Technique T0151.015: Online Game Platform

Summary: Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite, League of Legends, and World of Warcraft are examples of Online Game Platforms.

Online Game Platforms allow users to create Accounts which they can use to access Online Game Sessions; i.e. an individual instance of a multiplayer online game.

Many Online Game Platforms support text or voice chat within Online Game Sessions.
Belongs to tactic stage: TA07

Incident	Descriptions given for this incident
I00098 Gaming The System: How Extremists Exploit Gaming Sites And What Can Be Done To Counter Them	This report looks at how extremists exploit games and gaming adjacent platforms: Ethnic Cleansing, a first-person shooter game created by the U.S. white supremacist organization National Alliance in 2002, was advertised as follows: “[T]he Race War has already begun. Your character, Will, runs through a ghetto blasting away at various blacks and spics to attempt to gain entrance to the subway system...where the jews have hidden to avoid the carnage. Then you get to blow away jews as they scream ‘Oy Vey!’ on your way to the command center.” While games like Ethnic Cleansing —and others of a similar genocidal variety, including titles like Shoot the Blacks, Hatred, and Muslim Massacre —generate some press attention and controversy, they tend to be ignored by the large majority of gamers, who consider them “crude” and “badly designed.” Nevertheless, these games are still available in some corners of the Internet and have been downloaded by hundreds of thousands of users. A second strategy involves the modification (“modding”) of existing video games to twist the narrative into an extremist message or fantasy. One example is the Islamic State terrorist group’s modding of the first-person shooter video game, ARMA III, to make Islamic fighters the heroic protagonists rather than the villains. With their powerful immersive quality, these video games have, in some instances, been effective at inspiring and allegedly training extremists to perpetrate realworld attacks. Third, extremist actors have used in-game chat functions to open lines of communication with ideological sympathizers and potential recruits. Although the lack of in-game communication data has made it impossible for academic researchers to track the presence of extremists in a systematic way, there is enough anecdotal evidence—including evidence obtained from police investigation files—to infer that in-game chatrooms can and do function as “radicalization funnels” in at least some cases. White supremacists created a game aligned with their ideology (T0147.001: Game Asset). The Islamic State terrorist group created a mod of the game ARMA 3 (T0151.015: Online Game Platform, T0147.002: Game Mod Asset). Extremists also use communication features available in online games to recruit new members.

Incident

Descriptions given for this incident

I00098 Gaming The System: How Extremists Exploit Gaming Sites And What Can Be Done To Counter Them

This report looks at how extremists exploit games and gaming adjacent platforms:

Ethnic Cleansing, a first-person shooter game created by the U.S. white supremacist organization National Alliance in 2002, was advertised as follows: “[T]he Race War has already begun. Your character, Will, runs through a ghetto blasting away at various blacks and spics to attempt to gain entrance to the subway system...where the jews have hidden to avoid the carnage. Then you get to blow away jews as they scream ‘Oy Vey!’ on your way to the command center.”

While games like Ethnic Cleansing —and others of a similar genocidal variety, including titles like Shoot the Blacks, Hatred, and Muslim Massacre —generate some press attention and controversy, they tend to be ignored by the large majority of gamers, who consider them “crude” and “badly designed.” Nevertheless, these games are still available in some corners of the Internet and have been downloaded by hundreds of thousands of users.

A second strategy involves the modification (“modding”) of existing video games to twist the narrative into an extremist message or fantasy. One example is the Islamic State terrorist group’s modding of the first-person shooter video game, ARMA III, to make Islamic fighters the heroic protagonists rather than the villains. With their powerful immersive quality, these video games have, in some instances, been effective at inspiring and allegedly training extremists to perpetrate realworld attacks.

Third, extremist actors have used in-game chat functions to open lines of communication with ideological sympathizers and potential recruits. Although the lack of in-game communication data has made it impossible for academic researchers to track the presence of extremists in a systematic way, there is enough anecdotal evidence—including evidence obtained from police investigation files—to infer that in-game chatrooms can and do function as “radicalization funnels” in at least some cases.

White supremacists created a game aligned with their ideology (T0147.001: Game Asset). The Islamic State terrorist group created a mod of the game ARMA 3 (T0151.015: Online Game Platform, T0147.002: Game Mod Asset). Extremists also use communication features available in online games to recruit new members.

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Technique T0151.015: Online Game Platform

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