The White House launched a website called Arcade.gov on Sept. 3 featuring retro-style video games built around President Donald Trump’s policy agenda, including two that turn immigration enforcement into playable missions.
Researchers who study games and their effects on young people said the site amounts to propaganda aimed at children and teenagers, embedding a political message about immigration policy inside familiar arcade mechanics.
“It may not be as obvious to younger people and that’s part of the reason why propaganda works,” said Rachel Kowert, a research psychologist based in Ottawa who studies video games, according to CBC.
Five games, one pulled
The site launched with five games. In Rio Run, modeled on the classic game Snake, players guide a figure along the Rio Grande to capture people described as border crossers, who then reappear in orange jumpsuits and are tallied as deportations, according to reporting by CNN and CBC.
Build the Wall, a Tetris-style game subtitled “Zombie Border Siege,” had players stack falling blocks along the southern border to stop approaching figures described as a “horde,” with a “border breached” message appearing if the blocks piled too high, CNN reported. Two other games touch on unrelated priorities: Flappy Bill flies a bald eagle over the National Mall, and Supply Line has players remove “unhealthy” items from a food conveyor belt to fit Make America Healthy Again standards. A fifth, Trump Savings Tycoon, has players collect cash for children’s Trump Accounts.
Build the Wall was removed from the site within days after the Tetris Company said the game’s mechanics resembled its own and that it had not authorized the use of its intellectual property. “The Tetris Company was not involved in the creation of ‘Build the Wall,’” the company said in a statement reported by NBC News and Variety, adding, “We take copyright infringement very seriously.” The company also said, “At Tetris, we believe in the power of connection and bringing people together, not dividing them.” Kotaku first reported that the game’s page began returning a 404 error days after the company’s statement. The White House did not respond to NBC News’ requests for comment on the removal, and the other games, which also mirror existing titles, remained live.
How games shape opinion
Scott DeJong, a communication studies researcher at Concordia University in Montreal, said a single game rarely changes a person’s views outright. “Instead, they can gradually shift a person’s moral compass and normalize certain worldviews or actions,” he said, according to CBC.
DeJong said the games simplify complicated issues into something a player can win or lose, without teaching the larger context behind the policy. Tanner Mirrlees, a media studies professor at Ontario Tech University, said playing the games is not itself a problem but urged players to consider who made a game, its intent, how it reached them and whether it discloses any political sponsorship before they start playing.
White House defends the project
A White House official described the arcade as a contrast between what the administration called “a culture of fun and winning” and what it called Democrats’ agenda, saying opponents were “defending their record of raising taxes and empowering criminal illegal aliens,” according to the Washington Examiner. Deputy assistant Kaelan Dorr called the site “policy you can interact with,” and the administration told Time magazine it was “laser focused on ways to innovate and tell the story of the President’s many accomplishments in a way that resonates with every American.”
Democratic Representative Jasmine Crockett of Texas criticized the launch on social media: “Instead of creating policies that actually help people, the White House just rolled out arcade games. They need to spend less time playing and more time governing. Folks need affordable groceries, not games.”
Rights advocates also objected to the games’ framing of deportation. “They’ve been playing games with people’s lives for years, now they’ve made a video game of what they’re doing,” Amerika Garcia Grewal, co-director of the Frontera Federation in Eagle Pass, Texas, said, as reported by AFP.
The launch came as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained nearly 50,000 people in July, the highest monthly total since Trump returned to office, according to reporting cited by CNN. The White House has not responded to questions from multiple outlets about whether contractors were hired or taxpayer funds used to build the site. Arcade.gov remains live, minus Build the Wall, at whitehouse.gov/arcade.