According to the general opinion, the UK government-funded educational game entitled ‘Pathways’ is not a good teaching instrument for young people to learn about extremism. One of the game designs of the game intended for students aged 11 to 18 was to associate some weighty immigration-related questions with anti-social behavior and to steer players towards anti-terrorism programs. The disclosure of a user named Pirat_Nation started an online debate which was about government intervention and the use of gamification as a means of social control that became very heated.
In a nutshell, the situation is as follows: the UK government financed a game with taxpayers’ money that was intended to be informative for adolescents. It sounds perfect, doesn’t it? Maybe a lesson in civics or a kid’s version of its history. But it is not. The Pathways game functions like an electronic thought crime detector. The concept is that you are playing the role of a teenager who is facing social issues and at one point your character begins to question things like the migration policy, and the in-game meter starts to tick up showing how “extreme” you are being. In the event that you lose the game, you may receive “counseling” for your “ideological thoughts” or a referral to an anti-terror expert. The author of this article does not exaggerate. A picture to go along with the tweet shows a very dull corporate-looking character named Amelia, and the game text is saying that players are “threatened with referral to anti-terror program” for merely being curious about migration. It is as if the 1984 situation was happening. A person read the novel and said, “Cool! Let’s make a kids’ game based on this.”
Online reactions have been quite unusual. Gamers and critics have ridiculed the game in a very harsh manner. One user named Jockomo immediately asked how to play and jokingly said, “I bet I can get a high score.” That is the kind of atmosphere that exists. Another one, Renier_TV, predicted “far-right extremist speed runs incoming,” which is a mix of humor with deeply troubling connotations. Amelia, whose non-specific corporate art style has made a user call it “the deepest corporate hellhole,” is already becoming a meme. People are comparing her to “British far-right Ramona flowers” and making comments like, “If the UK government did not want young men to become political extremists, they should have made the extremist character a cute girl.” The internet, as always, is already laughing at the game’s expense using its own imagery.
Nevertheless, this saga gets even stranger. The reply conversation takes the most bizarre turns imaginable. Some users are even comparing the game to dystopian fiction directly, with one user very succinctly claiming, “They really just using V for vendetta and 1984 as guides huh.” Others are sharing dark humor with the premise, for instance, Numeryczny who said, “Finally, a game that lets me measure how good of a war criminal I am.” However, besides the jokes, there is real anger and fear among the people. User TLFOXN64 posted a long, sarcastic script imitating the UK government and ending with, “That’s all I hear from them atp.” One can sense a real fear that people consider it a terrifying overstep, treating normal teenage curiosity or political dissent as a pathology that needs to be reported and “cured.”
Then, there is the larger political debate which emerged in the discussion. One of the users, David Thole, wrote a long thread disputing the idea of foreign interference but nonetheless describing the situation as “sad.” He observed that “The U.K. is quite heavy-handed in this whole wrongthink situation, and I couldn’t imagine living there.” Another user, Joseph, replied directly, “If the UK people didn’t rise up against their country being invaded by Muslims, then they won’t rise up against this.” It is a chaotic and passionate debate that goes beyond the game discussion and touches upon issues of national sovereignty, censorship, and cultural change. The game is merely a reflection of the bigger tensions.
So, what is really going on here? The government’s intention seems to be the prevention of radicalization. However, the method applied is so clumsy and so overtly manipulative that it will probably drive the youth in the opposite direction. Asking a teenager if he/she is asking “why” is a sign of extremism will not make him/her more knowledgeable; on the contrary, he/she will learn that it is not allowed to question authority. The government will also be taking the very real and multi-faceted problem of violent extremism and reducing it to the level of simple political discourse by saying that even discussing politics is a sign of extremism. The players will only be able to “win” the game by uncritically accepting the official story. This is not education but indoctrination, and it’s a topic that sparks debate among gamers and players alike.
