In 2013, former National Security Agency (NSA) employee and whistleblower Edward Snowden shocked the world when he revealed that the government knew more than anyone may have suspected. In a series of leaks published in The Guardian, it was revealed that the NSA was “collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily,” “monitoring calls of over 35 world leaders,” and conducting over 200 offensive cyber-operations.
The magnitude of these leaks is so immense that they are still being discussed nearly ten years later. One particular leak, published in December 2013, described a 2008 NSA document in which the NSA stated their intent to monitor video games such as “Second Life” and “World of Warcraft,” describing them as “‘target-rich communications network[s]’ where intelligence targets could ‘hide in plain sight.’” This has sparked debate about whether or not digital worlds have the potential to serve as a host for unconstitutional activities and the implications for each player’s experience.
UCI’s film and media professor Peter Krapp is leading the conversation. Krapp is affiliated with the Departments of English, Music and Informatics at UCI and has a variety of research interests, spanning from cultural memory to cryptologic history to aesthetic communications. He was recently awarded a senior fellowship at the Zukunftskolleg Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Konstanz where he and colleagues organized a workshop on cybersecurity in online gaming, in addition to giving an individual talk on the value of the internet as a museum of computing.
Video games occupy a unique position in entertainment. They’re more immersive than books, movies or music, and players are not only invited to peek into different worlds, but are offered a variety of ways to directly partake in them, including via interactions with other players. If the NSA were monitoring phone calls, they would also take an interest in in-game communications, which are just as legitimate as text conversations, phone calls or direct messages on social media platforms. However Krapp pointed out that, “[m]ost gamers go online expecting their virtual interactions to be separate from work and everyday life, an escape, a harmless activity. Finding that these networks were being systematically combed for potential terrorist activity, whether recruiting or planning or communicating, came as a surprise to players.”
It is also worth noting that not all games are created equal. The games discussed in the initial leaks — namely “World of Warcraft” and “Second Life” — fall under the category of massively multiplayer online role-playing games, or MMORPGs. In MMORPGs, players take on the role of a character or “avatar,” assuming complete control over the avatar’s actions in order to complete various in-game tasks. A key feature of these games is interaction between players, usually through the formation of some sort of group such as a guild or clan.
An early, widely-cited study by American researcher Nicholas Yee – who also created the Daedalus Project, dedicated to researching the psychology and sociology of MMORPGs – noted that “MMORPG users become highly invested in these environments, and serious social phenomena occur in these environments that can create, shape and restructure relationships in the material world.” Similarly, Krapp argues that while games often have their own messages baked in, simply waiting for players to uncover them, “[online] groups can [also] influence people. We should not dismiss ‘play’ as a meaningless or non-oriented activity but recognize it as something that can shape our behavior (and this can show itself in team work, in communications, in attitudes to others, etc).” Though these avatars may be viewed as an escape into a fantasy world, the interactions that occur in the roleplay setting may influence real life.
This raises a variety of questions for players and developers alike: how do players’ interactions with game environments change when they are aware that there is someone virtually peering over their shoulder? Are video games any more worthy of national surveillance than text and phone conversations? Does the anonymity that comes with in-game avatars have any impact on player behavior that makes them more interesting? Has the knowledge of digital surveillance, or at least an interest in it, impacted the way games are designed and operated?
Krapp emphasizes that it’s just as important to ask these questions for ourselves as it is to seek answers from others. He considers the Snowden leaks a learning experience, inviting gamers and non-gamers alike to think “about their privacy online, about their responsibility for in-game interactions, and about implications for the ludic, legal, and economic environments of virtual worlds and multiplayer online games.”
But are these games, including MMORPGs, actually hosts of threats to national security? The general answer seems to be no, but like all communication platforms, they have the potential to be. Krapp notes that, “[m]ost gamers surveyed in the aftermath of the Snowden revelations were taken aback that their online refuge had become so intensely politicized and surveilled.” Additionally, the documents discussed in the initial 2013 leak “contain no indication that the surveillance ever foiled any terrorist plots, nor is there any clear evidence that terror groups were using the virtual communities to communicate as the intelligence agencies predicted.” In a 2017 lecture on virtual espionage in MMORPGs, Krapp discussed a study conducted by the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) which looked at how popular MMORPG “World of Warcraft” could potentially be used in terrorist activities. In the slide shown below, the analysts at SAIC showed how an in-game discussion of a “raid” in “World of Warcraft” could actually be a cover for a real life raid on Washington D.C. when an actual map of Washington D.C. was placed over a specific “World of Warcraft” map.
This is all hypothetical, though, and seems to be proactive planning for the sake of security. Krapp’s work aims to draw our attention not to threats waiting to be uncovered, but rather how in-game actions may create an environment that is open to threats, especially as more and more people join the gaming scene. Krapp states, “[t]he more popular online gaming becomes, the more important it seems to be that we carefully reflect on the choices that shape those online environments … We cannot simply forget about [surveillance] or be in denial about it – it does change players’ view of their games.”
Teresa Pham is an Entertainment Staff Writer for the winter 2023 quarter. She can be reached at teresaap@uci.edu.