All the things that make video games great, like immersion, connectivity and identity-building, also make them prime real estate for bad actors. The United Nations is taking this challenge head-on in an attempt to fight terrorist and violent extremist organizations, like ISIS and Boko Haram, that have for years used games to spread propaganda, recruit members and form communities. In collaboration with member governments in Japan and Australia, the games industry and Northeastern University, the U.N.-backed effort is looking to fight fire with fire, using video games to combat violent extremism.
“They leverage these elements, the fundamental trust, the connection, but we were thinking the exact same elements can be used by us,” said Odhran McCarthy, New York liaison for the U.N. Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute, or UNICRI. The effort, which UNICRI and the U.N. Office of Counter-Terrorism launched in 2022, recently resulted in the publication of a landmark report focused on the convergence of gaming and extremism in Africa. Moving forward, it hopes to partner with local game developers to create games that help communities develop a resistance to insurgent bad actors.
