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White House and the Department of Homeland Security use Halo references for political gain
DayZ creator criticises Valve’s reliance on ‘gambling mechanics’, just days after Counter-Strike skins market crash
The Séance of Blake Manor provides spooky mysteries in the week’s releases
Hello VGIM-ers,
The end of the year is fast approaching. That means it is time to open up submissions to the VGIM Readers’ Game of the Year column.
Every year, we give you the chance to submit a 150-200 word review of your favourite game from the calendar year.
We then sift through the entries, pick out the best ones, and run the reviews in our final edition of the newsletter before we vanish for Christmas.
Do you want to feature in VGIM? Or, do you want to get someone from your games business sounding off on these pages?
Pop an email to george@videogamesindustrymemo.com with your review, your name, and your social media handles before Friday 28th November.
I’ll be in touch with the winning entries before publication.
The big read - Say Halo to political propaganda
Cursed wishes: The video games industry has long wished that politicians would take it seriously. Unfortunately for us, they have started to do so in the most ‘person wishes on a cursed monkey paw’ kind of way.
Commander in Master Chief: Last weekend, the White House and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) both used imagery from the Halo games to promote their talking points. Each post generated tens of millions of impressions, as well as sparking coverage across games and mainstream media.
Frame not rated: The use of video game imagery has been seen by some as an attempt by the White House to court players. But that, I’m afraid, is a framing error. Our industry’s culture is not being courted by the American populist right; it is at the heart of its political language. And we need to work much harder to protect our creative works, studios, and communities from such nakedly aggressive political appropriation.
Ending the console wars
Mundane beginnings: A week of social media idiocy was sparked by an unlikely source. On Friday 24th October, PlayStation announced that the first Halo game, the flagship first-person shooter that launched Microsoft’s Xbox, was coming to PS5 in 2026.
Peace in our time: On 25th October, GameStop - part-time video game retailer, full-time meme stock - posted a letter on social media that declared the console wars were over. The letter deliberately aped formal declarations of ceasefires at the end of wars, jokingly suggesting that GameStop was a “demilitarised zone” for “combatants on all sides” to come together in.
Starring role: Shortly after GameStop had posted its letter, the White House social media team decided to get in on the conversation. After initially replying to the post through its Rapid Response account, it reposted the letter via the White House’s official social media accounts. The post was promoted with the help of an AI-generated image of Donald Trump as Master Chief (standing in front of an American flag with the wrong number of stars on it) underneath the caption “power to the players.” GameStop responded to the White House’s post with some sycophantic AI slop of its own.
Grim: Two days later, DHS joined the, ahem, ‘fun’. On October 27th, it posted an image of two soldiers in the game’s famous Warthog vehicle. The image exhorted readers to ‘Destroy the Flood’, a reference to the game’s parasitic alien race, by joining US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And the post was captioned with the phrase ‘finishing this fight’, implying that people currently being abducted and deported by the authorities are enemies akin to borderline vampiric extra-terrestrial life. So much for democracy, eh?
Lips are sealed: The use of prominent video game intellectual property without permission for political messaging prompted questioning. At the time of writing this newsletter, DHS, GameStop, and Microsoft have not commented on the posts.
War is over?: The White House, however, did. Journalist Alyssa Mercante contacted its press office to find out why it posted the image. Kush Desai, the organisation’s Deputy Press Secretary, claimed the image was celebrating “yet another war ended under President Trump’s watch”, referring to his questionable record of ending conflicts. He went on to claim “that’s why he’s hugely popular with the American people and American Gamers.” Hugely is doing a lot of heavy lifting there, Kush.
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In the political bloodstream
On the biggest stage: The posting prompted head scratching in the press. Paul Tassi, a senior contributor at Forbes, identified that the use of game IP in political messaging was a big deal. “The most powerful government in the world is tweeting about Halo,” he wrote, illustrating that, hey, video games really have made it to the political big time.
Dooming Zoomers: However, Tassi also showed the limitations of the media’s understanding of what is really going on here. He argued that ‘zoomers’ in the Trump administration were testing video game memes as a way to reach audiences. He also suggested that this was a “new development” for the administration.
Gamergate to populism: But Tassi missed something important. “Gamer” subculture is not a new part of the American populist movement. Instead, it has been a central part of its rise over the past decade. Hate movement Gamergate was the spark that lit the revolution on the right. It trialled the tactics for strategically mainstreaming extreme ideas that reshaped our political discourse, washing conspiracy theories from fringe game communities, through right-wing media and into the mainstream to change the way we think. Its activist base formed large parts of the alt-right, powered QAnon, and acted as the ‘online’ shock-troopers used by the Trump campaign to dominate the digital debate in two election campaigns. The group is so important to the American right that it has specifically been targeted by Russian agents, who have sought to use the gullibility of these communities to spread narratives designed to undermine democracy.
Cultural influence: And there is plenty of evidence to show that the influence of ‘gamers’ within the populist right is already widely recognised. Campaigners have actively courted the audience for political gain, including setting up Donald Trump’s appearance on a livestream with Adin Ross during the 2024 Presidential Race. Elon Musk has attempted to position himself as an influential player within the political right by leaning hard (and hilariously unsuccessfully) into his gamer credentials. Even the language of games has spilt into political discourse, with Ezra Klein warning about the risks posed by the derogatory usage of the phrase ‘non-player character’ within the Republican right.
Saying the quiet part out loud: What we’re seeing isn’t necessarily new then; it’s different. Gamer culture may have been a dominant part of the American populist culture, but it remained ‘quiet’ to much of the mainstream. These posts change that. The brazen use of video game IP for political purposes, with seemingly no repercussions, marks an escalation in the co-option of video games culture to strengthen an authoritarian brand of populism. And as silly as a post of Trump with an energy sword might seem, the influence of the American right on global digital discourse is huge - making this a serious problem for all of us.
Striking back
Predictably meek: So, once again, I’m exhorting us to fight back. The question is how. And the answer is ‘not like Microsoft’. The company has joined the growing ranks of video games businesses that are self-censoring themselves, even where they likely have legal grounds to protect themselves. Is the bastardisation of one of its strongest creative franchises a price that the company is willing to pay to protect its hefty federal contracts? Or is it showing that its support for the White House isn’t just about donating cash to build a sparkly new ballroom? We can’t tell. Instead, it’s been left to Halo co-creator Marcus Lehto to describe the post by ICE as “absolutely abhorrent” - an act of institutional buck-passing of the highest order.
Naming the problem: However, there are things that we can do rather than wallow in despair. The first is to make sure we name this for exactly what this is: appropriation of our culture for a narrow, extreme political agenda. These posts are not reflective of the breadth of the global games community. Instead, they’re another way in which games are being captured for ‘hostile’ use against democratic norms: something we’ve seen pro-Russian voices do extensively in their information war against Ukraine and the West.
Personal responsibility: In the absence of companies doing anything about it, that means it is down to us as individuals to take a stand. If you are a games business leader, push for your company to protect its rights, the staff who create for you, and the players who gather around your creations. If you work within a studio, push your leaders to foster cultures where the extremes of our subculture are challenged, not given prominence. If you play, ask whether you, your friends, or your communities are being co-opted in ways you don’t like (and have the confidence to speak out if you do). And if you’re watching the industry from outside in the press or political worlds, be prepared to kick the sector if it doesn’t get its act together soon.
Time to grow up: Games are too culturally significant to be captured by hostile actors, wherever they are in the world. And at the moment, the industry is proving to be meekly captive to political forces that it just doesn’t seem to be ready, or maybe merely grown-up enough, to push back against.
News in brief
Judgement DayZ: DayZ creator Dean Hall has criticised Valve for using what he describes as ‘gambling mechanics’ such as loot boxes in its in-game economies. Hall claimed in an interview with Bert Purchese of Eurogamer that the company “does not get anywhere near enough criticism” for its use of the monetisation mechanic within Counter-Strike’s skins economy. The critique landed less than a week after the game’s skin trading economy lost $2bn in value following an update to the game. Talk about a bubble bursting, eh?
How Do You Like Them, Apple? Apple has lost a landmark case at The Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT), after being subjected to one of the first UK ‘class action’ style lawsuits brought on behalf of consumers. The tribunal found that Apple had abused its dominant position in the market through its App Store, passing on significant costs to developers and consumers by forcing them to pay a 30% tithe to download content on its devices. The company could be on the hook for as much as £1.5bn (roughly $2bn) in damages. Apple, unsurprisingly, is appealing the ruling.
Roblox Roadblocks: Iraqi government officials have banned access to Roblox over child safety concerns. Iraq joins a growing list of countries to have banned the platform, alongside the likes of the UAE, Turkey, and North Korea. Roblox “strongly contests” their claims, citing measures taken by the company, such as suspending in-game chat for all Arabic-speaking West Asian countries, as evidence for their collaboration.
New World: AI-ternum: Amazon has announced plans to lay off 14,000 workers, impacting, among others, Amazon Web Services and its gaming division. Despite stating the company is “performing well”, the business has made the layoffs as part of a wider plan to automate work using artificial intelligence. Amazon will continue working on third-party games, but is ceasing updates on its most successful MMO, New World: Aeternum.
Playing petitions: Finally, one to watch for next week. Ben Goldsborough MP is hosting a Westminster Hall debate in the UK Parliament at 4:30 pm on Monday 3rd November to respond to a petition regarding the Stop Killing Games campaign. We’ll be wrapping up some of the conclusions of that in next month’s paid Playing Politics newsletter.
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Moving on
Sergio Franco is the new Director of Engineering at Epic Games…Kokku have rejigged its leadership with Carol Lara joining as COO and João Moraes taking over as CFO… Justin Davis is the new VP, Commerce at IGN…Kenny Xu has stepped down as Director of Performance Marketing at Warner Bros Games and joined Kindroid as Head of User Acquisition… And Amanda Kruse has become the Business Development Lead at Blumhouse Games…
Jobs ahoy
Aardvark Swift is aardently seeking a PR & Marketing Manager… EA is searching for an Associate Game Product Manager… Epic Games also wants a Marketing Director, EMEA…Over in Hollywood, Riot Games needs a new Marketing Creative Director (which is kinda similar)… And rounding things off on a non-marketing note, Larian Studios is hiring a Global Property Project Manager…
Events and conferences
AI and Games Conference, London - 3rd-4th November
Playing for the Planet: Green Games Summit, London - 6th November
Pocket Gamer Connects Aqaba, Aqaba - 8th-9th November
Gamesbeat Summit Next, San Francisco - 12th-13th November
Unite, Barcelona - 19th-20th November
Games of the week
The Séance of Blake Manor - Investigate the mysterious disappearance of Evelyn Dean before midnight strikes while unravelling colonial trauma, dealing with supernatural threats, and navigating haunted corridors.
Arc Raiders - Embark on a multiplayer survival shooter set amidst a climate-wrecked planet, fighting against a ruthless mechanical entity to discover the truth behind humanity’s downfall.
Flesh Made Fear - Descend into a nightmarish world of grotesque abominations and occult experiments to take down a deranged ex-CIA scientist in this PSX-inspired survival horror.
Before you go…
I went to see Audience VS, a new comedy show from Glenn Moore and Simon Parkin that pits comedians against punters in rule-changed versions of popular video games, on Tuesday evening. And I’m pleased to say a good time was had by all.
I was narrowly defeated in a game of Alien: Isolation hide-and-seek by Ellie Gibson. Friend of VGIM Gary Dutton successfully teamed up with another audience member to batter Gibson and stand-up comic Ed Night, another acquaintance of these virtual pages.
But the evening was stolen by the Sniper Elite-powered ‘kill Hitler’ penalty shoot-out, where people stood up one at a time to try to blow the Führer’s face off. We promise the sadness of the gentleman on the left of the picture above was due to his in-game defeat - not any sympathies with the long-dead dictator.
Get tickets to the next event at The Pleasance Theatre in London in November here.
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Thanks to Anna Mahtani for production support on this week’s newsletter.