The far right and video games, 08/08/2024
A depressingly timely look at new research into extremist influence on video game platforms
Donald Trump’s appearance on Kick reinvigorates concern over far right exploitation of video games
Warner Bros exploring a partial or full sale of its WB Games arm
The Crush House brings much needed love in the week’s release
Good morning VGIM-ers,
I was in the pub on Monday afternoon (#professionalism) talking shop with a friend when they asked a simple, but pertinent, question.
“Why is your business called Half-Space Consulting?”
I quickly realised that I haven’t publicly explained the answer to that question. And rather than save it for tomorrow’s Ask George, I thought I’d tackle it here by taking you on a brief diversion to a field that I’m sure you’re all familiar with: the world of football tactics.
Way back in 2014, Austrian coach Rene Maric put together a blog exploring how top football minds like Pep Guardiola, who is currently Manchester City manager, and Jurgen Klopp, the former Liverpool coach, were making the most of a part of the pitch that was seemingly under-appreciated by the wider footballing world.
While most coaches were helping to position their players by getting them to take up spaces in three vertical columns down the football pitch, (the centre of the pitch and two wings) Maric argued that it was smarter to chop it into five lanes - narrowing the three existing columns to add two lanes in-between - to give players a little more room.
By doing so, Maric argued that managers could position their attacking players into these new spaces to open up more aggressive passing options, pull opposing defenders out of position and, ultimately, win football games. But what should these two new lanes of the pitch be called?
As you can see, the German term for these new lanes was the ‘halbraum’. But for his English audience, Maric landed on the term ‘half-space’.
And in the decade since his post, the phrase has gone on to become a central part of the footballing lexicon because successfully occupying the half-space is one of the things that elite football teams do best, according to sports publication The Athletic.
So when I was thinking up names for my business, Half-Space leapt out at me because it’s a term that’s all about the importance of finding the right space to make smart decisions that create value.
And with the video games industry being the kind of place where you need to creatively engineer bespoke positions, policies, campaigns and partnerships to succeed, I felt that guiding clients into the ‘half-space’ between games and the rest of the world was a smart summary of what I wanted to do.
So, are you working for a business or organisation outside of games that’s trying to get into them but don’t know where to start? Do you have a plan for working within games but want someone to check your homework? Or do you need a hand telling your story in games effectively to the right people to help it come to life?
Half-Space can help you in three ways:
Educating clients about the video games market through reports, workshops and ongoing advice and insight.
Creating strategies to succeed within the space that are aligned to industry reality and offer both return - and protection - of your investment into games.
Communicating your story within the industry through editorial content, bespoke events and media relations.
And if you’re wondering what our work looks like, well, you’ve quite possibly been reading it for a while.
Video Games Industry Memo is a Half-Space product. It’s a taster of the style, tone and expertise we’ve brought to work for the likes of CCP Games, The Games Rating Authority and Playing for the Planet - each of whom have described us respectively as “instrumental”, “exceptional” and “great to have around.”
And if you want this kind of support for your business, then all you need to do is ask me for it.
Between September and December 2024, Half-Space has a limited amount of time available to sell for work.
If you need help finding space for your company’s story in the video games sector, drop me an email at george@half-space.consulting to arrange a call or IRL meeting (especially if you’re out at gamescom).
And in the meantime, here’s a big read that shows the interesting things that are happening in the half-space between games and the wider world.
The big read - The far right and video games
Donald Trump was at it again earlier this week. On Monday 5th August, the former President and convicted felon gave a typically controversial interview in which he took sideswipes at rival Kamala Harris, claimed he wanted to ‘fire’ a black journalist who gave him a grilling at an National Association of Black Journalists event and even told his supporters to stop using Google search on the groundless basis that it was censoring him.
What was less typical was where he made his comments. Rather than rocking up to a familiar broadcast TV channel like Fox News, Trump instead appeared on a livestream hosted on Kick - a streaming service seeking to rival Twitch - by Adin Ross; a video game streamer who is friendly with Andrew Tate and previously hosted white Supremacist Nick Fuentes on his channel.
Trump’s appearance on Ross’s channel has reignited concerns over the links between video games platforms, communities and the far right.
It was, however, oddly timely in regards to the publication of relevant research on the topic, which have provided fresh perspectives on an issue that will be at the front of many minds - especially for those of us disgusted by the thuggish far right rioters run amok in the UK.
In July, three different papers exploring the intersection of games and extremism were published by members of The Extremism and Gaming Research Network (EGRN) and The Global Network on Extremism and Technology (GNET).
And while each research paper demonstrates a nuanced understanding of video games and the complexities of tackling extremism across digital channels, Trump’s appearance underlines the concerns that researchers have raised over the industry’s vulnerability to - and role in facilitating - far right activism.
Downstream challenges
Given Trump’s appearance on a video game streaming platform earlier this week, it makes sense to first dive into Lars Wiegold, Constantin Winkler and Judith Jaskowski’s paper for GNET: Camera, Action, Play: An Exploration of Extremist Activity on Video and Livestream Platforms.
The paper, which was released on 19th July, provides an overview of a number of major streaming platforms used to share video game content, details of their functionality and examples of how far right extremists have used streaming sites to spread hatred (including live streaming atrocities such as the May 2019 Christchurch shootings).
The researchers found examples of far right content on all streaming platforms they examined.
They highlighted Twitch’s failure to take down a two hour live streamed interview between Martin Sellner, the founder of the Identitarian Movement, and a far right streamer on its platformer.
It showed how some user accounts on the service DLive openly reference far right terms, such as the inclusion of the phrase ‘14 words’ (a reference to a racist dogmatic phrase) or the use of the number 88 (a numerical reference to the initials of Heil Hitler).
Kick, meanwhile, seems to be the laxest of all the streaming services, acting as a home for conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones and doing little to moderate anti-semitic and far right content dropped directly into livestream chats.
The problem with the research is its necessarily limited scope. The piece is deliberately framed as a first step to understanding the existence of a problem. This means it doesn’t go into great depth over the prevalence of the issue overall, the counter measures each platform takes to address it (or otherwise) or recommendations on how to stop it.
However, it does enough to hint at an issue of ‘displacement’ whereby stronger platform policies on services such as Twitch - which the report says does have “comparably strict and effective moderation measures” - pushes extremist voices out towards fringe platforms that may be willing to trade societal safety for its own growth purposes.
This suggests that law enforcement needs to balance watching mass audience services like Twitch with monitoring smaller services to make sure far right activists can’t hide in plain sight.
It also suggests that video games companies running creator and influencer marketing campaigns should begin to assess which platforms its partners are streaming on as part of due diligence in regards to brand safety.
By doing so, games companies could nudge creators and influencers either away from platforms with lax moderation policies or encourage them to hold their own communities to higher standards - allowing the sector to indirectly push back against the influence of far right extremists in the process.
Boiling point
If Wiegold, Winkler and Jaskowski’s paper hints at the importance of gently shoving video games streaming platforms towards cracking down on hateful content, Shiraz Shaikh’s report about Steam - the PC games store front - makes a strong argument for the industry to push one of its key platforms to do much better on far right content.
Shaikh’s paper, titled Gaining Steam: Far-Right Radicalisation on Gaming Platforms, found that Steam’s deliberately light content moderation approach has turned it from being just a video game store front into a useful channel for the far right to operate within.
Steam’s issue is largely unrelated to the games that it sells on its store. Since 2018, Shaikh reports that it has removed 179 games due to breaches of its content policies with 50 of those directly pulled for containing Nazi content in particular.
Given that Steam currently has over 100,000 titles on its store, it is reasonable to say that the sale of such content is a niche issue. However, the reasons for the removal of that content hints towards a much wider issue within the company.
As Shaikh writes, Steam removed the games “because they incurred unknown costs to the Valve Corporation, its developer partners and users” - not because they necessarily contained extreme or far right content.
This leads us to the real problem. Steam’s libertarian approach to moderating content on its store also applies to its moderation of its community and communication channels: turning it into a space where far right extremists can organise with ease.
Steam’s implementation of social features such as the ability to create a list of friends on the platform, join community groups and chat with one another via text or voice was clearly intended to make online play as easy as possible.
But its decision to explicitly avoid mentioning the term ‘extremism’ in its content moderation policy, its inadequate chat moderation tools and its reliance on reactive user reporting to identify abusive content has allowed far right groups like Atomwaffen Division and Nordic Resistance movement to operate on the platform with impunity - allowing them to gather their community together, recruit new members and ‘off-platform’ them to other spaces in the process.
As a result, Shaikh argues that Steam has turned into the “most entrenched and long-lasting gaming platform” serving the interests of the far right. The question is what to do about it.
Shaikh suggests a number of actions that Steam could take, including using machine learning powered tools to automatically filter and block out extreme content.
The challenge is whether Steam has any appetite to do so, given its lax approach thus far and its deliberately under-resourced team, as evidenced by the recent revelation that Valve likely has fewer than 100 people working to support the store.
For me, I think the solution has to come from the industry. Steam’s economic importance to the sector makes its inaction on issues like this a reputational and political risk for businesses of all sizes.
If the sector doesn’t start asking questions of why it is allowing content such as this to flourish - especially since the passing of stricter online safety laws around the world - newly empowered regulators will likely take the lead instead.
And if they do, the sector shouldn’t be surprised, or outraged, if it damages the industry’s argument in favour of self-regulating itself on a much wider range of issues in the long term.
Partnering up
Fortunately for the industry, there does appear to be a way that it can take action on the issues of far right extremism in a way that keeps regulators from the door.
CTRL+ALT+COLLABORATE: Public-Private Partnerships To Prevent Extremism in Gaming was completed in February 2024 by Galen Lamphere-Englund (who previously popped up in VGIM) and Menso Hartgers of the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism.
It argues that the best way to tackle many of the issues you’ve read about in this newsletter is by building deep partnerships between the video games industry and the public sector - effectively tackling challenges while keeping regulators from the door.
The paper, which was created on behalf of the European Union’s Radicalisation Awareness Network policy support function, draws on the insight of 17 experts to outline the challenges of extremism in games, to showcase the gaps in understanding and trust between public bodies and games businesses and outlines how partnership approaches can overcome it.
At the heart of it, Lamphere-Englund and Hartgers encourage both sides of the equation to develop trust and understanding of one another to build the right foundations for a joint approach to tackling extremism.
Once again comparing online video games to sports stadiums (in essence, welcoming community spaces that can be abused by bad actors), the authors argue that the public sector can build bridges with the games industry by increasing its specialist knowledge of the sector, approaching the sector constructively to avoid fears over ‘moral panics’ and providing targeted solutions to industry wide problems (e.g. training for community managers to spot extremism issues as they emerge organically) to foster trust.
In return, Lamphere-Englund and Hartgers suggests that the sector can support public bodies by being open to approaches from public bodies over concerns around extremism, engaging in more regular dialogue with relevant agencies and regulators (formally and informally) and creating shared standards for content moderation to encourage best practice across the sector to limit the reach of extremists.
Importantly, the paper makes little suggestion that the answer to the issue is more regulation. With online safety laws bedding in and bodies like law enforcement getting to grip with a much wider regulatory workload, Lamphere-Englund and Hartgers make suggestions for limited rule changes (e.g. providing some more clarity around what content lawmakers want companies to tackle) rather than sweeping additional action.
Instead, CTRL+ALT+COLLABORATE shows the willingness within public circles to let the industry continue to police its own environments in partnership with law enforcement - provided it can show that it is up to scratch.
But despite my overall positivity on games, and love for the sector, this month’s tranche of research suggests a mixed picture on that front and that there is plenty of work still to be done to tackle extremism within our industry.
So if the video games industry really wants to prove its cultural value as a source of fun for billions of diverse players across the world, it needs to heed the concerns - and seize the opportunities - found in these papers to both weaken the influence of the far right within our communities and across the wider world in the process: creating a healthier society in the process.
News in brief
That’s all, folks?: The FT reports that Warner Bros is looking to flog part, or all, of its WB Games division to alleviate its wider financial woes. The company previously explored a $4bn sale of its video game business in 2020 during the height of the pandemic to Take-Two or Microsoft, but didn’t get a deal over the line at the time. One to watch…
Game Is-former: Game Informer has become the latest victim of the games media crisis, with GameSpot shuttering the three decade old publication at the end of last week. Despite posting an ‘official’ notice of the closure on GameSpot’s site, Game Informer staff managed to dig out the logins for its social media channels to issue a proper goodbye from the team.
Bungie thumped: Bungie’s decision to lay off 220 people last Wednesday was a result of it ‘under-delivering’ on financial promises made to PlayStation, according to journalist Stephen Totilo. Despite the success of The Final Shape, the last part of DLC for Destiny 2, Totilo’s sources report that job cuts had already been priced in due to the company’s wider struggles. This meant that the cuts were always going to happen - however the new release did. Grim.
TikTok’s Blight: TikTok’s efforts to launch a ‘Lite’ version of its app in the EU has been shot down by regulatory concerns over how its internal Rewards programme would function. ByteDance’s plan to reward users with points for completing ‘tasks’ around the app, like watching more content or inviting friends to join, was flagged as a ‘systemic risk’ under the Digital Services Act due to potentially addictive risks - killing its prospects in the process.
Screen if you want to go faster?: Finally, Fast Company has taken a prod at Netflix’s games strategy. Tl;dr - it’s likely moving forward steadily, especially on mobile, but we’re waiting to see whether the arrival of new head honcho Alain Tascan from Epic Games will change its ambitions to stream games via your home TV.
Job moves
Mike Escudero has taken up the post of Business Development, Games - App Store at Apple…There’s been a big reshuffle at PC Gamer, with highlights including the appointment of Evan Lahti as its Strategic Director, Tyler Wilde as US Editor-in-Chief and Phil Savage as the new Global-Editor-in-Chief…May-Vy Thach has joined Capcom as PR Manager, Central Europe…Amy Graves has popped up at MythWright to support their Community & Social push…And Asim Tanvir is the new Community Marketing Manager at Kinetic Games…
Hiring now
Major League Soccer is recruiting in New York for a Director, Gaming and Emerging Digital Products (for the love of all things holy, push them away from NFTs)...Oculus VR is looking for a new Head of Studios, Beat Games…Unity is hiring a new Director of Global Strategic Partnerships - Advertising…Parlez-vous français? Then you could be perfect for Sega’s new Paris based Head of Communications role (if you’re, like, into comms and stuff too)...And if you like talking about very involving strategy games with people who like very involving strategy games, get your application in for the Community Manager - Hearts of Iron post at Paradox…
Events and conferences
GDL Indie Games Expo, London - 9th August
ChinaJoy, Shanghai - 26th-29th July
Serious Play Conference, Toronto - 12th-14th August
Gamescom, Cologne - 21st-25th August
PAX West, Seattle - 30th August-2nd September
Games of the week
The Crush House - Unofficial ‘Love Island: The Video Game’ from the makers of Reigns rolls onto virtual cameras on Steam this week.
Cat Quest III - Third entry in the feline 2.5D action adventure game asks the question: do I know anyone who played the first or second game?
Train Valley World - Lean into the UK Government’s decision to renationalise the railway by giving this train tycoon game a go.
Before you go…
What good can playing video games do for you? They can turn you into a multi-Olympic gold medal winner, that’s what.
Leon Marchand, France’s superstar swimmer who won four gold medals for his country, cited his love of games and anime as a key part of his success.
Come on, everybody, let’s start the chanting: one of us, one of us, one of us…
I don't think I agree with the idea that Steam should add more content moderation. This approach does not appear to work. In anything, it has politicised the social media platforms and led to even more fringe platforms that are diluting law enforcement efforts to track political crimes.
Also, it's easy to cast these ideas towards far-right extremism. But what about something messier, like wars in the Middle East. Then there is China and its oppressive policies: if financial incentives are at the heart of political moderation, then Steam should start toeing the CCP's line, as other companies are quietly doing.
I agree we can't ignore extremism on gaming platforms. But recent history shows that political moderation tends to increase extreme political attitudes, and I'm not certain that the economic and reputational damages are quite what we're expecting them to be.
There is definitly a pipeline to alt right extremists for gamers. I know many former apolitical people who spend most of their time gaming somehow now in an algorythm filled Charlie Kirk, Andrew Tate, Tim Pool and their ilk.
I agree all platforms could set a bar on extremism. Many of the ideas or statements shared on these platforms are harmful and should be addressed. However, I think its all in the optics. These voices are often the loudest in these platforms, providing a "cool" space for those who dont have a spot to feel validated. The Harris/Wallz were talking about interview Streamer Kai Cenat as a counter to Adin Ross but he is largely Apolitical. Viewers on the platform she see more rolemodel-like figures such as Pokimane, Vaush, or Hasan Piker who are loosely in the video game/anime world while taking an alternative stance to the alt right
......also great, read.