Checkpoint Reached: The Prevention of Violent Extremism and Online Gaming

• Online Gaming Today: Social Worlds, Esports & Digital Identity
• Insights from UNICRI-UNOCT Activities on Gaming and Violent Extremism

• Panel Discussion: Threats, Trust, and Safeguarding the Gaming Ecosystem

• The Quest Continues: Launch of New Project on Gaming and Violent Extremism in Southeast Asia

• Q&A, Member State Comments and Closing

Online gaming ecosystems have quickly developed into advanced social environments the place hundreds of thousands of customers – particularly youth – work together, collaborate, and construct communities. These areas are digital social worlds, providing alternatives for creativity, connection, studying and id formation. For many, gaming environments are one of the crucial important arenas for peer interplay and belonging. At the identical time, the size, immersion, and social dynamics that make gaming so highly effective for constructive engagement may also render these areas susceptible to exploitation by malicious actors.

The immersive nature of gaming, mixed with anonymity, peer bonding, and restricted regulation, has created best environments conducive to grooming and radicalization – typically hidden in plain sight. Terrorist and violent extremist actors are believed to be shifting towards gaming and gaming-adjacent platforms, the place oversight stays much less stringent than for conventional social media. Such actors have begun utilizing gaming for each direct engagement and oblique affect, together with recruitment, propaganda, and communication in chats and personal servers, in addition to the dissemination of narratives by means of gamified content material, cultural memes, and modified video games.

At the identical time, the robust group ties, collaborative gameplay, narrative immersion, and identity-building additionally place gaming ecosystems as highly effective platforms for prevention, resilience, and constructive engagement. Gaming communities can present significant alternate options to the narratives and sense of belonging provided by terrorist and violent extremist teams. Increasingly, builders, publishers, civil society actors, and youth themselves are exploring how the pro-social advantages video games and gaming tradition may be leveraged.

The problem is subsequently twofold. While malicious actors proceed to adapt to new applied sciences and migrate throughout platforms, typically outpacing the capability of nationwide authorities, platforms, and communities to reply, the alternatives to proactively harness gaming ecosystems for stopping violent extremism stays largely untapped, with restricted understanding of and funding into on how these areas may be proactively leveraged to strengthen resilience and stop violent extremism.