Trump admin's propaganda "arcade" hits some apparent legal limits.
Trump admin's propaganda "arcade" hits some apparent legal limits.
The White House's "Build the Wall" game asked players to stop a "Zombie Border siege" by stacking Tetris -styled bricks in an attempt to "hold the line." Unlike in Tetris , though, the blocks in "Build the Wall" don't disappear when you complete a line, meaning each brick contributes to an impassable barrier for the pixel-art "zombies" marching in from the "Southern Border." That change makes the gameplay pretty uninteresting for anything but cheap propaganda, and it also means that every game quickly and ironically ends with a "Border Breached" message when the blocks inevitably fill up the well.
Amerika Garcia Grewal, co-director of Texas migrant rights group Frontera Federation , told AFP last week that the makers of the game "have lost touch with what it means to be human and care for others."
"Build The Wall" was one of five simple web games that went up on a new "Arcade" section of WhiteHouse.gov (as well as an alternative arcade.gov URL) just before Labor Day weekend . The game's previous URL now returns a 404 / Page Not Found error and has done so since sometime after Sunday morning, according to Internet Archive snapshots (where a playable version is still available). Other Trump Arcade games based on Flappy Bird and Snake remain on the site today.
In a statement on Friday , a spokesperson for The Tetris Company said it was "reviewing the matter" and that the company "was not involved in the creation of 'Build the Wall' and did not authorize or license the Tetris brand or intellectual property for the game." The company reiterated that message in a social media post Friday afternoon , writing that it "believe[s] in the power of connection and bringing people together, not dividing them."
P.S. The Tetris Company was not involved in the creation of 'Build the Wall'.
The Tetris Company has a long history of protecting its intellectual property via frequent takedown requests and legal proceedings against games that copy its gameplay and/or style. And while unofficial Tetris clones are still relatively easy to find , officially licensed versions of the game are available on everything from the Data Zapper M7000 to a giant plastic chicken McNugget .
In promoting the launch of the White House Arcade site, the White House social media team created parody videos mimicking the iconic start-up sequences from classic game consoles from Sega, Nintendo, and Sony. The Trump administration has previously used explicit Halo imagery to promote its military policies, a move that resulted in pointed silence from Microsoft .
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