Two weeks ago my roommate shouted across our apartment, “You gotta see this, you gotta see this, the White House is making video games now!” Confused but interested, I ran over to his computer and was confronted with the White House Arcade.
Now, if one were to describe the White House press team's current function, it would be, as David Karpf, a political communication professor at George Washington University, put it, to “give us things to talk about.” They are definitely giving us plenty to talk about. For better or for worse, in the era of generative AI, the one thing the White House can do is produce media very rapidly and cheaply.
While I am sure many of you are familiar with President Trump’s barrage of absurd Truth Social posts, this latest installment in the Trump cinematic universe specifically targets gaming culture and marks an escalation in the administration's strategy of using pop culture to communicate with the American people. The Arcade features four games, each of which centers on topics the administration would like voters, the public and journalists to be talking about.
I have played all of them, so that you don’t have to:
Flappy Bill, an obvious knockoff of Flappy Bird, is perhaps the most innocuous of the cohort. The familiar green bird is replaced by a bald eagle carrying a scroll, presumably one of Trump’s many executive orders, while a pixel art version of Washington D.C. replaces the old game’s nondescript cityscape and green tubes. Supply Line is reminiscent of Sega’s 1983 arcade classic Tapper, only now instead of serving beer, the player sorts healthy food from junk food. The game is a manifestation of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s war on seed oils and other pollutants. It could nearly be an educational game, except for some reason you play as a boxer who gets more bloodied with every processed food item you fail to punch into the garbage chute. Trump Savings Tycoon lets you “fill your kids’ Trump Accounts” by collecting bills and bags of coins with a net; however, the reflecting pool in the background does not reflect its current, algae-laden state.
Then come the less savory titles. Rio Run, the undisputed most f*cked up of the bunch, is a sadistic take on Nokia’s 1997 classic Snake. In Rio Run, you play as a government official collecting brown people, who then follow you around, now changed into orange prison jumpsuits. Like in Snake, you move around the playspace collecting more people, while avoiding your “tail,” until you eventually mess up and are left with X number of deportations. Lastly, Build the Wall, a twisted version of Tetris where you fortify the southern border by stacking blocks to stop “the coming horde,” no longer appears on the site. On Sept. 4, Tetris posted to its social media claiming that it had no involvement with Build the Wall and added that “We take copyright infringement very seriously.” Shortly after the statement, Build the Wall disappeared. The White House has not publicly confirmed if the removal was due to copyright concerns.
One could go on forever about how Rio Run and Build the Wall are disgusting. They blatantly gamify and trivialize the dehumanizing, traumatic and violent experiences of those caught up in the administration's mass deportation campaign. Above all though, they are embarrassing. Ignoring the glaring moral and political issues for a second, these games are simply terrible. Like most things that leave the Trump White House, the Arcade is spiteful, petty, unimaginative and lazy. I sincerely hope they were vibe coded, lest real humans spent their precious time on Earth making these half-baked games.
Most interestingly, though, are the great ironies these games draw out, especially Build the Wall. Anyone familiar with the gaming industry and its culture knows it is a world predicated on the travel of ideas, people and products across borders. Tetris, for example, is famously the invention of a Soviet programmer, whose wonderful game made its way to the U.S. and world through international commercial relationships forged at a time when geopolitical tensions were at peak intensity. Its creator, Alexey Pajitnov, even immigrated to the U.S. in 1991. That immigrant heritage and story of cross-national cooperation is a rather ill-suited cultural source for a nationalist border game. Tetris is also a curious choice for a border-wall game from a mechanical perspective. In the original, a completed wall immediately disappears; the only way to keep it standing would be to put holes in it, not to mention that building to the top is how you lose the game. The creators changed the rules to make their pro-wall messaging work, but the original game suggests the exact opposite through its mechanics.
There is so much more to be scrutinized here, but the important question is: What was the point? Are these games just meant to piss us off, are they just more culture war shitposting or do they contain genuine political messaging? Well, as Kaelan Dorr, head of White House digital strategy put it, the games are “policy you can interact with.” The White House wants to see if it can get voters who have been tapped out for the last few years interested in the White House again, but more subtly, with its intended messaging underneath. It’s an attempt to get those uninterested, or simply too tired of the constant media rigmarole, to pay attention for 24 to 48 hours. Some evidence suggests this works too. VGIM analysis of White House Posts shows posts that directly reference video game content did twice as well on average as other pop culture posts.
Either way, we cannot attach too much outrage and disbelief to these games. They exist to provoke a reaction, not to persuade; it is deeply unlikely that a round of Rio Run will convert anyone who doesn't already share Trump’s outlook. Either way though, at a time when Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund and Affinity partners (the firm run by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner) now co-own Electronic Arts, the world's largest game developer, we shouldn't overlook gaming's broader potential as a propaganda vehicle. Gaming lovers should keep their eyes and ears open for less clumsy attempts to influence their opinion.
James Palm is a member of the Class of 2027 in the College of Arts and Sciences. He is an assistant arts editor for the 144th Editorial Board and was an assistant arts editor for the 143rd Editorial Board. He can be reached at jpalm@cornellsun.com.
