On September 3, the Trump Administration advertised the launch of arcade.gov, a website with five games available for users to play. Two of them, titled “Build the Wall” (no longer accessible) and “Rio Run,” specifically ask the player to round up or target migrants, and are explicitly racist and encourage violence against migrants. Deputy Assistant to the President Kaelan Dorr callously described the hateful games as “policy you can interact with.”
Deputy Assistant to the President Kaelan Door describes the Trump Administration’s anti-immigrant games as “policy you can interact with.” (Source: X).
Extremists have long used gaming and gaming-adjacent platforms (i.e, platforms used to share and discuss gaming) to organize and spread hateful beliefs. A Norwegian terrorist who murdered 77 people in 2011 told the court that he used World of Warcraft and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 for “training purposes” to carry out his attacks. Discord, a text, audio, and video messaging platform designed for gamers, was used by the “Unite the Right” participants to organize the Charlottesville riots in 2017, protests that ended in violence when a white supremacist drove his car into a crowd of anti-racist protestors, killing one and injuring more than a dozen others. The Christchurch, New Zealand, shooter, who targeted Muslims, killing 51 people, in 2019, referenced the video games Spyro the Dragon and Fortnite in his manifesto. Severe harassment and incitement to violence have also been regularly associated with several forms of extremism introduced into video games, including white supremacism, neo-Nazism, and misogyny.
The Trump administration’s decision to release these games is yet another example of how gaming is co-opted by extremists to radicalize young people into hateful beliefs, specifically anti-migrant and racist content prevalent on platforms such as Roblox and Epic Games’ Fortnite. “Build The Wall” was a game apparently inspired by the classic arcade video game Tetris, in which the player builds a border wall using Tetris-style blocks. Migrants were depicted as small, green aliens storming the “southern border,” and the player was responsible for using the blocks to prevent them from crossing. The game was removed from the arcade.gov website following a post made by Tetris clarifying that they were not involved in the game’s production, also saying “we believe in the power of connection and bringing people together, not dividing them” and “we take copyright infringement very seriously.”
In “Build The Wall,” the player uses blocks similar to the classic arcade game Tetris to construct a border wall, preventing migrants, depicted as literal aliens, from entering through the “southern border.” (Source: arcade.gov).
A post made by Tetris on X following the release of “Build the Wall” explicitly states the company was not involved in the creation of the game, and clarified that they “believe in the power of connection and bringing people together, not dividing them.” (Source: X).
The other arcade.gov game, still available to play on the website, is called “Rio Run,” resembling the classic game Snake. The game asks the player to “patrol the line along the river” (suggesting that the player is patrolling the Rio Grande, a common border crossing location) and round up predominantly Black and brown characters. Once one collects these characters, they follow your character around wearing orange jumpsuits, bearing a resemblance to prison outfits. The player’s character bears some resemblance to “Border Czar” Tom Homan.
In “Rio Run,” rounded-up migrants, depicted as primarily brown and Black, are wearing orange after you “collect” them. (Source: arcade.gov).
These obviously racist games were simply described by mainstream media outlets as “copycat[s]” of classic games, and “promoting the president’s agenda.” Only a few, such as gaming outlet Kotaku, accurately described the games as “racist.” Other large gaming companies, such as Microsoft, Sony, and Sega, at the time of publishing, have not commented on White House’s games.
Games demonizing immigrants and marginalized communities are common on large gaming platforms. Previous investigations by the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) uncovered youth extremist groups inspired by the white supremacist Patriot Front and the transnational neo-Nazi Active Club network recruiting children on Roblox. Social media accounts affiliated with the Active Club movement have specifically cited the gaming platform as part of the inception of “Youth Clubs,” which consist of members aged 15 to 18 years old. Roblox has also monetized virtual extremist cosmetics (digital attire for a player’s avatar) including ICE vests and t-shirts promoting extremist groups. Similarly, popular far-right gaming streamers such as Zack Hoyt (“Asmongold”) use their platforms (such as YouTube and Twitch) to spread hateful and violent rhetoric targeting migrants. The White House is now engaging in the same hateful practices as these fringe extremists, further risking the radicalization of more young people into hatred and anti-migrant violence.
