What if video games served as tools of resistance against tyranny? It is the daring bet of these activists and journalists who have decided to use this medium to convey a message and escape the censorship of dictators who would have liked to silence them. Here are 3 emblematic examples.
Counter-Strike
This is the most recent news. At the beginning of May and occasionally the Finnish newspaper Helsingin sanomat newspaper has decided to circumvent the blocking put in place by the Russian government by slipping information into the online game Counter-Strike, which is very popular in this country.
Concretely, players can use certain unofficial maps that can be downloaded freely. Our colleagues therefore took advantage of this opening by creating a fictitious Slavic city called Voïna, which means war in Russian.
Smart, they added a room in the basement of one of the buildings in this town where gamers can find Russian-language reports produced by the newspaper’s reporters on the Ukrainian front.
While the abuses committed on civilian populations are hidden from the people by the Russian media, the latter can therefore access them freely, and this in a very original way. This map has since been downloaded several thousand times, but it is impossible to say whether or not these connections come from Russia.
Minecraft
In 2020, the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) association built a veritable virtual library in the world of Minecraft. This virtual building allows players around the world to find articles and documents inaccessible in many countries that practice censorship. You can access it by going to the website uncensoredlibrary.com.
RSF then explained that it had asked the BlockWorks studio for help. The association stated in this regard: “The construction took three months and the library consists of more than 12.5 million blocks. Its design and creation required more than 250 hours of work by 24 builders from 16 countries. The main dome of the building reaches almost 300 meters in width, which would make it the second largest in the world. »
Animal Crossing
In April 2020, at the very beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong had to revise their plans because it was now forbidden to demonstrate in the open air. Never mind, they have set their sights on the game Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
One of the leaders, Joshua Wong, then specified: It is a place without political censorship, so it is an ideal place to continue our fight”. Ultra popular, Nintendo’s title also affects sections of the population that are not necessarily politicized. These exchanges later gave rise to real virtual demonstrations on an island in the game where the characters displayed anti-government signs.
