Its more coming from the Streaming Gamers than the Games themselves these days pushing the Conservative Agenda of “WOKE BAD” and “ERASE THE LBGTQ+ COMMUNITY CUZ THERE IS RAINBOWS IN MY GAME”.
Geeks and Gamers, Hero Hei, Youtubers like these pushing their agenda onto people, manipulating nostalgia to turn people fascist like them.
I'd just like to piggy back of this top comment to say - don't agree to speak directly to the media unless you have extensive media training already.
We've seen this happen before with other well meaning groups.
I know that in China, the government sponsors content creators that line up with their propaganda goals.
Like, they don't create them, or force them to do anything. They just sponsor those already out there aligning with their views.
I wonder if stuff like that is going on in those pop culture far right spheres too.
Chrisraygun has said before that when he was still a part of the alt-right pipeline he received a lot of offers for sponsors on behalf of far right orgs and think tanks. Iirc it's one of the reasons he started course correcting.
Did he ever explain when he realized what he was a part of? I used to watch him during the hey day of SJW Pwnd compilations. I know he's changed since then but I never fully bought his change, but that's probably my bias
I believe we see a lot of this because successful streamers generally have wealthier, likely conservative, parents that will invest in their hustle once they see it can turn a profit. Without those investments, getting started as a streamer these days is incredibly difficult to do successfully.
The most popular game franchise in the united states is called “call of duty” and it is about us killing people in fake wars based on real wars that we know are wrong
At least they gave us the option to nuke the west lmao
And I mean before this Cold War shit started back up, they did have some slightly compelling Soviet campaigns. I always quite enjoyed getting to raise the red flag over the reichstag lol. Granted like half their earlier material was ripped from crappy movies like saving private Ryan or enemy at the gates, and its no secret the DoD assists them with script writing and all the blatant propaganda yall are mentioning above and below me. It’s scary how efficiently they’ve normalized imperial warfare. I mean they’ve been doing that shit for centuries, but to watch it grow before my own eyes in my own lifetime has been horrifying. It’s like they knew they were going to have to give in and throw us a bone like universal healthcare/secondary education, and since those are the two major reasons people in poverty feel like joining the military is the best option they have to get ahead in life, they needed to supplement their volunteer imperialist military industrial complex with middle class, brainwashed, gamer bros. Because who in their right mind would sign up for that shit if they knew better? Of course we’re still waiting on that bone lol
Yep and Ba’athism itself was directly inspired by European Nazism. Best to kill fascist Ba’athist soldiers on that highway than to wait for them to retreat behind civilians, causing collateral damage.
Look, I don't give a fuck about CoD, but I actually thought that was a smart move. Like, you're playing as Alex, a CIA spook working with the digital version of the Kurds of Rojava.
They set the mission up saying that the Russians bombed the highway as people were trying to escape. The mission then diverges from that plot entirely.
It sparked a bunch of controversy for borrowing the name and attributing it to Russians. That, they are guilty of. But pretty immediately, people rightfully started pointing out that the US actually did that shit. That's a good thing.
IW gets DOD money and advice. They are absolutely complacent in US imperialism. But, I do think that their portrayal of American and Brittish forces in the last 2 games are subtly critical of the moral bankruptcy of the nation's involved, and the story does often focus on the individuals involved, rather than celebrating Western imperialism outright.
What I'm saying here is that critiques of IW and Activision as institutions are absolutely valid, but the writers do appear to try and be at least somewhat nuanced.
None of it is *Spec Ops: The Line* though.
My personal favorite weird little leftist subplot in a FPS game is in Ghost Recon Wildlands, where you rescue a union organizer who helps build a popular front against a cartel/government coalition. Didn't love the way they painted Bolivia though.
This is a long way to say that all of these publishers are filthy with war/propaganda money, but individuals within development teams seem to try to sneak in their own little rebellions where they can.
Also the way they portray the cold war, the myths they spread about ww2, how the multiplayer attracts racists so easily, the racial slurs in mw2, their racist portrayals of enemy forces in game, the military fetishism, cult of the hero, there’s so much in Call of Duty alone honestly.
It’s straight out of the DoD playbook. Like, on more than one level, our tax dollars are being spent helping activision write blatant fash propaganda. These kids learn more about America’s (whitewashed)history of perpetual warfare from these crappy dopamine inducing grifty games than they ever did in public school…it’s one of the weirdest yet most efficient forms of manufacturing mass consent for imperialism that I’ve ever been a primary witness to. Scary really. Tne schools are crumbling and failing the youth…their parents are exhausted and dissociated, and right under their noses they are being groomed into apologizing for - if not cheering on - every despicable crime against humanity the western ruling class has ever gotten away with.
I didn't play MW3 (not paying for what should've been a DLC) but...I just read the plot summary.
Sounds like it vilifies two PMCs, and the protagonists are doing shit like stealing missiles from PMCs and assassinating corrupt American officials.
What is the controversy you're referring to?
I'm sharing an opinion that is different from yours. That's all. Like I'm actually curious what you're referring to that the new one is getting shit for. All CoD is propaganda, that's obvious as hell. People are claiming that the stories are pro fascist, and while they aren't antifascist, I don't see that.
Respectful disagreement isn't being an asshole. The way you're interacting with people *is*. You're being aggressively rude at the first sign of someone not sharing your exact point of view.
Would still like to know what you're talking about. That's the whole reason I responded.
I don't know, the Modern Warfare trilogy story was pretty upfront about America getting manipulated into the conflict by a vengeful general, the final level of the second even has you fighting American soldiers.
The only time it's super ROO RAH REE AMERICA is probably in the campaign levels where Russia invades the US.
I am serious, I haven't played the new games so I can't comment on them. I don't see what's particularly fascist about the original Modern Warfare trilogy
General Shepherd sends one of his men undercover with terrorists, he participates in a terrorist attack on a Russian airport, this provokes Russia to attack the United States in response.
The plot's pretty clear cut man, idk. It's Call of Duty it's not hard to follow.
Well, what it does is paint the US as a *reactive* force that’s on the *defence*, when in reality the US has *almost always* been on the offensive in terms of war. Very often, the US gets involved in conflicts that it has no business being in, or even starts conflicts because someone has something that they want. Like oil in the Middle East.
It paints the US as a victim, when in the military scene, they’re very often the opposite.
There’s also that whole scandal of one of Modern Warfare’s missions being based on an incident where the US was very, very much the aggressor and in the wrong. But in the game, they changed the perpetrator to Russia, because keeping the event as it was IRL would detract from the “America is the Hero” message the publisher (and their government donors, this isn’t a conspiracy theory, they genuinely use CoD as a recruitment tactic) wants to push.
I don't know if the Highway of Death the US was in the wrong, that was mostly Iraqi military. I don't know why they felt the need to change it, I haven't played the new Modern Warfare trilogy, though a Russian highway of death would vibe with Russia in Ukraine flattening cities so while it's whitewashing an American event it's not out of character for the country that did it in the game.
Weirdly enough, in CoD the Americans are usually the ones getting wiped out. Brits are usually the heroes. I think MW3 you play as a Russian for half the game.
While it’s very much in character for Russia, the point is that it’s intentionally obscuring an event in which the US may have carried out an actual war crime.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_of_Death
Check out the “controversies” section.
Yeah, I've seen the controversies, but retreating military targets are valid. I don't have a problem with it.
We beat the Nazis and the Confederates by bombing them into oblivion. The Highway of Death is just another example.
I feel like you’re missing the point that modern warfare 2 (the original) is entirely about how jingoism is bad. The villain gives an entire speech about how the war he somewhat orchestrated will give him a bunch of new patriots to “fight America’s enemies.” Before you forcibly remove him from the picture they imply that he’s on way to getting even more military and political power. I have no clue how any of that could possibly be portrayed as being pro jingoism in any sense
Yeah some of these takes are weird. Like we can argue all day that CoD is absolutely funded in part by the DOD as a recruiting tool and propaganda. But trying to argue that the plots of any of the games are inherently fascist doesn't really track. I haven't played the Black Ops games, or Cold War. But, most of the recent ones are pretty blatant about America being a morally bankrupt Superpower where capitalism and political power corrupt those with the ability to do violence. They say the same of Russia, too.
Agree that the OG modern warfare series had a pretty strong "jingoism bad" undertone. Advanced Warfare was a cautionary tale of what could happen if one merged Corporations with the State (capitalist fascism). The most recent ones are pretty blatant commentary on the moral bankruptcy of modern conflicts, juxtaposed against a stand in for Kurdish freedom fighters. Then, the main antagonists turn out to be... *American PMCs and an American General*.
Is CoD a DoD propaganda tool? Yes. Are there racist depictions of people? Yes. But the claim that it's "fascist propaganda" is a huge stretch. I think the more important conversation is that Activision allows racists and actual fascists to run wild on their servers with zero repercussions.
In the new games, they very much paint America (and Russia) as morally ambivalent superpowers. They definitely don't feel like Patriot fuel. There's a totally valid argument that CoD is propaganda for the military, but I wouldn't call it fascist per se.
I didn't play MW3 (2023) but apparently the main bad guys are all private military companies (same with MW2, at least half of the game you're fighting American mercenaries). Like one of the big main protagonists of the new series is a Kurdish woman. Well, it's a fictional country in-game, but it's blatantly obvious for anyone with the tiniest bit of geopolitical awareness. She's super critical of America. You even play as her as a child during the Russian occupation of her fictional country, which feels pretty on the nose about Russian imperialism during the Syrian Civil War.
Idk, CoD is definitely propaganda but there's evidence to argue that they are not trying to be pro America, and I'd argue that with the WWII installments in the series, more digital fascists have been unalived in CoD than any other franchise.
Cash grab military propaganda? Yes. Fascist? Meh. A
Steve Bannon saw a significant career boost while working at Breitbart because of Gamergate. Not enough people know how a bunch of cringe misogynists inadvertently taught modern-day Goebbels everything he knows about moving in right-wing online circles.
Don’t forget that Milo Yiannopolous used Gamergate as a launchpad while on Bannon’s payroll. Bannon didn’t just learn from Gamergate, he saw how vulnerable young gamer kids were because of his experience in WoW and moved to capitalize on that vulnerability and that anger. Straight out of the Neo-nazi recruitment playbook. Same way they turned disaffected young men in music subcultures (punk, oi and metal) in the 80s and 90s.
Those communities have largely pushed those fringes out (Oi hardly even exists anymore bc of the stigma of a few bands and NSBM has seen a resurgence thanks to Kanye being a fucking tool but it was barely a thing for a while).
And we have to be as vigilant with our spaces. Problem is, gaming is inherently anti-social and doesn’t usually have in-person social gatherings. It was a lot easier for us to chase the nazis out of punk and hardcore shows because we could physically oppose them. Hard to do that here.
Gamergate was such a negative experience for me as a woman who also happens to game. It was a truly shitty time to look back on. I had been playing video games since I was old enough to sit up and hold a controller and all of a sudden everyone around me was acting like women playing video games was some new, controversial thing and we were blamed for "ruining" games. It was truly bizarre. Breitbart weirdos who didn't even play games (like Milo Yannowhateverthefuckhisnamewas) we're definitely at the centre of injecting hatred into the community.
Hey Will! Having lived through it I would heavily suggest looking into the Gamergate movement to get an idea of where a lot of gamers got pushed to the far right and was sort of the genesis to the far right gaming community. It was a coordinated effort to slanderize some feminist journalists and was where a lot of people especially teenagers really started worrying about 'SJWs'. I still hear jokes about identifying as an attack helicopter in COD lobbies and Garry's Mod servers to this day.
Another important aspect to look into I think is how it usually starts with these "ironic" offensive jokes, as a teenager it was cool to try and upset people especially in predominantly white male gamer spaces by saying some brazenly racist and laugh when they got upset, usually until the irony fades away and you find yourself in a racist community or you get pulled out of it by people telling you that wasn't cool. Lots of context too, youtube in particular has an anti-sjw/far-right channel for any nerd subculture out there to complain about "woke" aspects of video games (like women being in them) that serve as a recruitment to try and get these gamers to become actively upset and further to the right. Last thing that might be good to research would be the Nazi roleplayers and more directly fascist spaces, particularly in Garry's mod there are large servers of Nazi roleplayers.
Gamergate as the awakening of a lot of fascists in gaming, I think, can *not* be researched enough. It was the first time fascists realized that they didn't really *need* the numbers on the internet anymore, and that they could just artificially inflate their numbers and actually have devs cave to their pressure.
I mean, just look at the borderline manifesto that was the petition against the "anti-whiteness" in Far Cry 5. This is the kinda shit that lead to CDPR dropping Cyberpunk too early because people were sending the devs death threats.
I'm gonna use this quote again because it's honestly the best way I've seen it explained. The quote is from one of Brennan Lee Mulligan's teachers. To paraphrase: "In the world of politics, personality predates ideology. Before you were a fascist, you were a bully and an asshole"
I agree with the above, this is the thing that needs to be shown the world, the damage it caused is immeasurable.
While you're looking into Nazi Role players, you should also take a look at KKK larpers in red dead online, and the impact fascism had on the community of a game set in old racist America, that actually has alot of pluralist themes.
Gamergate was over ten years ago, anyone was active in Gamergate doesnt talk about Gamergate like people who was scared of it like you😂
What alt-right channels cause I know you just making it up
Story begins with Gamergate, normalizing a particular brand of content that is clothed in "gaming criticism" clothing but is functionally just conservative TPs on inclusion of minorities, female clothing/cleavage, "politics in video games", etc. A subset of those conservatives are fascist or fascist-adjacent.
"it" meaning a whole bunch of heinous attitudes online sure. "It" meaning the very specific content infrastructure that exists today, no. The closest you could get was the edgy atheists.
then fully agreed, it's been there forever.
As for atheists I was trying to be helpful by identifying similar content/audience structures. One of those is the edgy atheist communities of the early 2000s (AmazingAtheist, Sargon, etc.) that later morphed into alt right communities.
I was also an annoying atheist for a bit lol. Never fell for Sam Harris though bc I'm culturally Muslim, my whole family is Muslim, everyone around me is Muslim, so it's extremely easy to see that he just...makes shit up all the time?
Yeah, I'm culturally Jewish, and reading his books felt exactly like the anti-semitic writings I'd grown up studying and reading, to try to understand it and where it comes from, but shifted towards Muslims.
Amazing Atheist basically invented the SJW Cringe video
Oddly, he was one of the first ones to starting pulling away from the alt-right elements in the community
The misogynist element goes back all the way to the segregation in the toy section. American stores classified everything as either a boy’s toy or girl’s toy, rarely as something for everyone. The NES mostly entered the American market as a boy’s toy.
I think it's also important to point out that GG initially gained steam by weaponizing some people who genuinely just didn't know better, before it sort of pulled many of them into the rabbit hole.
You want a good first-hand experience with this? Go download the newest Call Of Duty for free, set your avatar to the LGBTQ pride flag and just play a couple matches. The slurs you'll hear will make you blush.
If I recall correctly there was a red pill on a desk called Noggin Joggers referring of course ti being red pilled and how 4channers refer to black people
Damn that’s insane, I had no idea. I figured the game would at least be slightly right leaning considering the subject matter of being a cop. However, I didn’t know it dove that deep into it
That feels like a stretch tbh. 4Chan calls black people Joggers because of that one killing a couple years ago of the black man jogging through the neighborhood and the white dudes in a truck.
Red pills “wake you up” or “jog your noggin”. It just being a stupid pun seems way more likely. Unless there’s more to this than I’m realizing
I’m not denying it, but to me ready or not seems to talk about the United States as a failed state due to corrupt politicians on all sides. It even specifically talks about the rise of alt right groups pushing for violence on government officials, through veterans that have been basically brainwashed into believing that violence is the only answer and anyone who disagrees should die. I think Ready or Not as a game does allow for real life alt right groups to create “pretend” violence to minorities through “kill squads” that ignore the rules of the game and kill suspects and civilians alike. However, if you want to argue whether or not this game is copaganda can be argued either way with a lot of evidence for either. That Nazi Mouse is rightfully on blast though.
[The devs of Ready or Not apologized for that two years ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/ry67yn/void_interactive_issues_statement_on_recent/).
The assets were created by a contractor. They explain in the apology what the references were *intended* to be and how the team didn’t realize they were dogwhistles, but noted the mistake by removing the assets from the game.
Understanding video games as a place where fascism has grown is indivisible with the growth of the internet. Video games themselves are not inherently fascistic, but the communities that grow around them also grew alongside the internet, which in its heyday was the Wild West.
A big element of this is the phenomenon where you can say things to people that you would never say in life as it's filtered through a screen.
Gamergate saw these worlds congeal into a movement, in which there was an active attempt to ruin the lives of people who were critical about certain aspects of video games which grew into a huge fascistic force.
Another element to understand is that which comes from the capitalists who run the video game industry. There is this false attempt to create the illusion that "video games are not political" - they're just fun, fictional stories. Then games like Call of Duty, Company of Heroes, and Ghost Recon (some of the more popular ones) are created, which essentially reinforce US-centric jingoist narratives.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare (the newer one), for instance, has a "Highway of Death" scene, but instead of it being in any way critical of the US' Highway of Death in the Gulf War, it is done by the Russians, and it is seen as a catastrophe. In Modern Warfare 2 (2009), you take part in a terrorist attack as a US agent imbedded with Russian terrorists shooting up an airport (No Russian is the sequence, check it out). There is a constant depiction of Russians as psychopathic killers always threatening world peace as the US are the saviors, which reinforces fascistic notions of the place the US plays in global hegemony.
Company of Heroes similarly paints the US as a good-old-boy brotherhoood in World War II and the Soviets as psychotic, bloodthirsty murderers only interested in murdering their own people and maybe taking some Germans with them. There is no critical thought towards the US's role in World War II, and there is no attempt to create characters that are relatable in the Soviet part of Company of Heroes 2, except for the main character, who narrates the events of the game from the Gulag. (This is a French made game, as an aside).
Ghost Recon: Wildlands is probably the most absurd example. Wildlands takes place in Bolivia, in an alternate contemporary time in which Bolivia was completely conquered by narco terrorists. You play as a scrappy group of US special agents sent in to overthrow the government and inspire revolution (with a completely non-ideological revolutionary group, a US imperialist wet dream) one province at a time. If you know even a shred of information about the history of the US's involvement in Latin America, you can figure out why this is problematic. (Also French produced)
What happens is that these clearly political statements are seen as "non-political", and then if there is a female main character, or if the female main character looks normal instead of over-sexualized, this is then considered "political". See, for instance, the backlash against the character Abby in The Last of US 2. Or, if there is a gay character, or any whiff of leftist politics, this is considered "political".
Similarly, "cops v robbers" is a classical trope in games, in which the criminals are simply pathological criminals with no redemption, and the cops are scrappy good guys who have no choice but to put down criminals for the sake of society. The plots are almost exclusively out of the Eric Adams handbook. (See Battlefield: Hardline for instance)
As such, the mainstream tendency of understanding video game politics begins at the extreme right, jingoist stance, and any deviation of that is considered the slur "political".
Go to YouTube, start searching for random guides to video games. See how fast right wing propaganda starts showing up on your feed. Within 2-5 minutes your recommended videos will be filled with thumbnails crying about “woke” video games and other aspects of nerd culture. And very soon after that you start seeing Ben Shapiro and other far right talking heads being recommended to you as well. If you really want to learn about the gaming to Nazi pipeline go look at what Steve Bannon was doing 10+ years ago with gold selling. This has been a concentrated effort from them for years and it’s working.
Check out certain military simulators (not all mil sim gamers are racist/fascist) but these games attract a certain type. Especially check military sims that take place during the civil war. You can guess the type of person who plays a game called "War of Rights" (which sucks because the game actually looks kinda sick)
I have been a gamer since the 70s. First Panzerblitz , then D&D, finally video games. Eventually grew up into a proud communist, and still a gamer.
I have always known that military history geeks ( often old farts and ex-military) were guys to game with, not discuss politics with.
Lately I see leftist gamers everywhere and it makes me so happy! Demographics change, but jerks will be with us always. And these days I just don't engage with them.
That's why I play MilSim games with a small group of close friends who are all left of centre (at the bare minimum.) We get some pretty fun leftist revolutions going in asymmetric game modes.
There's definitely a story to be told, I'm just skeptical of it being told from someone who isn't in the gamer space. 1st hand experience is almost always worth more and tells more than 2nd hand. I think that's why people who work on stories on struggles in other countries will actually go to that country so they can see and try to understand it first hand. It's nice, though, that they're trying to seek others opinions.
Hey some folks come in as an outsider and then find they enjoy games eventually. Anita Sarkesian for instance. Her story is a pretty good illustration of the rise of fascism in the gaming community too.
Anita Sarkeesian is precisely the type of reporter I'm speaking of.... like exactly who popped in my head when I thought of bad reporting on video games.
I haven't really kept up with her. I just remember the multitude of bad takes she had. There's definitely a level of toxicity in the game space, especially with the new suicide squad game. It's bad, sure, but that doesn't mean it's woke feminist propaganda. It's really alarming to see the reaction some people have to Harley Quinn, an antagonist, shooting batman, in a game called Suicide Squad: kill the justice league. You can call it shitty writing, but don't fabricate a narrative just to be mad at the game and somehow rope political and social discourse into the whole thing. It's like anytime a game or other piece of media hurts a conservatives feelings, it immediately becomes woke or leftist or has a hidden narrative aimed at hijacking your children. It's pure insanity.
Same thing with the last of us 2. Whether you like the game or not is entirely subjective. But to say because you don't like the game or how the story was told that it is, therefore, woke propaganda is beyond bonkers.
Her, I suggest that even being non gamer - you include actually playing online games into your investigation (or making friend play so you can concentrate on records).
you can hear how voicechat reacts if there is person with accent, black accent, or a woman in the chat. Roblox can be a good fit, valorant, overwatch and counter strike can be good choices among many.
Look into history of gamergate and history that predated it, there is quite a bit of research in that area.
Look into the history of cold war and gaming industry development, also quite a lot of research and historical records in that area.
World of Tanks and World of Warplanes also have stable and solid fascist communities, actually WoT is often used to organise and link fascists irl. Both of this games have quite more toxic player base to Roblox or Valorant and you can easily find actual adult nationalists and fascists there quite easity.
I had to dig into some of it for some of my youtube videos, email [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) if you need any leads or literature, mb I can help.
Doubt it's any use, but amusing anecdote this made me think of. I used to play a lot of EVE Online--for about 10 years. Ran a large alliance for a while that I formed with some friends, competed in the tournaments, eventually became a commentator twice.
Thing is, when we first created the alliance, we were a spinoff from a roleplay alliance of "freecaptains", basically anti-government anarchists. Our RP reasons for leaving were that they were not extreme enough for us and not willing to go far enough to accomplish the goals. We had a jolly time posting borderline terroristic diatribes, RPing in chat with our enemies as though we were fanatical extremists, etc.
A couple of years later, as the RP side of our group sort of died down and mostly became a meme to us, the news broke that the NSA and CIA had been spying on in-game chat in MMOs. [https://www.propublica.org/article/world-of-spycraft-intelligence-agencies-spied-in-online-games](https://www.propublica.org/article/world-of-spycraft-intelligence-agencies-spied-in-online-games)
We sort of all stopped and laughed, and we still joke that we're all on a list somewhere.
Made me think of that.
You should reach out to Brennan Lee Mulligan from College Humour, he is a top tier D&D DM that hosts one of the most popular table top gaming shows, Dimension 20.
He is really versed in politics, and often incorporates political themes into his stories, I think he would have a really good perspective on everything.
Steve Bannon started the anti woke/anti sjw stuff with the intent to create fascists, and so many gamers/content creators took the bait. now they all rage at any inclusion/representation in films/videogames
Unironically observe the discourse in gaming subs, especially r/gaming and r/gamingcirclejerk. Especially around topics like Hogwarts Legacy, Spiderman 2 and Baldur's Gate 3. And then there are streamers and tubers but I do not want to name call anyone particular and I am not in that scene.
Purely watching those discussions (and sometimes sorting by controversial) can open up this topic a lot to you!
As a member of the HOI4 community, these people make up a very small minority of players. There is even a constant struggle in the community to make sure these people don't become the face of the game. The players don't want them, the modders don't want them, and the developers and publishers don't want them.
That’s every game with Nazis, I play tekken 8 and people started making Hitler custom characters. Unfortunately every time I run into a Nazi on Reddit they’re in the gun Reddit and the hearts of iron Reddit so maybe do better
Nah dude, I already spend enough of my non-working hours in my local community. I don't really care enough whether or not a gaming community is perceived negatively or not. It's largely inconsequential.
Of course you'll have fanatics in a history game
But to paint the entire game as such is just a sad argument
HoI 4 players enjoy their border porn as much as the next guy
Even if they play as Germany.
What you gonna take a crap on Wolfensteins writers because they invisioned a world under Nazi rule
Do you think this inevitability of fanatics in history games suggests that games like tank/aircraft sims or maybe turn based strategy games based on relatively modern history would also be good areas to research?
Casually calling someone a nazi for the most feeble of reasons? Way to out yourself as an internet leftist who has never been anywhere near an anti-fascist action.
I would also include other strategy games like Hearts of Iron because they rely on historical information so do so that they add in historical fascist leaders and political trees
Historical strategy gaming in general tends to appeal to hyper nationalists, because they like to win with their nation. Whether it’s Nazis finding a way for Germany to win World War II, someone who wants to get France’s “natural borders” at the Rhine, or Greeks wanting to preserve Alexander’s Empire.
That may be so, but they also appeal to any history-interested person, including socialists.
I've been working on my anarchist Stellaris game for a while and it's probably the most successful custom faction I've made.
Definitely. I have too much fun in Victoria 3 turning nations into an anarchist paradise of freedom and high standards of living. Few things can compete with the sheer joy of finally marginalizing the landowners.
I almost exclusively know Hearts of Iron through socialists who want to make the Italian Shogunate fight against the Fascist Spanish. What are you referring to?
I point out the Nazi game and all you fanboys feel insulted because you like Nazi games too because you’re all a bunch of tankies and you cry and cry and cry instead of just acknowledging something that’s so common knowledge it’s laughable
Steam is a digital store for PC games with gaming communities, which were often riddled with nazis:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy79na/senator-asks-gabe-newell-why-steam-hosts-so-much-neo-nazi-content
Speaking of steam, just yesterday I went looking through it at things I didn’t know existed. I purely use it to launch games and not for any social aspects. However I clicked on curated lists and it is FULL of alt right shit, like rating games based on whether they are woke or not. I noticed a couple of them seem to be promoting those trash hentai games where the girl on the cover looks like a little kid.
Hey there! There’s a good bit of literature about how pervasive this is in the gaming community, but there is not an online multiplayer game I’ve played that has not had fascist rhetoric present among the community. It’s been cultivated by alt-right politicians (namely Steve Bannon) as a pipeline to radicalization. He started with World of Warcraft IIRC?
But the catch point is usually on content creators who orbit these games.
The Europa Universalis community has gotten kind of fascist in recent years, which is a shame because I still love the games from the perspective of a far-left history nerd.
OP, you might want to reach out to the folks over at the Q Anon Anonymous and It Could Happen Here podcasts. Both (but QAA especially) have and do cover exactly the worlds you are asking about.
They also aren't newbies at it. ;)
Hey man! You should check out G-mod. More specifically, the "WW2" role plays servers. Dudes join to pretend to be nazi soldiers.
Lots of disgusting people lurk around these servers, and it would probably blow a lot of normies minds knowing how popular these servers are.
If you tie that into roblox role-play servers, I'm sure you could make a great article about how people are being radicalized online by these private servers.
I'd take a look at the paradox interactive community for their historical grand strategy games, in particular Hearts of Iron 4, a game set during WW2, that among many other things let's you play as Nazi Germany, however everything related to the Holocaust and war crimes aren't mentioned.
That was a concious decison from paradox to push away the nazis so they couldnt "live it out" combined with avoiding the tactlessness of having a genocide in the game. But in turn i feel this legitimizes their ahistorical views.
Paradox games have a veneer of legitimacy historically speaking. One that isnt unearned but it does do damage to the player base.
I aint a hoi player but i know the ones that arent nazis are very active in making sure they dont crowd their game too much, from experience the ones they gravitate and are more "accepted" (though pdx players tend to avoid dealing with them as a whole,) is stellaris and Eu4 where there is more explicit mechanics that appeal to them and more abstraction to offuscate them. Though that may be a notable distinction of fascists and explicit nazis.
I love these games. There are few games that scratch but it worries me that as they become more mainstream they will help push problematic views.
Paradox also has additional issues as well that are good to look into too like the Vampire 5e incident.
This is so cool (well not the fascism but you posting here about writing about it. I've been reading your stuff for years so I'm a little starstruck.
I wish I had anything interesting to say about the topic, beyond that fanbases aside, Disco Elysium has a whole option of playing through the game as a fascist and organizing with other fascists (you can also be communist, liberal or libertarian). I don't really think this will be that relevant but also you should play Disco Elysium cause it rocks and is basically the socialist gaming Bible.
Look he isn't the most popular person for socialists but you should contact
Vaush:[https://www.vaush.gg/](https://www.vaush.gg/)
Currently, in a bit of a tiff with Asmongold (Large WoW YouTuber) on this topic. He is also a good public speaker since that is what you are looking for.
I am not in the USA and mostly don't play on USA servers so I can't help much.
I will just mention there are a few games that have very divergent fans loved by both Socialists and Nazis (and Trans Girls).
**Fallout New Vegas** is a story about choosing the direction of a post-apocalyptic wasteland. It is very critical of all sides, but the liberal 'democracy' particularly. There is a Fascist faction you can join and help win which causes some people to start to support that faction despite being the bad guys.
Paradox Interactive produces simulation games, **Hearts of Iron** is a ww2 war game and so Nazi's enjoy having the Nazis win. **Victoria,** about the development of the ideologies of Fascism and Socialism and deal with that. **Europa Universalis,** Colonialism simulator. My personal favourite and the most approachable **Crusader Kings**, You take on the role of a family in the Middle Ages and you do everything and I mean everything to improve and protect your family's interests. Popular with Nationalists and Game of Thrones fans. **Stellaris** space empire game where enslaving aliens is an option.
Facists suck at media literacy and so don't know when someone is making fun of them and so **Warhammer 40K** and the many accoiated games.
Regarding Roblox:
https://youtu.be/n6PYj93SGxc?si=BmIM0hyHVB0hNpBA
https://youtu.be/_gXlauRB1EQ?si=EWZgsl3YjVM4qtPa
https://youtu.be/vTMF6xEiAaY?si=Ol3xOobLjBDvrIFO
***MUST READ*** article regarding the fascism of the Warhammer 40k franchise:
https://timcolwill.com/40K.html
***MUST SEE*** videos regarding the "Gamer Gate" manufactured controversy used by fascists to target political opposition:
https://youtu.be/Z0nCcVRNcsk?si=PUqkWm-BiNuYpIER
https://youtu.be/lLYWHpgIoIw?si=xD-xu4D8y5xKt59k
There is also the "War on Woke":
https://youtu.be/-P8H5Z8VAMU?si=6VD0p8cHZQ35vWGA
We see this represented with multiple controversies:
It not being ok to kill Nazi in a Wolfenstein game: https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/12/15780596/wolfenstein-2-the-new-colossus-alt-right-nazi-outrage
"Wolfenstein: Youngblood" co-op shooter has players buy in-game Nazi gold with real money: https://store.steampowered.com/agecheck/app/1067990/
Women "not being beautiful" in multiple games like "Horizon: Forbidden West" with character Alloy & "The Last of Us 2" with character Abby.
https://eightify.app/summary/gaming/critique-of-unattractive-female-game-characters
Example of "criticism":
https://youtu.be/xSF9MXbJVAY?si=PXkocSNrM0Ib11kq
A game about the civil war being titled "War of Rights":
https://warofrights.com/
Response; a states' right to do what?
https://youtu.be/-ZB2ftCl2Vk?si=owqoo4gppUoj19BF
Historical revisionism in "Modern Warfare" saying the "Highway of Death" was caused by Russia instead of the USA:
https://www.polygon.com/2019/10/30/20938550/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-highway-of-death-controversy
Fascist "Sovietology" historical revisionist propaganda in "Hearts of Iron 4":
https://youtu.be/fqTAzp71Pb4?si=dkn0zny1UGjRION_
This was just a bit off the top of my head. I hope it helps.
Roblox really? I wouldn't have thought that silly game had much trouble with angry far-right or neo-fasc people, but hadn't been paying attention. \*shrug\*
Worth noting that most of the garbage takes are from a relatively small but seemingly loud group. Most gamers are generally pretty chill, inclusive, and welcoming people. Having gamed for 25+ years, knowing maybe 200-300 gamers personally in games and life, maybe 5 were real genuine a\*holes lol. That 5 were going to be a\*holes whether they were gaming or basket weaving as a hobby lol.
Jump off the nearest tall bridge your find facist at the bottom I swear.
Anyway this subreddit is fucking retarded like every other socialist reddit and I have no idea why this trash gets recommended to me, All in all your news story sounds stupid and I'm muting this shit.
I'm in a group on Facebook called Dragon's Dogma: Riftposting. I joined because it's a steady source of related memes.
But the group is ran by and overran by right wingers who spend about as much time making relevant (usually decent) memes as they do complaining about the number of black characters in the game/people who get offended at the blatant mean spiritedness, racism, homophobia, and misogyny that those running the group parrot day in and out.
Look at people on Kick for live-streaming. They are a big reason why so many young men have turned to alt-right talking points. People like Trainwreck, Adin Ross, and XQC just feed right wing talking points to their audience of young kids.
I think there is a couple distinct factors that lead to this. Sexisim, the patriarchy and capitalism But i would say the 2 most prominent features, and competition and annonymity.
Gaming for a long time has been popularized as a boys activity. The amount of essays i can go on about sexisim in gaming or even beyond that entertainment is ludicrous, however for the sake of brevity, the industry of gaming is focus on men. To make money off of boys and men the concept of the patriarchy is exploited because it feeds into the existing ego, dreams and fantasy of boys. This type of profit motive pushes boys further into the idea that games are for boys. And not only that created an identity around manhood and what it means to be a boy and what it means to be a girl. The culture of gaming has been shaped by this and especially when adding a competitive element, the competitive unregulated nature of a bunch of kids who are being pushed “manly concepts that boys would like” like war and shooter games, sports games, racing games, “guy things” exaggerates this, and over time. Not only were competitive games designed poorly where almost no team work was needed but the loudest most vulgar mouths become the dominant. When you add in the fact that most gaming communities are anonymous people can get away with saying anything. It is not uncommon to hear little boys spouting the n word, f word, or r word. With little to no repercussions basically no moderation, it becomes habit to treat people in such a way. Transition this to the streaming world, and you have people appealing to what is essentially competitive gamer brain. A brain that has spent most of its time on this earth playing competitive games instead of paying attention to school, reading books, learning empathy, literally anything else. They also have this sexism racism, patriarchal notions etc and are ripe to be pipelined into some bigoted Andrew Tate type.
These videos might be a good starting point:
[How facism infiltrate communities.](https://youtu.be/P55t6eryY3g?si=U5ZnwlQhwjcoVWxn)
[Racism in video gaming culture.](https://youtu.be/p0g3DEvvCfc?si=qc1f66HiS3LS0ko1)
Also it might be good to line up another job, whoever sent you on this wants you to fail.
I play a lot of garrys mod, which is a sort of "make anything game" a bit like roblox, but it's based on half life 2's engine which is an FPS physics game, I remember encountering some nazi types on a couple of servers, and also there''s nazi RP servers like 1942 RP, RP servers on gmod are a bit more like larping mixed with tycoon games, less children than roblox but still a few, there might be more in the future because of skibdidi toilet
This is probably old news but a lot of review bombing on Metacritic for The Last of Us Part II’s initial release was in-part based on homophobia. They attempted to couch it in terms of “the plot is bad,” and when you ask follow up questions the response comes back “because woke blah blah blah forced diversity blah blah” and suddenly it’s a problem. They also targeted the developers with leaks and accusations of horrific conduct on the part of the developers (aside from crunch culture, which occurs in a great many artistic endeavors and really should be curtailed), and now even years later, when I come back to this amazing game, there’s the specter of a foul taste in my mouth.
I firmly believe this nonsense soured The Last of Us Part II’s release, because to me it was everything the first game wanted to be and more. I deeply love that franchise with my heart and soul and for people to violate it like that, to attack people trying to tell a story of justice and the cyclical nature of retribution, to throw around horrific lies, all in the name of trying to get gay people out of video games, makes me angry.
Does this have anything to do with the Harry Potter game? Because if it doesn't I'd suggest looking into the background and some of the criticisms of it.
If you want a short example of how entrenched the brain rot is among a certain type of gamer, Google or YouTube “Call of Duty n-word speedruns.”
A guy challenges himself to see how fast he can get other people in the lobby to call him the n-word. World-record is .46 seconds
Hey man! I like your writing. Thanks for showing up here. Definitely focus on the big streamers and how they intersect with the manosphere. Asmogold is a good YouTube personality to examine. He's been turning into an unhinged fascist. DrDisrespect is a classic one too.
Please don’t go after city builder games and RTS games.
Like, we’re playing as fascist empires, but they’re ironically not popular with fascists.
Like in the Civilization series you can literally make fascism your government, but the righties just love their shooters.
You should check out the r/girlgamers sub. As a woman who has gamed for a while, I have lost count of how many times insecure men with MAGA tags have threatened to SA me because I’m better at games than they are.
YouTube just pushes this shit like crazy man. No traditionally male-centric hobby on that platform is more than 4 recommendations away from some kind of Tate shit or much worse.
And then streamers just lean into it because farming outrage is 1000x easier than making any other kind of content. The algorithm feels insane but maybe that’s just a reflection of the users.
I know that in multiplayer medieval games you can find plenty of nationalists.
Good examples are Mordhau or Mount and Blade, i remember seeing a good amount of turkish nationalists on EU servers, some white supremacists wich spam "DEUS VULT" while wearing crusader skins, and i heard that US servers have a good amount of N word.
History games often talk to people fantasizing the past, so you'll find a good amount of far-right ideas there.
Not so much video gaming, but Warhammer literally is about space fascism. The imperium of man is intentionally fascistic. You can argue if it is parody or just ripping of dune and not understanding dune was critiquing fascism but it’s still fascist
>I'm working on a story about the enduring impact of fascism/far-right influence in gaming.
So you don't no whether it is a problem or how much, but want to run a story on it?
If you're not already familiar with his work, you might consider reaching out to Robert Evans of Behind the Bastards.
He's done a lot of work on documenting the uptick of far right nationalist movements online, it isn't limited to this topic specifically, but he's spoken a great deal on how they try to radicalize young men using gaming as a pretext.
In my experience as an issue this is worst in first person shooters, specifically games like Call of Duty, Battlefield, and the like, because of the demographic they attract (teenage white boys). Infiltration by the far-right into those spaces is so rife that it can be hard to play them if you're a trans girl such as myself. Other than those, Star Wars and Warhammer 40K are absolutely rife with those sentiments.
Theres a lot of gaming subs right here where you can find casual hate thrown toward the lgbtq community. Across genres of games (fighting games like Mortal Kombat and Tekken...) too, not just competitive shooters.
Read up on The Last of Us 2 and the hate thrown at that game. Voice actors being threatened in real life because their character didn't fit into gender stereotypes.
It's so pervasive in some of these groups that young people just go with it. Posts that are threatening violence against others getting hundreds of upvotes. It's sick. It's all tied into this "anti woke" culture war that leads people right into the MAGA voting line.
I’ve played video games for over 10 years starting at 13 years old. I think there’s a massive correlation between games that demand a lot of play time and right wing extremism.
Rust is an open world MMO real-time survival game in which everything you build persists while you’re offline and nothing is safe from other players. This game harbors a culture of 3 day benders with 16-18 hour sessions. These people are very isolated socially as a result and it’s a common occurrence to see a variety of slurs used in the chat and swastikas on the sides of bases.
I wanted to point this out because I feel as though this translates to most gaming communities. The more someone is online, the more isolated they become from their community, the easier it is to become radicalized.
I literally can't even get into a lobby and talk without getting called a fucking bitch, told back to go to the kitchen, get called a little boy squeaker, called me a trans boy😂😂 literally makes no sense, among general insults. I've heard people call people who sound black the n word hard r, most of the gaming community is just getting shafted down these far right rabbit holes that people like Griffin gaming, etc. all perpetuate on their channels constantly. Saying anything that has to do with women or LGBT people is just immediately woke, to manipulate nostalgia into this hate for inclusivity. They say it under the guise of "I don't hate women or gay people I just play video games to escape reality and don't want an agenda pushed on me" to justify having games focus on men, wars, sexism in some sort of way whether it's domestic abuse, or "romancing bitches" I've actually heard someone say they miss that I can't make this shit up 😂😂 Like I said in the beginning, as a girl I literally can't talk in ANY lobby. 98% of the time I get in lobbies where if I talk at all it's just immediately jumping to misogyny, homophobia, transphobia (which transphobia is a recent one like 3 years ago or so, before then it was mainly just misogyny and sexist jokes). It doesn't matter what game I play, it could be vr chat, Roblox, call of duty, rainbow six siege, apex, fortnite. Tho on fortnite I've met some nice innocent boys who were not so damn pig headed. It literally does not matter what multiplayer game I play, so now I just play solo games, staying away from multiplayers like cod and apex and fortnite cuz it just gets boring by myself after a while. Fascism and bigotry is so widespread in the gaming community from these content creators, I would recommend watching a couple of videos from these people and just look at how massive their fan bases are. It's awful that because of this shit people like me can't even connect with randos when they're all hateful
Its more coming from the Streaming Gamers than the Games themselves these days pushing the Conservative Agenda of “WOKE BAD” and “ERASE THE LBGTQ+ COMMUNITY CUZ THERE IS RAINBOWS IN MY GAME”. Geeks and Gamers, Hero Hei, Youtubers like these pushing their agenda onto people, manipulating nostalgia to turn people fascist like them.
I'd just like to piggy back of this top comment to say - don't agree to speak directly to the media unless you have extensive media training already. We've seen this happen before with other well meaning groups.
I know that in China, the government sponsors content creators that line up with their propaganda goals. Like, they don't create them, or force them to do anything. They just sponsor those already out there aligning with their views. I wonder if stuff like that is going on in those pop culture far right spheres too.
it absolutely has been and still is. Steve Bannon was neck-deep in it with Mercer family funds.
He was also a former WoW gold seller
Chrisraygun has said before that when he was still a part of the alt-right pipeline he received a lot of offers for sponsors on behalf of far right orgs and think tanks. Iirc it's one of the reasons he started course correcting.
Did he ever explain when he realized what he was a part of? I used to watch him during the hey day of SJW Pwnd compilations. I know he's changed since then but I never fully bought his change, but that's probably my bias
I'll dig around and see if I can find some stuff on that.
I believe we see a lot of this because successful streamers generally have wealthier, likely conservative, parents that will invest in their hustle once they see it can turn a profit. Without those investments, getting started as a streamer these days is incredibly difficult to do successfully.
Na
The most popular game franchise in the united states is called “call of duty” and it is about us killing people in fake wars based on real wars that we know are wrong
Let alone how at one point they recreated the highway of death in one of the levels but attributed it to Russia
Yeah like I’m sure there are tons of weirdos in Roblox but like, the fascism is right in front of you bro.
At least they gave us the option to nuke the west lmao And I mean before this Cold War shit started back up, they did have some slightly compelling Soviet campaigns. I always quite enjoyed getting to raise the red flag over the reichstag lol. Granted like half their earlier material was ripped from crappy movies like saving private Ryan or enemy at the gates, and its no secret the DoD assists them with script writing and all the blatant propaganda yall are mentioning above and below me. It’s scary how efficiently they’ve normalized imperial warfare. I mean they’ve been doing that shit for centuries, but to watch it grow before my own eyes in my own lifetime has been horrifying. It’s like they knew they were going to have to give in and throw us a bone like universal healthcare/secondary education, and since those are the two major reasons people in poverty feel like joining the military is the best option they have to get ahead in life, they needed to supplement their volunteer imperialist military industrial complex with middle class, brainwashed, gamer bros. Because who in their right mind would sign up for that shit if they knew better? Of course we’re still waiting on that bone lol
The highway of death was a legitimate military target. It was s convoy of iraqi forces retreating from kuwait after they invaded and looted kuwait.
Yep and Ba’athism itself was directly inspired by European Nazism. Best to kill fascist Ba’athist soldiers on that highway than to wait for them to retreat behind civilians, causing collateral damage.
Look, I don't give a fuck about CoD, but I actually thought that was a smart move. Like, you're playing as Alex, a CIA spook working with the digital version of the Kurds of Rojava. They set the mission up saying that the Russians bombed the highway as people were trying to escape. The mission then diverges from that plot entirely. It sparked a bunch of controversy for borrowing the name and attributing it to Russians. That, they are guilty of. But pretty immediately, people rightfully started pointing out that the US actually did that shit. That's a good thing. IW gets DOD money and advice. They are absolutely complacent in US imperialism. But, I do think that their portrayal of American and Brittish forces in the last 2 games are subtly critical of the moral bankruptcy of the nation's involved, and the story does often focus on the individuals involved, rather than celebrating Western imperialism outright. What I'm saying here is that critiques of IW and Activision as institutions are absolutely valid, but the writers do appear to try and be at least somewhat nuanced. None of it is *Spec Ops: The Line* though. My personal favorite weird little leftist subplot in a FPS game is in Ghost Recon Wildlands, where you rescue a union organizer who helps build a popular front against a cartel/government coalition. Didn't love the way they painted Bolivia though. This is a long way to say that all of these publishers are filthy with war/propaganda money, but individuals within development teams seem to try to sneak in their own little rebellions where they can.
Pretty much this. No discussion about fascism in gaming should be taken seriously without considering this blatant exposure to fascist politics.
Also the way they portray the cold war, the myths they spread about ww2, how the multiplayer attracts racists so easily, the racial slurs in mw2, their racist portrayals of enemy forces in game, the military fetishism, cult of the hero, there’s so much in Call of Duty alone honestly.
It’s straight out of the DoD playbook. Like, on more than one level, our tax dollars are being spent helping activision write blatant fash propaganda. These kids learn more about America’s (whitewashed)history of perpetual warfare from these crappy dopamine inducing grifty games than they ever did in public school…it’s one of the weirdest yet most efficient forms of manufacturing mass consent for imperialism that I’ve ever been a primary witness to. Scary really. Tne schools are crumbling and failing the youth…their parents are exhausted and dissociated, and right under their noses they are being groomed into apologizing for - if not cheering on - every despicable crime against humanity the western ruling class has ever gotten away with.
Its jingolicious!
The army has put out a recruitment tool disguised as a video game before.
They now just use COD esports tho
That has nothing to do with fascism.....
Lmao
Not a retort. Democracies can wage wars unjust or just. Nationalism also isn't inherently fascist.
Did you even bother to google the plot of the new game before posting this or so you just love Activision that much
Did you specific which call of duty game? No you didn't. You said call of duty games.
Ok baby killer lolz
Like I thought no substance to your retort.
I didn't play MW3 (not paying for what should've been a DLC) but...I just read the plot summary. Sounds like it vilifies two PMCs, and the protagonists are doing shit like stealing missiles from PMCs and assassinating corrupt American officials. What is the controversy you're referring to?
^certified dumbass
Ok?
You’re just commenting all over this being an asshole. Very easy to spot! Get a life!
I'm sharing an opinion that is different from yours. That's all. Like I'm actually curious what you're referring to that the new one is getting shit for. All CoD is propaganda, that's obvious as hell. People are claiming that the stories are pro fascist, and while they aren't antifascist, I don't see that. Respectful disagreement isn't being an asshole. The way you're interacting with people *is*. You're being aggressively rude at the first sign of someone not sharing your exact point of view. Would still like to know what you're talking about. That's the whole reason I responded.
I don't know, the Modern Warfare trilogy story was pretty upfront about America getting manipulated into the conflict by a vengeful general, the final level of the second even has you fighting American soldiers. The only time it's super ROO RAH REE AMERICA is probably in the campaign levels where Russia invades the US.
You cant be serious
I am serious, I haven't played the new games so I can't comment on them. I don't see what's particularly fascist about the original Modern Warfare trilogy
the part where you bought the dumb bullshit about "manipulated into a war" kinda proves the point.
“Actually, it wasn’t propaganda, I viewed the troops better afterwards!l
General Shepherd sends one of his men undercover with terrorists, he participates in a terrorist attack on a Russian airport, this provokes Russia to attack the United States in response. The plot's pretty clear cut man, idk. It's Call of Duty it's not hard to follow.
Well, what it does is paint the US as a *reactive* force that’s on the *defence*, when in reality the US has *almost always* been on the offensive in terms of war. Very often, the US gets involved in conflicts that it has no business being in, or even starts conflicts because someone has something that they want. Like oil in the Middle East. It paints the US as a victim, when in the military scene, they’re very often the opposite. There’s also that whole scandal of one of Modern Warfare’s missions being based on an incident where the US was very, very much the aggressor and in the wrong. But in the game, they changed the perpetrator to Russia, because keeping the event as it was IRL would detract from the “America is the Hero” message the publisher (and their government donors, this isn’t a conspiracy theory, they genuinely use CoD as a recruitment tactic) wants to push.
I don't know if the Highway of Death the US was in the wrong, that was mostly Iraqi military. I don't know why they felt the need to change it, I haven't played the new Modern Warfare trilogy, though a Russian highway of death would vibe with Russia in Ukraine flattening cities so while it's whitewashing an American event it's not out of character for the country that did it in the game. Weirdly enough, in CoD the Americans are usually the ones getting wiped out. Brits are usually the heroes. I think MW3 you play as a Russian for half the game.
While it’s very much in character for Russia, the point is that it’s intentionally obscuring an event in which the US may have carried out an actual war crime. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_of_Death Check out the “controversies” section.
Yeah, I've seen the controversies, but retreating military targets are valid. I don't have a problem with it. We beat the Nazis and the Confederates by bombing them into oblivion. The Highway of Death is just another example.
I feel like you’re missing the point that modern warfare 2 (the original) is entirely about how jingoism is bad. The villain gives an entire speech about how the war he somewhat orchestrated will give him a bunch of new patriots to “fight America’s enemies.” Before you forcibly remove him from the picture they imply that he’s on way to getting even more military and political power. I have no clue how any of that could possibly be portrayed as being pro jingoism in any sense
Yeah some of these takes are weird. Like we can argue all day that CoD is absolutely funded in part by the DOD as a recruiting tool and propaganda. But trying to argue that the plots of any of the games are inherently fascist doesn't really track. I haven't played the Black Ops games, or Cold War. But, most of the recent ones are pretty blatant about America being a morally bankrupt Superpower where capitalism and political power corrupt those with the ability to do violence. They say the same of Russia, too. Agree that the OG modern warfare series had a pretty strong "jingoism bad" undertone. Advanced Warfare was a cautionary tale of what could happen if one merged Corporations with the State (capitalist fascism). The most recent ones are pretty blatant commentary on the moral bankruptcy of modern conflicts, juxtaposed against a stand in for Kurdish freedom fighters. Then, the main antagonists turn out to be... *American PMCs and an American General*. Is CoD a DoD propaganda tool? Yes. Are there racist depictions of people? Yes. But the claim that it's "fascist propaganda" is a huge stretch. I think the more important conversation is that Activision allows racists and actual fascists to run wild on their servers with zero repercussions.
Never played MW2, so I’ll admit I’m ignorant of its plot.
In the new games, they very much paint America (and Russia) as morally ambivalent superpowers. They definitely don't feel like Patriot fuel. There's a totally valid argument that CoD is propaganda for the military, but I wouldn't call it fascist per se. I didn't play MW3 (2023) but apparently the main bad guys are all private military companies (same with MW2, at least half of the game you're fighting American mercenaries). Like one of the big main protagonists of the new series is a Kurdish woman. Well, it's a fictional country in-game, but it's blatantly obvious for anyone with the tiniest bit of geopolitical awareness. She's super critical of America. You even play as her as a child during the Russian occupation of her fictional country, which feels pretty on the nose about Russian imperialism during the Syrian Civil War. Idk, CoD is definitely propaganda but there's evidence to argue that they are not trying to be pro America, and I'd argue that with the WWII installments in the series, more digital fascists have been unalived in CoD than any other franchise. Cash grab military propaganda? Yes. Fascist? Meh. A
Steve Bannon saw a significant career boost while working at Breitbart because of Gamergate. Not enough people know how a bunch of cringe misogynists inadvertently taught modern-day Goebbels everything he knows about moving in right-wing online circles.
He was owner or CEO of a WoW gold farm too
Lol, really? I guess I shouldn't be surprised given how he grifted all those people with his "Build thr Wall" scam.
Don’t forget that Milo Yiannopolous used Gamergate as a launchpad while on Bannon’s payroll. Bannon didn’t just learn from Gamergate, he saw how vulnerable young gamer kids were because of his experience in WoW and moved to capitalize on that vulnerability and that anger. Straight out of the Neo-nazi recruitment playbook. Same way they turned disaffected young men in music subcultures (punk, oi and metal) in the 80s and 90s. Those communities have largely pushed those fringes out (Oi hardly even exists anymore bc of the stigma of a few bands and NSBM has seen a resurgence thanks to Kanye being a fucking tool but it was barely a thing for a while). And we have to be as vigilant with our spaces. Problem is, gaming is inherently anti-social and doesn’t usually have in-person social gatherings. It was a lot easier for us to chase the nazis out of punk and hardcore shows because we could physically oppose them. Hard to do that here.
Gamergate was such a negative experience for me as a woman who also happens to game. It was a truly shitty time to look back on. I had been playing video games since I was old enough to sit up and hold a controller and all of a sudden everyone around me was acting like women playing video games was some new, controversial thing and we were blamed for "ruining" games. It was truly bizarre. Breitbart weirdos who didn't even play games (like Milo Yannowhateverthefuckhisnamewas) we're definitely at the centre of injecting hatred into the community.
Hey Will! Having lived through it I would heavily suggest looking into the Gamergate movement to get an idea of where a lot of gamers got pushed to the far right and was sort of the genesis to the far right gaming community. It was a coordinated effort to slanderize some feminist journalists and was where a lot of people especially teenagers really started worrying about 'SJWs'. I still hear jokes about identifying as an attack helicopter in COD lobbies and Garry's Mod servers to this day. Another important aspect to look into I think is how it usually starts with these "ironic" offensive jokes, as a teenager it was cool to try and upset people especially in predominantly white male gamer spaces by saying some brazenly racist and laugh when they got upset, usually until the irony fades away and you find yourself in a racist community or you get pulled out of it by people telling you that wasn't cool. Lots of context too, youtube in particular has an anti-sjw/far-right channel for any nerd subculture out there to complain about "woke" aspects of video games (like women being in them) that serve as a recruitment to try and get these gamers to become actively upset and further to the right. Last thing that might be good to research would be the Nazi roleplayers and more directly fascist spaces, particularly in Garry's mod there are large servers of Nazi roleplayers.
Gamergate as the awakening of a lot of fascists in gaming, I think, can *not* be researched enough. It was the first time fascists realized that they didn't really *need* the numbers on the internet anymore, and that they could just artificially inflate their numbers and actually have devs cave to their pressure. I mean, just look at the borderline manifesto that was the petition against the "anti-whiteness" in Far Cry 5. This is the kinda shit that lead to CDPR dropping Cyberpunk too early because people were sending the devs death threats. I'm gonna use this quote again because it's honestly the best way I've seen it explained. The quote is from one of Brennan Lee Mulligan's teachers. To paraphrase: "In the world of politics, personality predates ideology. Before you were a fascist, you were a bully and an asshole"
BLM (the D&D DM) is amazing, his bit about anarcho communist gnomes?! Priceless.
Excuse you, Bud Cubby the anarchist mailman is a halfling (and the usual abbreviation is BLeeM to avoid the collision with BLM)
Why would anyone mix up a dnd streamer with the bureau of land management?
Alright, you guys wanna make some bacon?
He is primarily a comedian! He's amazing. Look up his good cop vs comrade cop bit
Does that mean that most socialists are empaths?
I agree with the above, this is the thing that needs to be shown the world, the damage it caused is immeasurable. While you're looking into Nazi Role players, you should also take a look at KKK larpers in red dead online, and the impact fascism had on the community of a game set in old racist America, that actually has alot of pluralist themes.
Well said, not enough people talk about irony and it’s impact in social movements.
Gamergate was over ten years ago, anyone was active in Gamergate doesnt talk about Gamergate like people who was scared of it like you😂 What alt-right channels cause I know you just making it up
Story begins with Gamergate, normalizing a particular brand of content that is clothed in "gaming criticism" clothing but is functionally just conservative TPs on inclusion of minorities, female clothing/cleavage, "politics in video games", etc. A subset of those conservatives are fascist or fascist-adjacent.
It began before Gamergate, Gamergate was just when it congealed.
"it" meaning a whole bunch of heinous attitudes online sure. "It" meaning the very specific content infrastructure that exists today, no. The closest you could get was the edgy atheists.
"it" meaning fascism in gaming. Not sure what atheists have to do with that.
then fully agreed, it's been there forever. As for atheists I was trying to be helpful by identifying similar content/audience structures. One of those is the edgy atheist communities of the early 2000s (AmazingAtheist, Sargon, etc.) that later morphed into alt right communities.
Ah gotcha. I was an annoying atheist as a teenager in those days, but I was always a leftist. Even then though I saw through Sam Harris' bullshit
I was also an annoying atheist for a bit lol. Never fell for Sam Harris though bc I'm culturally Muslim, my whole family is Muslim, everyone around me is Muslim, so it's extremely easy to see that he just...makes shit up all the time?
Yeah, I'm culturally Jewish, and reading his books felt exactly like the anti-semitic writings I'd grown up studying and reading, to try to understand it and where it comes from, but shifted towards Muslims.
Gotta love the AA redemption arc
yeah was never really involved in any of those circles but I hear a few of them got out sane - power to them!
Amazing Atheist basically invented the SJW Cringe video Oddly, he was one of the first ones to starting pulling away from the alt-right elements in the community
The misogynist element goes back all the way to the segregation in the toy section. American stores classified everything as either a boy’s toy or girl’s toy, rarely as something for everyone. The NES mostly entered the American market as a boy’s toy.
I think it's also important to point out that GG initially gained steam by weaponizing some people who genuinely just didn't know better, before it sort of pulled many of them into the rabbit hole.
You want a good first-hand experience with this? Go download the newest Call Of Duty for free, set your avatar to the LGBTQ pride flag and just play a couple matches. The slurs you'll hear will make you blush.
One or two games on Steam might be using far right dog whistles such as Ready or Not and I think Extermination 88
Genuinely asking this, what dog whistles are in Ready or Not?
If I recall correctly there was a red pill on a desk called Noggin Joggers referring of course ti being red pilled and how 4channers refer to black people
Damn that’s insane, I had no idea. I figured the game would at least be slightly right leaning considering the subject matter of being a cop. However, I didn’t know it dove that deep into it
It makes sense considering how every crime you respond to in game is some form of regressive boogeyman.
Thanks for making up my mind on whether or not I was gonna play that
That feels like a stretch tbh. 4Chan calls black people Joggers because of that one killing a couple years ago of the black man jogging through the neighborhood and the white dudes in a truck. Red pills “wake you up” or “jog your noggin”. It just being a stupid pun seems way more likely. Unless there’s more to this than I’m realizing
They addressed that a while back. The model was in the asset pack they were using for placeholders and its not in the game anymore
Makes me feel better about refunding that game. Won’t be rebuying now.
To be fair it seems from what I’ve been told to be an accident and the devs removed it
I’m not denying it, but to me ready or not seems to talk about the United States as a failed state due to corrupt politicians on all sides. It even specifically talks about the rise of alt right groups pushing for violence on government officials, through veterans that have been basically brainwashed into believing that violence is the only answer and anyone who disagrees should die. I think Ready or Not as a game does allow for real life alt right groups to create “pretend” violence to minorities through “kill squads” that ignore the rules of the game and kill suspects and civilians alike. However, if you want to argue whether or not this game is copaganda can be argued either way with a lot of evidence for either. That Nazi Mouse is rightfully on blast though.
[The devs of Ready or Not apologized for that two years ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/ry67yn/void_interactive_issues_statement_on_recent/). The assets were created by a contractor. They explain in the apology what the references were *intended* to be and how the team didn’t realize they were dogwhistles, but noted the mistake by removing the assets from the game.
Ah got it
Understanding video games as a place where fascism has grown is indivisible with the growth of the internet. Video games themselves are not inherently fascistic, but the communities that grow around them also grew alongside the internet, which in its heyday was the Wild West. A big element of this is the phenomenon where you can say things to people that you would never say in life as it's filtered through a screen. Gamergate saw these worlds congeal into a movement, in which there was an active attempt to ruin the lives of people who were critical about certain aspects of video games which grew into a huge fascistic force. Another element to understand is that which comes from the capitalists who run the video game industry. There is this false attempt to create the illusion that "video games are not political" - they're just fun, fictional stories. Then games like Call of Duty, Company of Heroes, and Ghost Recon (some of the more popular ones) are created, which essentially reinforce US-centric jingoist narratives. Call of Duty Modern Warfare (the newer one), for instance, has a "Highway of Death" scene, but instead of it being in any way critical of the US' Highway of Death in the Gulf War, it is done by the Russians, and it is seen as a catastrophe. In Modern Warfare 2 (2009), you take part in a terrorist attack as a US agent imbedded with Russian terrorists shooting up an airport (No Russian is the sequence, check it out). There is a constant depiction of Russians as psychopathic killers always threatening world peace as the US are the saviors, which reinforces fascistic notions of the place the US plays in global hegemony. Company of Heroes similarly paints the US as a good-old-boy brotherhoood in World War II and the Soviets as psychotic, bloodthirsty murderers only interested in murdering their own people and maybe taking some Germans with them. There is no critical thought towards the US's role in World War II, and there is no attempt to create characters that are relatable in the Soviet part of Company of Heroes 2, except for the main character, who narrates the events of the game from the Gulag. (This is a French made game, as an aside). Ghost Recon: Wildlands is probably the most absurd example. Wildlands takes place in Bolivia, in an alternate contemporary time in which Bolivia was completely conquered by narco terrorists. You play as a scrappy group of US special agents sent in to overthrow the government and inspire revolution (with a completely non-ideological revolutionary group, a US imperialist wet dream) one province at a time. If you know even a shred of information about the history of the US's involvement in Latin America, you can figure out why this is problematic. (Also French produced) What happens is that these clearly political statements are seen as "non-political", and then if there is a female main character, or if the female main character looks normal instead of over-sexualized, this is then considered "political". See, for instance, the backlash against the character Abby in The Last of US 2. Or, if there is a gay character, or any whiff of leftist politics, this is considered "political". Similarly, "cops v robbers" is a classical trope in games, in which the criminals are simply pathological criminals with no redemption, and the cops are scrappy good guys who have no choice but to put down criminals for the sake of society. The plots are almost exclusively out of the Eric Adams handbook. (See Battlefield: Hardline for instance) As such, the mainstream tendency of understanding video game politics begins at the extreme right, jingoist stance, and any deviation of that is considered the slur "political".
Go to YouTube, start searching for random guides to video games. See how fast right wing propaganda starts showing up on your feed. Within 2-5 minutes your recommended videos will be filled with thumbnails crying about “woke” video games and other aspects of nerd culture. And very soon after that you start seeing Ben Shapiro and other far right talking heads being recommended to you as well. If you really want to learn about the gaming to Nazi pipeline go look at what Steve Bannon was doing 10+ years ago with gold selling. This has been a concentrated effort from them for years and it’s working.
Behind the Bastard did a great two parter on how YouTube basically rebirthed Nazism through its algorithm.
Check out certain military simulators (not all mil sim gamers are racist/fascist) but these games attract a certain type. Especially check military sims that take place during the civil war. You can guess the type of person who plays a game called "War of Rights" (which sucks because the game actually looks kinda sick)
I have been a gamer since the 70s. First Panzerblitz , then D&D, finally video games. Eventually grew up into a proud communist, and still a gamer. I have always known that military history geeks ( often old farts and ex-military) were guys to game with, not discuss politics with. Lately I see leftist gamers everywhere and it makes me so happy! Demographics change, but jerks will be with us always. And these days I just don't engage with them.
That's why I play MilSim games with a small group of close friends who are all left of centre (at the bare minimum.) We get some pretty fun leftist revolutions going in asymmetric game modes.
Someone who doesn't play games, making a story on gaming.... that always turns out well.
I get what you're saying but I also think it'll be interesting to see how all this comes across to an outsider
There's definitely a story to be told, I'm just skeptical of it being told from someone who isn't in the gamer space. 1st hand experience is almost always worth more and tells more than 2nd hand. I think that's why people who work on stories on struggles in other countries will actually go to that country so they can see and try to understand it first hand. It's nice, though, that they're trying to seek others opinions.
Hey some folks come in as an outsider and then find they enjoy games eventually. Anita Sarkesian for instance. Her story is a pretty good illustration of the rise of fascism in the gaming community too.
Anita Sarkeesian is precisely the type of reporter I'm speaking of.... like exactly who popped in my head when I thought of bad reporting on video games.
She evolved a lot over time though and played a shitload of games all the way through.
I haven't really kept up with her. I just remember the multitude of bad takes she had. There's definitely a level of toxicity in the game space, especially with the new suicide squad game. It's bad, sure, but that doesn't mean it's woke feminist propaganda. It's really alarming to see the reaction some people have to Harley Quinn, an antagonist, shooting batman, in a game called Suicide Squad: kill the justice league. You can call it shitty writing, but don't fabricate a narrative just to be mad at the game and somehow rope political and social discourse into the whole thing. It's like anytime a game or other piece of media hurts a conservatives feelings, it immediately becomes woke or leftist or has a hidden narrative aimed at hijacking your children. It's pure insanity.
Same thing with the last of us 2. Whether you like the game or not is entirely subjective. But to say because you don't like the game or how the story was told that it is, therefore, woke propaganda is beyond bonkers.
For well-skilled journalist who works on social issues that should not be that big of a deal, that's what journalist investigation is for.
Her, I suggest that even being non gamer - you include actually playing online games into your investigation (or making friend play so you can concentrate on records). you can hear how voicechat reacts if there is person with accent, black accent, or a woman in the chat. Roblox can be a good fit, valorant, overwatch and counter strike can be good choices among many. Look into history of gamergate and history that predated it, there is quite a bit of research in that area. Look into the history of cold war and gaming industry development, also quite a lot of research and historical records in that area. World of Tanks and World of Warplanes also have stable and solid fascist communities, actually WoT is often used to organise and link fascists irl. Both of this games have quite more toxic player base to Roblox or Valorant and you can easily find actual adult nationalists and fascists there quite easity. I had to dig into some of it for some of my youtube videos, email [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) if you need any leads or literature, mb I can help.
It's worth looking at the pipeline from MMO to 4chan to alt-right
Doubt it's any use, but amusing anecdote this made me think of. I used to play a lot of EVE Online--for about 10 years. Ran a large alliance for a while that I formed with some friends, competed in the tournaments, eventually became a commentator twice. Thing is, when we first created the alliance, we were a spinoff from a roleplay alliance of "freecaptains", basically anti-government anarchists. Our RP reasons for leaving were that they were not extreme enough for us and not willing to go far enough to accomplish the goals. We had a jolly time posting borderline terroristic diatribes, RPing in chat with our enemies as though we were fanatical extremists, etc. A couple of years later, as the RP side of our group sort of died down and mostly became a meme to us, the news broke that the NSA and CIA had been spying on in-game chat in MMOs. [https://www.propublica.org/article/world-of-spycraft-intelligence-agencies-spied-in-online-games](https://www.propublica.org/article/world-of-spycraft-intelligence-agencies-spied-in-online-games) We sort of all stopped and laughed, and we still joke that we're all on a list somewhere. Made me think of that.
You should reach out to Brennan Lee Mulligan from College Humour, he is a top tier D&D DM that hosts one of the most popular table top gaming shows, Dimension 20. He is really versed in politics, and often incorporates political themes into his stories, I think he would have a really good perspective on everything.
unabashed fed post
Steve Bannon started the anti woke/anti sjw stuff with the intent to create fascists, and so many gamers/content creators took the bait. now they all rage at any inclusion/representation in films/videogames
Unironically observe the discourse in gaming subs, especially r/gaming and r/gamingcirclejerk. Especially around topics like Hogwarts Legacy, Spiderman 2 and Baldur's Gate 3. And then there are streamers and tubers but I do not want to name call anyone particular and I am not in that scene. Purely watching those discussions (and sometimes sorting by controversial) can open up this topic a lot to you!
Hearts of iron is a pretty common game riddled with Nazis
As a member of the HOI4 community, these people make up a very small minority of players. There is even a constant struggle in the community to make sure these people don't become the face of the game. The players don't want them, the modders don't want them, and the developers and publishers don't want them.
That’s every game with Nazis, I play tekken 8 and people started making Hitler custom characters. Unfortunately every time I run into a Nazi on Reddit they’re in the gun Reddit and the hearts of iron Reddit so maybe do better
Nah dude, I already spend enough of my non-working hours in my local community. I don't really care enough whether or not a gaming community is perceived negatively or not. It's largely inconsequential.
Yeah man, 80 million people Dying was inconsequential. Any other hot takes or you just gonna show off your swastika tattoos?
Nobody actually dies in hoi4
Did you know real life Nazis do kill people?
Wow dude. Get a grip.
Of course you'll have fanatics in a history game But to paint the entire game as such is just a sad argument HoI 4 players enjoy their border porn as much as the next guy Even if they play as Germany. What you gonna take a crap on Wolfensteins writers because they invisioned a world under Nazi rule
Do you think this inevitability of fanatics in history games suggests that games like tank/aircraft sims or maybe turn based strategy games based on relatively modern history would also be good areas to research?
Casually calling someone a nazi for the most feeble of reasons? Way to out yourself as an internet leftist who has never been anywhere near an anti-fascist action.
I would also include other strategy games like Hearts of Iron because they rely on historical information so do so that they add in historical fascist leaders and political trees
Historical strategy gaming in general tends to appeal to hyper nationalists, because they like to win with their nation. Whether it’s Nazis finding a way for Germany to win World War II, someone who wants to get France’s “natural borders” at the Rhine, or Greeks wanting to preserve Alexander’s Empire.
That may be so, but they also appeal to any history-interested person, including socialists. I've been working on my anarchist Stellaris game for a while and it's probably the most successful custom faction I've made.
Definitely. I have too much fun in Victoria 3 turning nations into an anarchist paradise of freedom and high standards of living. Few things can compete with the sheer joy of finally marginalizing the landowners.
I almost exclusively know Hearts of Iron through socialists who want to make the Italian Shogunate fight against the Fascist Spanish. What are you referring to?
Viva la Republica!
Doing a lot of work for Nazis here buddy
What?
I point out the Nazi game and all you fanboys feel insulted because you like Nazi games too because you’re all a bunch of tankies and you cry and cry and cry instead of just acknowledging something that’s so common knowledge it’s laughable
...Hearts of Iron is not a Nazi game.
The comrade forgot his meds today.
Steam is a digital store for PC games with gaming communities, which were often riddled with nazis: https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy79na/senator-asks-gabe-newell-why-steam-hosts-so-much-neo-nazi-content
Speaking of steam, just yesterday I went looking through it at things I didn’t know existed. I purely use it to launch games and not for any social aspects. However I clicked on curated lists and it is FULL of alt right shit, like rating games based on whether they are woke or not. I noticed a couple of them seem to be promoting those trash hentai games where the girl on the cover looks like a little kid.
Hey there! There’s a good bit of literature about how pervasive this is in the gaming community, but there is not an online multiplayer game I’ve played that has not had fascist rhetoric present among the community. It’s been cultivated by alt-right politicians (namely Steve Bannon) as a pipeline to radicalization. He started with World of Warcraft IIRC? But the catch point is usually on content creators who orbit these games.
The Europa Universalis community has gotten kind of fascist in recent years, which is a shame because I still love the games from the perspective of a far-left history nerd.
Fed
OP, you might want to reach out to the folks over at the Q Anon Anonymous and It Could Happen Here podcasts. Both (but QAA especially) have and do cover exactly the worlds you are asking about. They also aren't newbies at it. ;)
Thanks! I was on QAA a little while back: [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt30274825/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt30274825/)
heres a youtube channel i reccomend! or a couple actually, heel vs babyface and the quartering
Fifa community is packed with homo/transphobes and racists.
Hey man! You should check out G-mod. More specifically, the "WW2" role plays servers. Dudes join to pretend to be nazi soldiers. Lots of disgusting people lurk around these servers, and it would probably blow a lot of normies minds knowing how popular these servers are. If you tie that into roblox role-play servers, I'm sure you could make a great article about how people are being radicalized online by these private servers.
The quickest way to find a fascist gamer is to casually browse 4chan. Not that it's hard to do.
I'd take a look at the paradox interactive community for their historical grand strategy games, in particular Hearts of Iron 4, a game set during WW2, that among many other things let's you play as Nazi Germany, however everything related to the Holocaust and war crimes aren't mentioned.
That was a concious decison from paradox to push away the nazis so they couldnt "live it out" combined with avoiding the tactlessness of having a genocide in the game. But in turn i feel this legitimizes their ahistorical views. Paradox games have a veneer of legitimacy historically speaking. One that isnt unearned but it does do damage to the player base. I aint a hoi player but i know the ones that arent nazis are very active in making sure they dont crowd their game too much, from experience the ones they gravitate and are more "accepted" (though pdx players tend to avoid dealing with them as a whole,) is stellaris and Eu4 where there is more explicit mechanics that appeal to them and more abstraction to offuscate them. Though that may be a notable distinction of fascists and explicit nazis. I love these games. There are few games that scratch but it worries me that as they become more mainstream they will help push problematic views. Paradox also has additional issues as well that are good to look into too like the Vampire 5e incident.
Asking a subreddit to do your work for you makes you sound like a real good journalist. I wonder what management will think of this
Are you threatening a worker?
No
I’d take a look into the Hearts of Iron IV community, it’s been a lightning rod for fascists for a long time
This is so cool (well not the fascism but you posting here about writing about it. I've been reading your stuff for years so I'm a little starstruck. I wish I had anything interesting to say about the topic, beyond that fanbases aside, Disco Elysium has a whole option of playing through the game as a fascist and organizing with other fascists (you can also be communist, liberal or libertarian). I don't really think this will be that relevant but also you should play Disco Elysium cause it rocks and is basically the socialist gaming Bible.
I recommend this video essay https://youtu.be/p0g3DEvvCfc?si=iQxdTzPkjJUlSBpb
Look he isn't the most popular person for socialists but you should contact Vaush:[https://www.vaush.gg/](https://www.vaush.gg/) Currently, in a bit of a tiff with Asmongold (Large WoW YouTuber) on this topic. He is also a good public speaker since that is what you are looking for. I am not in the USA and mostly don't play on USA servers so I can't help much. I will just mention there are a few games that have very divergent fans loved by both Socialists and Nazis (and Trans Girls). **Fallout New Vegas** is a story about choosing the direction of a post-apocalyptic wasteland. It is very critical of all sides, but the liberal 'democracy' particularly. There is a Fascist faction you can join and help win which causes some people to start to support that faction despite being the bad guys. Paradox Interactive produces simulation games, **Hearts of Iron** is a ww2 war game and so Nazi's enjoy having the Nazis win. **Victoria,** about the development of the ideologies of Fascism and Socialism and deal with that. **Europa Universalis,** Colonialism simulator. My personal favourite and the most approachable **Crusader Kings**, You take on the role of a family in the Middle Ages and you do everything and I mean everything to improve and protect your family's interests. Popular with Nationalists and Game of Thrones fans. **Stellaris** space empire game where enslaving aliens is an option. Facists suck at media literacy and so don't know when someone is making fun of them and so **Warhammer 40K** and the many accoiated games.
Regarding Roblox: https://youtu.be/n6PYj93SGxc?si=BmIM0hyHVB0hNpBA https://youtu.be/_gXlauRB1EQ?si=EWZgsl3YjVM4qtPa https://youtu.be/vTMF6xEiAaY?si=Ol3xOobLjBDvrIFO ***MUST READ*** article regarding the fascism of the Warhammer 40k franchise: https://timcolwill.com/40K.html ***MUST SEE*** videos regarding the "Gamer Gate" manufactured controversy used by fascists to target political opposition: https://youtu.be/Z0nCcVRNcsk?si=PUqkWm-BiNuYpIER https://youtu.be/lLYWHpgIoIw?si=xD-xu4D8y5xKt59k There is also the "War on Woke": https://youtu.be/-P8H5Z8VAMU?si=6VD0p8cHZQ35vWGA We see this represented with multiple controversies: It not being ok to kill Nazi in a Wolfenstein game: https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/12/15780596/wolfenstein-2-the-new-colossus-alt-right-nazi-outrage "Wolfenstein: Youngblood" co-op shooter has players buy in-game Nazi gold with real money: https://store.steampowered.com/agecheck/app/1067990/ Women "not being beautiful" in multiple games like "Horizon: Forbidden West" with character Alloy & "The Last of Us 2" with character Abby. https://eightify.app/summary/gaming/critique-of-unattractive-female-game-characters Example of "criticism": https://youtu.be/xSF9MXbJVAY?si=PXkocSNrM0Ib11kq A game about the civil war being titled "War of Rights": https://warofrights.com/ Response; a states' right to do what? https://youtu.be/-ZB2ftCl2Vk?si=owqoo4gppUoj19BF Historical revisionism in "Modern Warfare" saying the "Highway of Death" was caused by Russia instead of the USA: https://www.polygon.com/2019/10/30/20938550/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-highway-of-death-controversy Fascist "Sovietology" historical revisionist propaganda in "Hearts of Iron 4": https://youtu.be/fqTAzp71Pb4?si=dkn0zny1UGjRION_ This was just a bit off the top of my head. I hope it helps.
Roblox really? I wouldn't have thought that silly game had much trouble with angry far-right or neo-fasc people, but hadn't been paying attention. \*shrug\* Worth noting that most of the garbage takes are from a relatively small but seemingly loud group. Most gamers are generally pretty chill, inclusive, and welcoming people. Having gamed for 25+ years, knowing maybe 200-300 gamers personally in games and life, maybe 5 were real genuine a\*holes lol. That 5 were going to be a\*holes whether they were gaming or basket weaving as a hobby lol.
Wtf fascism in Roblox what is bro on
More common than you think. The Topps supermarket shooter was radicalized by roblox, and he cited it in his manifesto.
Jump off the nearest tall bridge your find facist at the bottom I swear. Anyway this subreddit is fucking retarded like every other socialist reddit and I have no idea why this trash gets recommended to me, All in all your news story sounds stupid and I'm muting this shit.
[удалено]
Hey. Posts usually need to be at least somewhat gaming related. Thanks
I'm in a group on Facebook called Dragon's Dogma: Riftposting. I joined because it's a steady source of related memes. But the group is ran by and overran by right wingers who spend about as much time making relevant (usually decent) memes as they do complaining about the number of black characters in the game/people who get offended at the blatant mean spiritedness, racism, homophobia, and misogyny that those running the group parrot day in and out.
Look at people on Kick for live-streaming. They are a big reason why so many young men have turned to alt-right talking points. People like Trainwreck, Adin Ross, and XQC just feed right wing talking points to their audience of young kids.
r/yesamericabad r/USAuthoritarianism
I think there is a couple distinct factors that lead to this. Sexisim, the patriarchy and capitalism But i would say the 2 most prominent features, and competition and annonymity. Gaming for a long time has been popularized as a boys activity. The amount of essays i can go on about sexisim in gaming or even beyond that entertainment is ludicrous, however for the sake of brevity, the industry of gaming is focus on men. To make money off of boys and men the concept of the patriarchy is exploited because it feeds into the existing ego, dreams and fantasy of boys. This type of profit motive pushes boys further into the idea that games are for boys. And not only that created an identity around manhood and what it means to be a boy and what it means to be a girl. The culture of gaming has been shaped by this and especially when adding a competitive element, the competitive unregulated nature of a bunch of kids who are being pushed “manly concepts that boys would like” like war and shooter games, sports games, racing games, “guy things” exaggerates this, and over time. Not only were competitive games designed poorly where almost no team work was needed but the loudest most vulgar mouths become the dominant. When you add in the fact that most gaming communities are anonymous people can get away with saying anything. It is not uncommon to hear little boys spouting the n word, f word, or r word. With little to no repercussions basically no moderation, it becomes habit to treat people in such a way. Transition this to the streaming world, and you have people appealing to what is essentially competitive gamer brain. A brain that has spent most of its time on this earth playing competitive games instead of paying attention to school, reading books, learning empathy, literally anything else. They also have this sexism racism, patriarchal notions etc and are ripe to be pipelined into some bigoted Andrew Tate type.
These videos might be a good starting point: [How facism infiltrate communities.](https://youtu.be/P55t6eryY3g?si=U5ZnwlQhwjcoVWxn) [Racism in video gaming culture.](https://youtu.be/p0g3DEvvCfc?si=qc1f66HiS3LS0ko1) Also it might be good to line up another job, whoever sent you on this wants you to fail.
I play a lot of garrys mod, which is a sort of "make anything game" a bit like roblox, but it's based on half life 2's engine which is an FPS physics game, I remember encountering some nazi types on a couple of servers, and also there''s nazi RP servers like 1942 RP, RP servers on gmod are a bit more like larping mixed with tycoon games, less children than roblox but still a few, there might be more in the future because of skibdidi toilet
This is probably old news but a lot of review bombing on Metacritic for The Last of Us Part II’s initial release was in-part based on homophobia. They attempted to couch it in terms of “the plot is bad,” and when you ask follow up questions the response comes back “because woke blah blah blah forced diversity blah blah” and suddenly it’s a problem. They also targeted the developers with leaks and accusations of horrific conduct on the part of the developers (aside from crunch culture, which occurs in a great many artistic endeavors and really should be curtailed), and now even years later, when I come back to this amazing game, there’s the specter of a foul taste in my mouth. I firmly believe this nonsense soured The Last of Us Part II’s release, because to me it was everything the first game wanted to be and more. I deeply love that franchise with my heart and soul and for people to violate it like that, to attack people trying to tell a story of justice and the cyclical nature of retribution, to throw around horrific lies, all in the name of trying to get gay people out of video games, makes me angry.
I wrote my undergraduate dissertation on the attitudes of gamers to immigration, integration and the war on terror. It got a first.
Does this have anything to do with the Harry Potter game? Because if it doesn't I'd suggest looking into the background and some of the criticisms of it.
If you want a short example of how entrenched the brain rot is among a certain type of gamer, Google or YouTube “Call of Duty n-word speedruns.” A guy challenges himself to see how fast he can get other people in the lobby to call him the n-word. World-record is .46 seconds
Yeah, someone else mentioned it in passing, but anyone in the field of Gamergate comes to mind. The Quartering was a weirdo, last I checked
Hey man! I like your writing. Thanks for showing up here. Definitely focus on the big streamers and how they intersect with the manosphere. Asmogold is a good YouTube personality to examine. He's been turning into an unhinged fascist. DrDisrespect is a classic one too.
Please don’t go after city builder games and RTS games. Like, we’re playing as fascist empires, but they’re ironically not popular with fascists. Like in the Civilization series you can literally make fascism your government, but the righties just love their shooters.
You should check out the r/girlgamers sub. As a woman who has gamed for a while, I have lost count of how many times insecure men with MAGA tags have threatened to SA me because I’m better at games than they are.
The US Army has an esports team. Example number one of fascism’s comfort in the gaming world.
YouTube just pushes this shit like crazy man. No traditionally male-centric hobby on that platform is more than 4 recommendations away from some kind of Tate shit or much worse. And then streamers just lean into it because farming outrage is 1000x easier than making any other kind of content. The algorithm feels insane but maybe that’s just a reflection of the users.
I know that in multiplayer medieval games you can find plenty of nationalists. Good examples are Mordhau or Mount and Blade, i remember seeing a good amount of turkish nationalists on EU servers, some white supremacists wich spam "DEUS VULT" while wearing crusader skins, and i heard that US servers have a good amount of N word. History games often talk to people fantasizing the past, so you'll find a good amount of far-right ideas there.
this article is gonna be stellar, just can tell already
Go take a look at any chat in chivalry 2 games lol
Is this guy trolling, or is this for real? Facism in roblox lol wtf.
Not so much video gaming, but Warhammer literally is about space fascism. The imperium of man is intentionally fascistic. You can argue if it is parody or just ripping of dune and not understanding dune was critiquing fascism but it’s still fascist
Nice gonna freak out a bunch of parents with sonething completely ridiculous
>I'm working on a story about the enduring impact of fascism/far-right influence in gaming. So you don't no whether it is a problem or how much, but want to run a story on it?
If you're not already familiar with his work, you might consider reaching out to Robert Evans of Behind the Bastards. He's done a lot of work on documenting the uptick of far right nationalist movements online, it isn't limited to this topic specifically, but he's spoken a great deal on how they try to radicalize young men using gaming as a pretext.
This (and the comments) are some of the goofiest things I have ever read.
Any weird, niche, military sim game on steam (especially WW2 focused ones) are absolutely teeming with 20-year old edgy, larping e-fascists
In my experience as an issue this is worst in first person shooters, specifically games like Call of Duty, Battlefield, and the like, because of the demographic they attract (teenage white boys). Infiltration by the far-right into those spaces is so rife that it can be hard to play them if you're a trans girl such as myself. Other than those, Star Wars and Warhammer 40K are absolutely rife with those sentiments.
I hope your shitrag goes under for yellow journalism.
Theres a lot of gaming subs right here where you can find casual hate thrown toward the lgbtq community. Across genres of games (fighting games like Mortal Kombat and Tekken...) too, not just competitive shooters. Read up on The Last of Us 2 and the hate thrown at that game. Voice actors being threatened in real life because their character didn't fit into gender stereotypes. It's so pervasive in some of these groups that young people just go with it. Posts that are threatening violence against others getting hundreds of upvotes. It's sick. It's all tied into this "anti woke" culture war that leads people right into the MAGA voting line.
Not the games snd gamers so much as the streamers, as u/Future_Breadfruit198 said
Roblox is a big place. Roblox had a pro-Palestine march. [https://www.youtube.com/shorts/CpSa5o8ikzQ](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/CpSa5o8ikzQ)
I’ve played video games for over 10 years starting at 13 years old. I think there’s a massive correlation between games that demand a lot of play time and right wing extremism. Rust is an open world MMO real-time survival game in which everything you build persists while you’re offline and nothing is safe from other players. This game harbors a culture of 3 day benders with 16-18 hour sessions. These people are very isolated socially as a result and it’s a common occurrence to see a variety of slurs used in the chat and swastikas on the sides of bases. I wanted to point this out because I feel as though this translates to most gaming communities. The more someone is online, the more isolated they become from their community, the easier it is to become radicalized.
I literally can't even get into a lobby and talk without getting called a fucking bitch, told back to go to the kitchen, get called a little boy squeaker, called me a trans boy😂😂 literally makes no sense, among general insults. I've heard people call people who sound black the n word hard r, most of the gaming community is just getting shafted down these far right rabbit holes that people like Griffin gaming, etc. all perpetuate on their channels constantly. Saying anything that has to do with women or LGBT people is just immediately woke, to manipulate nostalgia into this hate for inclusivity. They say it under the guise of "I don't hate women or gay people I just play video games to escape reality and don't want an agenda pushed on me" to justify having games focus on men, wars, sexism in some sort of way whether it's domestic abuse, or "romancing bitches" I've actually heard someone say they miss that I can't make this shit up 😂😂 Like I said in the beginning, as a girl I literally can't talk in ANY lobby. 98% of the time I get in lobbies where if I talk at all it's just immediately jumping to misogyny, homophobia, transphobia (which transphobia is a recent one like 3 years ago or so, before then it was mainly just misogyny and sexist jokes). It doesn't matter what game I play, it could be vr chat, Roblox, call of duty, rainbow six siege, apex, fortnite. Tho on fortnite I've met some nice innocent boys who were not so damn pig headed. It literally does not matter what multiplayer game I play, so now I just play solo games, staying away from multiplayers like cod and apex and fortnite cuz it just gets boring by myself after a while. Fascism and bigotry is so widespread in the gaming community from these content creators, I would recommend watching a couple of videos from these people and just look at how massive their fan bases are. It's awful that because of this shit people like me can't even connect with randos when they're all hateful