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One of the many things making this feel like a particularly dumb epoch to be living through is the way the US government has taken to using videogames as a tool for self-aggrandizement and disseminating its pro-war and anti-immigration messages. A bunch of people who usually argue politics should be kept out of videogames have suddenly found themselves defending the use of videogames in politics, and the rest of us are rendered stupider for having to pay attention to the circus.
As a reminder, we’ve seen the Department of Homeland Security make a Pokémon mashup about how they “gotta catch ’em all”, the White House use AI to dress Trump up as Master Chief from Halo after which Homeland Security decided “Destroy the Flood” was an appropriate recruitment message, and then the US government started using Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto memes to promote its war in Iran.
Most recently, the White House launched an arcade section on its website containing terrible knock-offs of games like Flappy Bird, Snake, and Tetris. The Tetris game is particularly baffling. Reskinned as Build the Wall, it becomes a game of defeating a “zombie border siege” on the helpfully labeled “Southern Border” in case you missed the subtlety of its theming, where you stack up tetrominoes that never clear while zombies march toward the blocks.
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The Tetris Company was motivated to respond. Posting on Instagram, it wrote, “At Tetris we believe in the power of connection and bringing people together, not dividing them. To our fans everywhere: we love you, we see you, and we’re grateful to have you in our community.”
This was accompanied by two clarifications. “P.S. The Tetris Company was not involved in the creation of ‘Build the Wall’.” And then, “P.P.S. We take copyright infringement very seriously.”
They’re not alone in being frustrated by this usurping of videogames to be used as propaganda tools by a conservative government, when it’s usually the conservative position that culture, whether the “Hollywood liberals” or videogames with women in them, should stop being so goshdarn political. Halo’s co-creator Marcus Lehto called the appropriation of his work “absolutely abhorrent”, and The Pokémon Company has also pointed out “permission was not granted for the use of our intellectual property.”
