10 KiB
Incident I00098: Gaming The System: How Extremists Exploit Gaming Sites And What Can Be Done To Counter Them
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Summary: Extremist actors are exploiting online gaming sites to disseminate violent ideologies, network with likeminded people, and perpetrate real-world harm. The sites where these actors operate include both those offering online video games and “gaming-adjacent” platforms, which host content and discussions related to gaming.
This report draws on existing literature; fresh interviews with gamers, gaming company executives, and experts; and findings from a multinational survey of gamers conducted in January 2023.
Online gaming is an enormous industry unto itself. In 2022, the global video game industry generated revenue of almost $200 billion and provided entertainment to more than three billion consumers around the world. The largest technology companies—including Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google—are heavily invested in gaming as owners of major game studios and their blockbuster titles, dominant distribution platforms, and popular gaming-adjacent sites.
A growing body of evidence shows that bad actors exploit basic features of video games and adjacent platforms to channel hate-based rhetoric, network with potential sympathizers, and mobilize for action—sometimes with deadly consequences. The relative ease with which extremists have been able to manipulate gaming spaces points to the need for urgent action by industry actors to avoid further harm. Although some gaming companies have made recent investments in content moderation technologies and systems, most companies are still far behind in terms of adequately governing and mitigating abuse of their platforms.
This call to address extremist exploitation became more urgent in April 2023 in the wake of media reports that the large gaming-adjacent platform, Discord, had been used by a young U.S. air national guardsman for the reckless and allegedly illegal sharing of top-secret military documents, which then were spread to other online sites. Separately, Microsoft's president, Brad Smith, revealed in an interview in April that his company had detected Russian operatives seeking to infiltrate discussion groups on Discord made up of people who play Microsoft's popular online game Minecraft.
Yet another reason to pay attention to the ways gaming spaces have been misused is that the technologies that help make video games so appealing are poised to become far more common. Immersive and interactive features of games are precursors of the "metaverse" platforms that Meta (formerly Facebook) and other companies are trying to develop. Heeding the popularity of gaming, these companies are pouring billions of dollars into the creation of a fully immersive 3-D Internet. Addressing the extremist exploitation of gaming spaces today will better prepare the industry to usher in new technologies while preventing harm to individuals and societies. -
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| Reference | Pub Date | Authors | Org | Archive |
|---|
| Technique | Description given for this incident |
|---|---|
| T0147.001 Game | IT00000360 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). The Islamic State terrorist group created a mod of the game ARMA 3 (T0151.015: Online Game Platform, T0147.002: Game Mod). Extremists also use communication features available in online games to recruit new members. |
| T0147.002 Game Mod | IT00000362 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). The Islamic State terrorist group created a mod of the game ARMA 3 (T0151.015: Online Game Platform, T0147.002: Game Mod). Extremists also use communication features available in online games to recruit new members. |
| T0151.015 Online Game Platform | IT00000361 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). The Islamic State terrorist group created a mod of the game ARMA 3 (T0151.015: Online Game Platform, T0147.002: Game Mod). Extremists also use communication features available in online games to recruit new members. |
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