White House Arcade sparks Tetris backlash over ‘build the wall’ game

The White House has launched its own browser-based arcade, and one of the games has already prompted a public rebuke. The site, live since Thursday, features five playable games tied to administration priorities, with a sixth slot still blank and labelled "a new adventure awaits".

The source of the conflict is the game called "Build the Wall", with a subtitle of "Zombie Border Siege", and this game uses Tetris game mechanics of putting blocks one above another to prevent an incoming horde from crossing the border, which results in the message "BORDER BREACHED".

The Tetris Company has made a statement on their Instagram page and expressed their opinion that "we believe in the power of connection and bringing people together, not dividing them," and after saying this, they noted explicitly, "The Tetris Company was not involved in the creation of 'Build the Wall.' We take copyright infringement very seriously." 

A Tetris company representative said to Variety that there was no licence request to use the Tetris brand.

Beyond the Tetris-style game, the arcade includes Supply Line, where players sort food along a conveyor belt into school-lunch and reject bins, and Trump Savings Tycoon, built around the administration's child savings initiative and set against a backdrop of the Reflecting Pool and a Washington skyline under construction.

Another game with the theme of immigration is called “Rio Run” and takes an idea of a traditional snake game in the context of border patrol. The social media posts featuring the arcade game have also mentioned the Xbox, Nintendo, and Sega brands, but none of them made any official statements.

It’s not the first time that the administration has tried to use gaming-related messages.

George Osborn, author of "Power Play: Videogames, Politics, and the Battle for Global Influence", told The Guardian the content "riffs on widely known popular culture in order to cut through", describing its tone as deliberately chaotic in a way suited to the social platforms it's shared on.