wrote a couple more songs for Dominion, which went so well that once Cooper and Churko could meet in person again, they continued on Zoom. "I'm not superstitious but if it's not broke, don't fix it," said the Skillet singer.
• Skillet saw the song as an obvious choice to lead their Dominion album. "There's something about that guitar riff in the beginning, it just made everybody feel like this is the song coming out of the gate," Cooper said. "It has a feeling of unbridled chaos to it, but it's very positive as well. There's something about all of those emotions that seem to resonate to people coming out of the pandemic."