This Insight was published as part of GIFCT’s Working Group on Gaming and Youth (GYWG). GIFCT Working Groups bring together experts from diverse stakeholder groups, geographies and disciplines to offer advice in specific thematic areas and deliver on targeted, substantive projects.
Since the right-wing extremist attack in Christchurch (New Zealand) in 2019, an upsurge in research has laid the basis for our understanding of the potential nexus between gaming and extremism. These efforts have led to a preliminary framework of extremist exploitation of online gaming spaces, which examines the production of bespoke propaganda games, the instrumentalisation of commercial games, the use of gaming (-adjacent) platforms for various purposes from internal communication to fundraising and livestreaming of attacks, the appropriation of verbal and visual gaming references in propaganda output, and the utilisation of gamified elements.
Now that this groundwork has been established, researchers, policymakers, and practitioners in preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) are moving toward exploring more specific issues. One of these key concerns is extremists’ targeting of different audiences in online gaming spaces, particularly in relation to minors. This includes examining the potential role such influences may play in youth radicalisation and mobilisation. While gaming spaces are largely populated by adults, children and teenagers, who are still in the process of developing their worldview, are particularly vulnerable to malign influences in the gaming sphere.
This Insight contributes to this discussion by exploring young people’s exposure to extremist content in digital gaming spaces, extremist targeting strategies, and the potential effects on youth radicalisation. It draws on 17 semi-structured interviews with experts conducted for a research report commissioned by the Bavarian Regulatory Authority for New Media in 2025. Interviews were held in German (n=11) and English (n=6) with experts from extremism studies, P/CVE, political education, game development, and online youth protection. Statements are anonymised, and quotes translated from German are indicated as such.¹ It should be noted that the interviews focused solely on right-wing extremism and, hence, the findings may not be applicable to other forms of violent extremism.
Exposure
Experts echoed recent surveys of gamers and postulated that users can, and do, stumble across identity-based hate and extremist content in digital gaming spaces without explicitly searching for it. This specifically includes children and teenagers, confirming previous research by the Anti-Defamation League. Experts reported that “it probably depends on the communities you are a part of, the games you play, but it’s not really difficult to stumble upon [right-wing extremist propaganda]”.¹ The interviewees did not identify any specific games or platforms that stood out. Rather, exposure “happens in the game. It happens in game-adjacent spaces. It’s happening verbally. It’s happening with written text. It’s happening with images, with maps, with content. So it is kind of everywhere.”
When asked about factors that may increase the likelihood of minors’ involuntary exposure to extremist content in gaming spaces, experts mostly mentioned material linked to important or controversial current affairs: It is during such events that extremist content can most easily seep into mainstream discussions in online communities, increasing its reach and the chance that young users are subjected to it. This includes extremist material related to:
- International conflicts such as in Gaza or Ukraine, including individual attacks and day-to-day media reporting;
- Elections and other political events across the globe;
- Protests and social movement actions such as the Black Lives Matter protests;
- (Attempted) terror attacks, school shootings, assassinations and other violent acts;
- The release of commercial video games or game trailers, even if they make no reference to political issues.
The experts assessed that the uptick in propaganda material shared in gaming space after such events is often almost instantaneous and seems to occur so regularly that “you can set your watch by it”.¹ For instance, “after the Hamas attack on Israel on 7/10 [2023], we’ve immediately seen many profiles on gaming platforms glorifying Hamas. Instantly after such incidents, or also after right-wing extremist attacks, we see that many accounts […] pop up that are named after the attackers”.¹ Extremist actors likely seek to utilise current affairs to increase the visibility of their material and frame events in accordance with their worldviews.
The surge in extremist content following the release of commercial games or trailers is particularly concerning, because children and teenagers may be exposed to hateful material when simply searching for information about the release or gameplay footage. For instance, one interviewee reported that the trailers of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Grand Theft Auto VI were instantly repurposed to spread identity-based hate: “People manipulated the trailer [of Grand Theft Auto VI] to show themselves […] basically vehicle-ramming all the people of colour that were on the beach and stuff like that. […] That was a crazy […] reaction, it was like immediately [after] the trailer came out and then there were […] memes and videos everywhere.” The interviewee went on to explain that such content appeared even on their personal social media feeds that had never been used to consume hateful material before, suggesting a high likelihood for involuntary exposure.
Explicit Targeting
Experts were also questioned about explicit targeting of children. Surprisingly, no interviewee reported that they had located propaganda in online gaming spaces that they deemed to be explicitly targeting children (rather than teenagers or young adults), stating that they have not “seen any evidence of […] mak[ing] the aesthetics particularly appealing to very young children or to make the language […] more basic in a way that would be appealing to somebody of a lower […] level of comprehension and reading and sort of a younger age.” Overall, the experts suggested that propaganda material seems universal rather than explicitly framed to appeal to children. “I am not aware that content is somehow adapted or made more accessible for very young target audiences. [The propaganda content] has a universal character”.¹
While the true intentions of the creators are difficult to gauge, from the standpoint of an observer, it does not seem to be the case that right-wing extremist propaganda explicitly targeting children is shared widely in online gaming spaces. This surprising finding could potentially be explained by the fact that most research and youth protection practices focus largely or exclusively on propaganda content located in openly accessible gaming spaces. It is therefore possible that the explicit targeting of children occurs in more private communication channels such as bilateral chats and small, closed groups – an assumption supported by a recent study demonstrating that children were approached in open gaming spaces, but then quickly invited into private, self-moderated groups.
However, even if most propaganda material is not explicitly targeting children, there may be certain gaming spaces that lend themselves to targeting minors, particularly games and platforms specifically designed for or popular among children. Examples named by the experts included Roblox, Animal Crossing, and Minecraft, which may need to be treated as “special cases”¹ due to their young user base. “When there is, for example, right-wing extremist content on a platform like Roblox, then you do need to ask: For whom is this content? The people who create it must know that this platform is frequented by many children and teenagers […] I think if people are making stuff on Roblox, that is a child’s platform, […] they’re trying to reach a young audience.”¹ This may indicate that even when propaganda is not tailored to children, if a game or platform has a large percentage of young users, these spaces could potentially be exploited for the explicit targeting of minors and may seem particularly appealing to those seeking to reach and possibly recruit underage users.
Radicalisation & Recruitment Processes
Experts stressed that for minors and adults alike, exposure to extremist material does not necessarily contribute to or lead to radicalisation. Radicalisation is a multifaceted process, in which online and offline factors interact. Gaming spaces can play “a role [in radicalisation processes of minors]. But it does not have to be the most formative or decisive role”.¹ Experts also cautioned that not every piece of extremist content is indicative of extremist beliefs, particularly if the user is very young, because minors may be particularly prone to posting content due to peer pressure, the desire to appear ‘cool’, or the wish for provocation, youth rebellion, and testing deviant identities. The younger the users, the experts assessed, the less extremist online expression may be indicative of a user’s worldview: “When you have this conversation around minors, […] it’s hard to know how much they actually understand about the ideologies that they’re talking about. […]It’s hard […] to unpick […] [whether the creators] actually believe in these ideologies, [particularly when they are children, because] I’m not sure an eight-year-old really knows who Hitler is […] to be perfectly honest with you. […] I think that they just wanted to draw a swastika because they knew that […] it was naughty.”
By and large, experts agreed that the social aspect of online gaming spaces is much more important for radicalisation, and especially recruitment processes, than exposure to identity-based hate and extremist material alone, echoing a recent study on recruitment patterns in online gaming spaces across different types of harm. This means that the “opportunities for community-building”¹ that gaming spaces provide are crucial for radicalisation processes to occur. These social connections formed in gaming spaces may be perceived as particularly deep and meaningful by minors, because “trust is formed very quickly between co-players, and we see in the research that that leads to closer, tight-knit bonds that are more long-lasting than you see in other spaces on the internet. So if you have this […] close community of people that you trust […] there is the potential for that to be more impactful in changing your worldview and changing your opinions than other friends you would meet on the Internet.”
Echoing previous work by Kilmer and Kowert, some experts also spoke about the similarities between the social-emotional processes that may potentially contribute to the radicalisation of minors in gaming spaces and processes of grooming for sexual exploitation: “It is very, very similar. It starts with a nice gesture. It looks like just becoming friends with someone, which makes it so insidious and difficult to flag or notice because from the outside looking in, it just looks like someone being nice. ‘Yes, let me help build this thing for you. Let me give you some in-game currency.’ And then it slowly funnels down into more concrete and more explicit asks. For child sexual exploitation, it might be […] ‘let me give you this thing, send me a picture, send me different pictures, send me more explicit pictures.’ For radicalisation […] [it’s] ‘hey, I’m going to help you do this thing [in the game]’ […] and then they say, ‘I have some other cool friends, I’m going to offer you [to join our] Discord [channel].’ Oh, now you’re in this community that’s a little more extreme.”
Other interviewees, however, reported that the radicalisation of minors in gaming spaces may also be an organic process of ‘mutually finding each other’ rather than strategic grooming or recruitment and may take place as peer-to-peer processes with minors approaching other minors. “Designated recruiters [targeting minors] is something I’ve never seen. Not a single case. […] From our experience, it’s very rare that right-wing extremists are […] explicitly targeting young users. […] By and large, [right-wing] supporters use gaming platforms organically [because they enjoy gaming] and then they get to know and befriend other users”.¹ The interviewee clarified that in most cases the users were aware that they were interacting with a right-wing extremist and were not at all surprised to eventually be invited into right-wing extremist groups. These differences suggest that radicalisation and recruitment dynamics in gaming spaces vary, and further research is needed to better understand these different processes.
Conclusion
Overall, the interviewees assessed that the likelihood that minors are exposed to extremist content in openly accessible digital gaming spaces is relatively high, even if they are not searching for it. Most of this material does not seem to be explicitly tailored to children, at least not when shared in public communication channels. Experts interviewed in this study stressed that online gaming spaces are not inherently more risky for minors than, for instance, social media platforms.
Nevertheless, the social aspect of gaming, where trust is formed easily between users, may be exploited by recruiters as well as allow for young users with an interest in extremist ideology to connect with like-minded individuals: “I hesitate to say there’s more risk in gaming spaces […], but I think we could have a very reasonable conversation about areas of more risk.” These areas of risk include the comparatively high prevalence of right-wing extremist material in gaming spaces, the surge in propagandistic content in the wake of real-life events such as game releases, the manifold opportunities for contact with strangers, and the social aspects of gaming that may be particularly conducive to establishing trust and forming social-emotional connections.
All experts agreed, however, that gaming itself – neither video games nor gaming content or spaces – poses no risk for online youth protection. Rather, the key driver of radicalisation and recruitment of minors is that the online gaming ecosystem provides a new space for social interaction, which offers the opportunity for young people to be approached by and to engage with radicalised individuals. Hence, the experts advocated for nuanced measures that address the issues discussed above without securitising gaming spaces as a whole or diminishing the positive effects it can have on children and teenagers.
- Indicates the author’s translation from German.
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Linda Schlegel is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF), where she co-leads the RadiGaMe project and researches extremist activities in digital gaming spaces. She is also a Research Fellow at modusIzad, where she explores new avenues for digital P/CVE approaches, and a founding member of the Extremism and Gaming Research Network (EGRN).
Vivienne Ohlenforst is a Research Fellow at modusIzad and a member of the RadiGaMe project, where she co-develops gaming-related disengagement approaches. She investigates disengagement processes from various ideological phenomena, with a focus on supporting and empowering caseworkers through evidence-based practices.
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The views and opinions expressed in this Insight are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect those of GNET or any of its partners.
