“Leveling Up Conspiracies: The Impact of Gaming Culture on Jan. 6 and QAnon”

From alternate reality games to the riots on January 6, Celia Pearce examines the notion of “play” and how the American far-right has utilized gaming and online platforms for its benefit.

Share this story
• 
  
  Copy Link
  Link Copied!
  

• Email

• Facebook

• LinkedIn

• 
  Twitter
  

• WhatsApp

• Reddit

It’s typical for youngsters to discover the outcomes when playing with peers escalates. Often it results from a participant taking a game excessively seriously, violating the rules, or causing emotional distress to another, with consequences that can include scraped knees, tears, and hopefully, a lesson absorbed.

But what occurs when “play” genuinely spirals out of control?

According to Celia Pearce, a game design educator at Northeastern University, the answer can be found in the events of the January 6, 2021, riots that disrupted the Capitol and the nation.

In her latest publication, “Playframes,” Pearce charts the origins of January 6, the QAnon conspiracy narrative, and the contemporary American far-right back to the realm of gaming, illustrating the consequences when the line separating “play” and reality becomes indistinct.

–– and perilous. 

Pearce, who will explore her recent book in depth at a launch event hosted at Northeastern on Jan. 21, navigates a wide array of cultural and political realms, linking them to the concept of the “playframe.” Whether engaging in a sport or a video game, there exists both explicit and implicit information indicating that we are participating in play. We internalize the rules of a game, memorizing them. There are designated venues for our recreational activities. There may even be attire or gear –– such as a sports uniform or gaming headphones –– we don during play. 

This information constitutes the framework that informs us of our engagement in play, which is significant because, in these moments, certain societal rules often do not apply.

“[The participants and] the spectators at Fenway Park are encapsulated within a kind of playframe,” Pearce articulates. “They can engage in truly bizarre behaviors, which if exhibited elsewhere in the world, would be considered ludicrous. Yet, because they are sports enthusiasts in a sports context and within a sports venue, they can act in ways that starkly differ from what is socially acceptable in other environments.”

However, Pearce notes, there exist “ambiguous zones within the play realm,” where odd conduct observed in a game may begin to infiltrate other facets of life, such as politics, where the repercussions of “play” can be profoundly significant.

In making connections between the events of Jan. 6 and gaming, Pearce references alternate reality games from the early 2000s, a medium crafted to deliberately interlace a playframe with reality. 

Participants in early ARGs often received communications via emails and text messages instructing them to visit actual locations, where they would encounter a URL directing them to a fabricated website, guiding them deeper into a narrative that transcended the digital realm into the physical world and back. 

Significantly, these games were frequently devised to convey a story laden with conspiratorial themes, engaging players in solving puzzles and searching for clues across various aspects of their lives. While the concept was undeniably enticing, even the creators of these games recognized early on that such designs could be exploited for more nefarious ends.

Pearce mentions that this apprehension has manifested itself in QAnon, a far-right conspiracy theory centered on unfounded allegations stemming from the anonymous figure referred to as Q, claiming the existence of a cabal of influential, cannibalistic child predators running a global sex trafficking syndicate opposing President-elect Donald Trump. 

As the theory proliferated across various corners of the internet, Q consistently employed the phrase “This is not a game,” which had been the catchphrase for ARGs. Based on her investigations, Pearce asserts that this is not merely coincidental. Within the ARG community, it was part of the playframe, serving to highlight the boundary-expanding essence of ARGs. However, when extracted from that context and repositioned into another, it evolves into a hazardous method to reinforce Q’s unfounded assertions while aligning with the mentality of the online ARG community.

“At minimum, individuals who were building upon the conspiracy recruited players from such … types of forums because they recognized them as adept problem solvers, capable of crafting narratives around all these ‘clues,’” Pearce states. “In a way, they turned a real-world conspiracy theory into a game by appropriating its terminology and culture.”

Pearce further explains that others have also discerned how to misalign the playframe to exploit the ways in which gaming communities think and act. Steve Bannon, former adviser and chief strategist to Trump, previously ran a company paying low-wage workers to collect virtual currency in games like “World of Warcraft.”