Inside the dark world of ‘killer gaming culture’
Right now, the world knows very little about the man accused of shooting Charlie Kirk – besides this one chilling detail.
It’s not the game. It’s the people who hang out there.
Soccer has its hooligans. Aussie rules its homophobes. Rugby struggles with racism.
They’re vocal. They’re obnoxious. Sometimes they’re harmful.
The online gaming world is no different.
It’s just far less public.
That makes it harder for parents to steer their children away from the wrong crowd. Or for friends, family or partners to see what’s really going on in each other’s lives.
We know very little about the 22-year-old suspect accused of the shooting death of Christian Nationalist Charlie Kirk last week.
But we know Tyler Robinson was an avid gamer. And that he confessed to his crime on Discord, a social media and communications platform designed to entice online gaming communities to its services.
FBI director Kash Patel said this week that participants of the Discord groups Robinson frequented were under investigation. Discord, valued at about $A15 billion, was quick to exonerate itself, stating it had found “no evidence that the suspect planned this incident or promoted violence on Discord”.
But the US Capitol isn’t so sure. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Thursday summoned the CEOs of Discord, Steam, Twitch and Reddit to Washington DC. It wants to “examine the radicalisation of online forum users, including instances of open incitement to commit politically motivated acts”.
Why?
This is far from the first time online gaming communities have been implicated, or at least associated, with real-world hate crimes.
“There are many positive aspects to gaming, including the opportunity to join communities of like-minded people and forge friendships,” argues RUSI Terrorism and Conflict Group analyst Petra Regeni.
“(But) socialisation can also offer opportunities for radicalisation and exposure to violent extremist content and ideas, including potential recruitment into violent extremism.”
Ready, player one
Kirk’s alleged killer reportedly etched gaming memes into the bullets he carried to a carefully selected Utah Valley University sniper position.
One casing reads “Hey, fascist! Catch! ↑ → ↓↓↓”
The arrows represent a sequence in the game Helldiver 2 that enables players to drop bombs on their opponents. In that game, players fight on behalf of a fascist government seeking to dominate the galaxy.
Another reads: “Notices bulges, OwO what’s this”.
It’s a reference to gamers of the furry community who role-play personalities based on animal avatars.
There’s also “O Bella ciao!”
This is a line from a World War II song protesting fascist Italy. It is featured in the first-person shooter Far Cry 6.
Then there’s the puerile “if you read this you are gay LMAO”.
Court documents reveal Robinson admitted to a friend via text message that the etched lines were a reflection of his online experiences: “The f**kin messages are mostly a big meme, if I see ‘notices bulge uwu’ on fox new I might have a stroke.”
Republican Utah governor Spencer Cox has seized on the gaming link.
“Clearly, there was a lot of gaming going on,” he told US media. “Friends that have confirmed that there was kind of that deep, dark internet, the Reddit culture, and these other dark places of the internet where this person was going deep.”
Counter-terrorism think-tank the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) published a report on the subject in 2021.
It specifically examined gaming community forums Steam, Twitch, DLive, and Discord.
“The content we encountered on Discord and Steam was more egregious than the content you would expect to easily find on mainstream social media platforms, but at a smaller scale than you would expect to find on alt-tech platforms such as Gab and Telegram,” ISD analyst Jacob Davey said at the time.
Soufan Centre think-tank political scientist Dr Julie Hwang says research has since shown 23 per cent of online gamers have encountered extremist propaganda.
“Extremists use multi-player games like Fortnite, Minecraft, and Call of Duty to target socially isolated youths with the promise of fun, solidarity, and community,” she writes. “Online gaming can also embolden already radicalised youth by providing them an opportunity to role-play their violent fantasies.”
Where virtual meets reality
“The evidence suggests most radicalisation takes place not through playing video games themselves, but through gaming platform communication channels,” says Australian Catholic University associate professor of philosophy, Matthew Sharpe.
He took part in a 2020 study of some nine million posts made to the gaming marketplace – and social media platform – Steam.
“We found evidence of radicalisation occurring through communication channels, such as team voice channels,” he writes. “Here, players establish connections with one another, and can leverage these connections for political recruitment.”
It could be a cooperative shooter, like Counter-Strike 2. It could be world-creating teams, as with Roblox.
Associations are made. Friendships forged.
“Once extremists have connected with potential targets, they invite them into platforms such as Discord or private chat rooms. These spaces allow for meme and image sharing, as well as ongoing voice and video conversations,” Sharpe explains.
From there, it’s the same process as any other form of radicalisation.
“You form connectivity with your group during gameplay and gradually become bonded through shared interactive experiences online – over time, that opens you up to hearing new ideas among your group,” adds RUSI’s Regeni.
“When those ideas come from your gameplay community – people you feel attached and bonded to – you may become more vulnerable to their ideas.”
An online community – just as any sporting club or social media forum – becomes a peer group.
And peer pressure is brought into play.
“Dark and sarcastic humour allow for plausible deniability while still spreading hate,” Sharpe adds. “As such, humour acts as an on-ramp to slowly introduce new recruits to the conspiratorial and violent ideologies that lie at the heart of terrorist shootings.”
It’s a high-stakes environment.
The threat, always, is ridicule – or even expulsion – from the in-crowd.
“It then becomes a question of resolve,” Sharpe concludes. “Who among the group is willing to do what the ideology suggests is necessary?”
Money talks
“I can’t emphasise enough the damage that social media and the internet is doing to all of us,” Utah Governor Cox told US media.
“Those dopamine hits, these companies — trillion-dollar market caps, the most powerful companies in the history of the world — have figured out how to hack our brains, get us addicted to outrage … and get us to hate each other.”
Online games are big business.
They’ve long since left their playing-field cousins in their digital dust. And even Hollywood now pales in comparison.
The global online game market raked in about $A450 billion from paying participants last year. Hollywood slipped just short of $A50 billion. Physical sports earnings fell somewhere in between.
“In a community of over 3 billion gamers worldwide, it should come as no surprise that extremist actors and ideologies appear in gaming spaces and seek to exploit its popularity and attractiveness,” argues Regeni.
Misogyny. Racism. Political and religious extremism.
All continue to thrive in digital spaces, despite more than a decade of warnings.
Even national security is at risk.
Recently, a 21-year-old US Air National Guard member released hundreds of top-secret documents to a Discord gaming community.
“What this case, and other game-associated intelligence leaks like War Thunder – a realistic military-themed game – highlights are the powerful social bonds built through shared gamer identities and in-group dynamics created in community-driven online gaming spaces,” Regeni states.
And the persistence of the problem has angered Utah Governor Cox: “The conflict entrepreneurs are taking advantage of us. And we are losing agency.”
But, like social media megacorps Meta, Google, ByteDance, and X, online gaming-related corporations have demonstrated a lack of willingness to take responsibility for how their services are used.
They’re about to be tested again.
“To prevent future radicalisation and violence, the CEOs of Discord, Steam, Twitch, and Reddit must appear before the Oversight Committee and explain what actions they will take to ensure their platforms are not exploited for nefarious purposes,” House Oversight Committee Chairman James Corer said Thursday.
“Congress has a duty to oversee the online platforms that radicals have used to advance political violence.”
But the $A450 billion industry’s lobbyists have a powerful presence in global halls of power. Their lawyers stand ready to attack every threat to their profitability, real or perceived.
That leaves the problem in the lap of parents, of friends, of family.
“Ultimately, in an increasingly online world, the best way to keep young people safe from online radicalisation is to keep having constructive offline conversations about their virtual experiences, and the people they might meet in the process,” concludes Sharpe.
Jamie Seidel is a freelance writer | @jamieseidel.bsky.social
Originally published as Inside the dark world of ‘killer gaming culture’
