Racists Produce High-Tech Hate Games

March 4, 2002 -- New software tools widely available on the Internet are helping hate groups jump on the video game bandwagon with offerings such as Ethnic Cleansing — where players become cyber-Klansmen and stalk minorities through a virtual urban landscape.

The technology to produce more realistic and immersive video games helped build what last year was a $6 billion entertainment software industry. And a recent report by the Anti-Defamation League says there is a rise in hate games on the Web.

White supremacy groups are using new software tools — which can be obtained for free on the Internet — to create video games promoting messages of hate.

The most notable example that has drawn the ADL's attention is Ethnic Cleansing from Resistance Records, an arm of the National Alliance neo-Nazi group. The game allows players to assume the persona of a Ku Klux Klan member or a "skinhead" gang member and kill minorities.

Offensive racial stereotypes and rock music with hate-filled lyrics are repeated throughout the game as the player competes toward the ultimate goal — killing a rocket-wielding Ariel Sharon.

William Pierce, founder of the National Alliance movement, defended the games, saying they were no more violent than other video games on the market.

"Do you ever see any video games that don't have violence in them?" Pierce says. "Our games are not for the purpose of sponsoring hatred. They're to give white kids a sense of hope, a sense that they can fight back."

Open Source to Open Hate?

However, critics say it's really a means for the group to spread its message of white supremacy.

"Throughout the whole game, there is information about National Alliance," says Brian Marcus, an Internet researcher with the ADL. "It's two steps beyond what we've seen previously."

That's because previously, it took a lot of computer programming know-how to create games that were of comparable quality to commercial video games such as Quake or Doom. But so-called open-source software — computer codes or routines written by and freely distributed among programmers on the Internet — has allowed the hate groups to custom-create their own high-quality hate games.

The ADL says Ethnic Cleansing uses a graphics engine — software that recreates visual objects — called Genesis3D. Like other open-source software, the code was designed by a team of programmers at Eclipse Entertainment to help others develop complex graphical applications — games and video conferencing software, for example — more quickly and cheaply.

Pierce says he is pleased by the ADL's comments.

"I was happy to see they pointed out our game is technologically and artistically far above any of the other games that have a racial theme," Pierce said.

‘There Isn’t Anything Anyone Can Do’

Wild Tangent, the software company that has held the copyright to Genesis 3D since its 1999 acquisition of Eclipse Entertainment, says the company has no direct involvement with the game.

"Any 'game engine' enables independent third parties to author any game of their choosing, no matter how objectionable its content is to us at Wild Tangent or to the public at large," Wild Tangent CEO Alex St. John said in a statement.

"We at Wild Tangent regret any association, no matter how distant, with the game engine highlighted in the Anti-Defamation League report and certainly do not support nor condone the use of our technologies to sponsor hatred or to recruit individuals to hate groups," the statement said.

And other developers who have worked with Genesis 3D are equally upset over the engine's use and the inability to do anything about it.

"It's crushing the name of a good engine and [the open-source] community," says Jean-Louis Clement, an independent developer who has used the engine to create an online virtual casino. "The point that is unfortunate is that there isn't anything anyone can do about it except to condemn it publicly."

Free Speech Challenges

Even opponents such as the ADL say very little can be done to prevent such games from being released in the United States, due to issues of free speech.

"I'm not sure if hate laws would apply to this," says the ADL's Marcus. "Even in the end, where you're killing Ariel Sharon, it's a satire. The defense would be that it's virtual. Clicking a mouse is not real."

Industry groups such as the International Game Developers Association also say there's very little they can do, since the game is sold directly through the Resistance Web site.

"These are not products commercially available or by any legitimate means," says Jason Della Rocca, a program director with IGDA.

Della Rocca says he is confident that hate games such as Ethnic Cleansing will ultimately be undone by the very nature of open-source software itself.

"This is a double-edged sword here," says Rocca. "The same way these guys took open source [and] used it to create something bad, the flip side is that someone could take these tools and create some great love story."

ABC News' Amanda Onion and TechTV's Jessica Rapaport contributed to this report.