The Dark Future of Virtual Reality
Daesh and the Next Wave of Digital Content
For several years Daesh has been using games like GTA5 to help promote its terror brand. (Grand Theft Auto V (GTA5) is the one of the top selling video games of all time. Sales of Grand Theft Auto products have generated $2.3 billion for Take Two since GTA5 launch)
This was a no brainer from a marketing standpoint. GTA5 is an open world action adventure game. As the name suggests…you can steal cars. You can do a lot of other things too.
You know what’s really really easy in GTA5? And fun? And synergistic with Daesh’s brand?
Killing people. Killing lots and lots of people.
Killing in GTA5 is something of a past time for players. It’s a service that GTA5 provides. If you get bored stealing cars, GTA5 provides a vast digital world. You can do what you want. Why not take a break for some fun, safe, killing. Yes, you can kill people by running them over with cars. (Duh.) But that’s not all. You can shoot people.
You can stab them. You can beat them to death with a hammer.
Blood spatters. Heads separate from bodies. Killing…how you do it is really up to you.
“Killing Time” With GTA5 Is VERY Popular
Players enjoy this part of the game so much, they document their video killing sprees and share them with friends. Consider “Sly Shooter.” Sly Shooter is a YouTuber. He currently boasts of more than 300,000 followers on YouTube. His specialty is “Funny/Brutal Kill Compilations.” (He’s currently up to at least 96 from GTA5.) Compilation #55 from December of 2014 has 6.4 million views.
Is all of this disturbing? (sigh)
Video games are fun. And there is, of course, a difference between pretending to kill people and actually killing people. But with the advent of hyper-realistic online interactive social video gaming, the lines between real and imaginary can blur. Current research suggests that there is a connection between violent video games and aggression, though what that connection means is not entirely clear.
When you combine blurring of lines with savvy marketing, and the promise of real life excitement and adventure that accurately mirrors video game action and adventure, you get a dangerous recruiting tool for Daesh.
The Gamification of Recruiting is a Real Thing
It’s not just a terrorist thing. Big businesses like PriceWaterhouseCoopers are using games as tools to identify and attract promising young talent. PWC in Hungary developed a multi-day game as a means of showing young interested candidates what it might be like to work for the accounting giant.
The business world has already bought in to the potential benefits of incorporating gaming into the workplace.
The professional military sees violent video games as potential teaching tools.
Daesh and the Gamification of Terror
Daesh’s innovation in the use of video games and video game imagery as terrorist recruitment tools was a smart logical step for the brand. It’s an easy way to talk directly to their target audience. Young people.
But not just any young people. Young people who already like to pretend to be killers in the safety of their own homes. The language and images of gaming, and in particular the ease with which individuals become personally involved in fun bloody digital violence, is ubiquitous among gamers world wide.
Gaming provides a familiar environment in which young people are comfortable and feel safe. They have gaming friends. They develop groups and relationships across the globe, all within the context of killing spree games. Using games like GTA5, and Call of Duty to market the Daesh terror brand to western youth is a no brainer. Modern games incorporate features that make it easy to develop personalized game modifications.
ISIS generated modifications allow you to assume the role of an ISIS fighter in the game. ISIS is also incorporating the imagery of video games to inform how it actually goes about killing people and sharing those images with the world.
And the world is responding. There are videos available on the internet entitled “ISIS in GTA5” and “ISIS knife execution in GTA5.” What is the exact content on those videos? I didn’t look. I don’t want to see any more. You can look if you want.
So what’s next?
Daesh Will Produce Virtual Reality Content
Count on it. How do you feel about your kids being virtually there at an actual beheading? Or an actual crucifixion? All in the style of their favorite video games. That’s all coming. In a format and with content tailor made for young gamers.
So what to do?
Much of the discussion regarding how to address the problem of homegrown radicalization to date has focused on young Muslims, and what right-thinking members of the Islamic community can do to address this problem. While that has value, it may also be missing the mark.
All tests have wrong answers that are “attractive distractors”…answers that feel right, but are wrong. Islam may be the attractive distractor in this test.
Islam — The Attractive Distractor
The solution to dealing with Daesh’s recruitment in the west may lie in understanding the social interactions and connections of young people, and particularly online gamers. How they see themselves and the groups to which they belong. How they can be influenced.
In the context of military deployments, there has been a call for the creation of a robust digital communications strategy to be employed in concert with operations. That strategy needs to be brought home and combined with a concerted effort to understand both the target audience for recruiting and the message. If we are to effectively address the problem of homegrown radicalization and deflect the efforts of groups like Daesh to attract the attention of young Americans, we need a robust domestic communications strategy, one that addresses the gamification of terror.
Terrorism doesn’t have to physically get here to the United States…digitally, it’s already here.
