A spotlight on Alt-right: Red-Pill blues in Gaming and its solutions

The alt-right pipeline has undeniably squirmed its way into gaming. But does the shallow criticisms it presents have enough ammunition for it to stay relevant?

This is a small snippet of streamer ‘Asmongold’ (sometimes known as zackrawrr) talking about his standards for playable women in gaming and what improvements would make a “welcome change”, and his reaction to the justifiable backlash to his ‘criticisms’ on recent game release ‘South of Midnight’ (Compulsion games, 2025).

WARNING: This clip contains sensitive language

Now usually this would be someone relatively unknown, acting out for fifteen seconds of fame, as many would agree that this type of behaviour, especially in that of a livestream, is dangerously misogynistic. So you would expect the viewership and people actively tuning into his content to be low.

Right?

Here is the most recent chart for the highest rated North-American streamers as of the first quarter of 2025, and another showing the most viewed streamers this month.

As of right now, he is one of the leading voices in gaming commentary, meaning many people specifically in the gaming community align with his views, as bigoted and self-centered as they are.

This is someone who is highly influential, especially to a younger, more impressionable audience. Whether or not you know who he is (which if you don’t, consider it a blessing), this is an issue that may affect you in the future, and you might not even know it.

So how did this happen?

The ongoing wave of masculinity centred around ‘red-pilled’ alt-right influences capitalising off an impressionable audience of straight males, young and old, is heavily affecting various parts of culture and youth.

The red pill, being a political metaphor drawn from cult classic film “The Matrix”, is usually a symbol of becoming aware of societal control and breaking free from the hierarchal structures that maintain societies through fascist control.

Ironically, this ideology, has become a trojan horse for fascist ideals to become a central core of masculine aesthetics, and has made way for a string of homophobia, ableism, racism, xenophobia, misogyny and in some cases Naziism within highly populated online communities.

What we can do now?

Rather than elaborating on the decline, a sentiment expressed years before this trend, I want to argue how gaming in its current state offers solutions to counteract this ongoing trend of hateful rhetoric and the real problems these trends don’t talk about.

I talked to Ailin Gist, game developer and programmer for Independent award-winning studio Chaos Theory Games to see how certain elements of the red-pilled movement becomes nullified through the progressive nature of independent gaming and how it can be translated into changing mindsets about the benefits of not just supporting independent developers, but gaming as a whole.

Independent thought to the Far-right is a near-mythical conceptualization and doesn’t exist in much of the rhetoric. As a result of this, much of the youth and people endorsing red-pilled aesthetics tend to lack key cognitive thought. In terms of Triple A games, it has had some severe consequences.

Concord, being a widely broadcast failing from triple A studio Firewalk studios and published by Sony Interactive entertainment, has pointed towards the downfall of the triple A game model, where a wider focus is now being broadcast on the Independent communities; not only as a means of more flexibility, but as a counteraction to the ongoing effect the alt-right has on major gaming studios.

However, despite the benefits of independent games and their communities, there are still problems revolving around individual representations of red-pilled masculinity, like Asmongold.

The “role” role-models play

There are 2 key negatives to this: the higher level of youth directly interacting with negative role models and the lack of thought and distinctive moral compass from those who are benefiting most from the youth’s endorsement.

Gaming can be seen as a ‘problem’ to this, but I would argue it’s the presence of online gaming influences, the environments that allows for certain characteristics to thrive, and their lack of moderation due to the financial benefits they help establish that are the key fundamental issues with gaming, rather than just the typical act of playing video games causing a dysfunction in young children.

It is in the rise of commentary that accentuates the lack of critical thinking skills and undermines some of the key problems that are affecting the general reception of games nowadays:

With this in mind, it is important to recognise that gaming as a medium is incredibly important today, especially for a younger audience requiring more direct interaction. And when considering that the rising population of bigotry stems from a lack of media literacy and a lack of potential exposure to influential works, gaming as a solution, namely independent games unaffected by corporate interference, becomes a lot more prominent.

So why independent games?

So what kind of games are the most beneficial to contest this? For Ailin, the benefits of the independent gaming sphere comes from 2 approaches:

First, the focus on having a wide brevity of different experiences to feel inspired or help understand potential thematic elements in gaming, which can be exacerbated in independantly made experiences.

Second, the community approach: Independent developers are a lot closer towards both the community members and towards each other through the more unified creative experience. Ailin has presented seminars on the importance of maintaining wellbeing in a studio environment, similar to that of independent developers.

There are also many success stories to be shared that started from the story of an independent studio and have managed to prove that success doesn’t always come from the Triple-A studio:

Not only is the alt-right movement directly affecting cognitive thoughts and behavioural patterns in children and young adults, but it is creating a loss of translation to the experience of gaming, and by effect, the majority of media and art in the first place.

Video games are capable of telling stories in a uniquely interactive way, unlike any other storytelling form. The medium has gone on to inspire audiences everywhere and bring people closer together through a shared immersive experience.

Therefore, I belive it is the unique enjoyment and creation of Independent games that will eventually win the war of attrition against the embodiment of cognitive thought and destruction.

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