Meet 'Plantifa' and 'Lil Pistons:' Two Anti-War Activists Building a Demilitarized Gaming Community
Leaders of “Gamers for Peace” share the stakes and opportunities behind building a veteran-led Discord
The existence of a group like “Gamers for Peace,” in a time of heightened militarization in gaming, really just makes a lot of sense to me.
It makes sense that the U.S. army and pentagon would seek to remedy failing recruitment efforts by attempting to militarize video gaming and hobby spaces; apparently the British Army has also misadventured into recruitment efforts on Fortnite. These spaces are full of minors, vulnerable to heroic fantasies about how ‘cool’ it would be to pilot drones or how ‘fun’ it would be to shoot heavy artillery. All while never really getting into the harder stuff like killing people or facing a life-time of devastating traumas.
And, it just makes sense that a group of anti-war veterans, allies, and gamers would lead an organized community to confront these manipulative efforts head-on. These are people who were often misled during recruitment themselves and have faced so much loss and pain from it all that protecting young people from enlistment feels like a moral responsibility.
My finding out about Gamers for Peace’s work didn’t come from one of their many, many, many appearances in national press and media. Rather, I was sitting with the discomfort of how violent and sometimes toxic gaming can be (period) and I did a simple search. A few choice key words later and I was introducing myself to an active, kind, and welcoming discord community of veterans and gamers.
Despite being a gamer who has dabbled in single-player war games (the Metal Gear series being a favorite) – I have never entered into online multiplayer war-game spaces. Additionally, I am also refugee-rooted and am currently witnessing a genocide against my people. At a time like this, I knew that I could not venture into the many questions I had about demilitarized gaming without some kind of support at my back.
My first moments within the “Gamers for Peace” Discord server were exactly what I was looking for. Two users, Lil Pistons and Plantifa chimed in to welcome me to what they’ve co-created – you can see our first interaction below ❣️
It didn’t take long for me to learn what Gamer’s for Peace truly is – another lesson in the transformative power of community and shared purpose. So much more than a topical chat or a place to game – Plantifa, Lil Pistons, and others built a little digital world committed to warmth with fellow veterans, solidarity with those whom war has harmed, and creativity while trying to disarm the threat that militarization can have on young people’s lives.
Gamers for Peace is also a place where pet photos reign supreme and everybody gets a happy birthday message.
Here are Lil Pistons and Plantifa, sharing more about Gamer’s for Peace in their own words.
I n t e r v i e w
PitaBreadFace: What is “Gamers for Peace” – is it a community, is it an organizing project, or both? Can you tell me a brief story about its beginnings and stated goals? Or what was going on in the world at the time?
“We came out from deep in covid times. Everything had moved online, even more than before. This included military recruiting on Twitch and in gaming spaces. A group of veterans saw this and decided to garner some efforts against it.”
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Lil Pistons: Our original goal was truth-in-recruitment, which often consists of veterans sharing their military experience stories and highlighting where the US military and its recruiters may not be giving all the details on what it means to enlist. In the beginning, we were connecting with other leftist post-9/11 veteran organizations like Left Flank and About Face with the goal of confronting military recruitment directly in streaming and esports spaces. We had a robust streaming schedule on Twitch and were monitoring military esports social media accounts to figure out a good strategy for direct counter recruitment.
I remember the first streaming show I did on Twitch was with members SmedleyButlerWasRight and HighlySensitiveUnicorn and it was called "How to talk to people without being extra: How do we reach the apolitical, fence-sitters, or even people with opposing viewpoints when talking about the realities of military service, war, and truth in recruiting?" We were so awkward! We didn't know each other very well yet and none of us had livestreamed before. We played Rocket League very poorly for an hour and talked about the topic. I was exhausted at the end!
As time went on, the community side part of the project expanded. It was inevitable because we spent so much time working and talking with each other over Discord, Zoom, and Twitch. It started as an organizing project, but it became a community first and organizing project second.
Plantifa: We came out from deep in covid times. Everything had moved online, even more than before. This included military recruiting on Twitch and in gaming spaces. A group of veterans saw this and decided to garner some efforts against it. I joined in pretty early on when all we had were a handful of usernames in a discord. The stated goal was to get the military off of twitch or at least to make their influence significantly less.
PitaBreadFace: Tell me about yourselves – what drew you to this group and what has it meant to you?
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Plantifa: I'm a Marine Corps veteran. I was seeing veterans' spaces that did not seem to align with how I felt about my service. I felt (and still do) feel very conflicted about it. I am proud of my accomplishments, but I cannot reconcile having participated in a violent imperialist system I was broadly blind to when I joined. It became difficult to engage in spaces from that point of view. So I catch wind of this group that looks at a lot of recruiting as predatory and embedded in a system that is inherently violent, imperialist, and thrives when people are without alternatives. I was like, "yes this is it. This is for me." I was absolutely right. It really has meant the world to me to be a part of a community that believes in wanting things to be better for everyone and actively imagines a better world. They have come through for me at every turn whether or not anyone within it actually knows, in intangible and tangible ways. Just having people with these shared values together has been tear-jerkingly beautiful.
Lil Pistons: Part of my job is facilitating the esports program at the community college where I work. The national esports organization we belonged to had a Discord server, and a coach started asking if anyone else's players were getting calls and messages from military recruiters. The coach said the students did not want to talk to the recruiters or join the military, and they didn't know how to stop the recruiters from bothering the esports team members.
Later in the semester I saw a Marine sponsored esports tournament posted in the Discord. I mentioned this to my partner, who is a Navy veteran and member of Veterans for Peace. It was upsetting to me because I do not like efforts to militarize youth (story for another time - look up the Young Marines program). A couple of months later my partner showed me a Veterans for Peace social media post announcing the Gamers for Peace initiative and I joined the first Zoom call in January 2021.
PitaBreadFace: I know one of the original stated goals of “Gamers for Peace” is to disrupt military recruitment in gaming – can you describe what recruitment in gaming looks like to an outsider and why it is effective?
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Plantifa: So, these "not recruiter" servicemembers would log onto Twitch and simply game. They would claim they are not recruiting, just playing games and talking about how great the military is. They would be "available for questions" and happily take people's information if anyone was interested. Most of the services, especially the army, had a discord where people, including very young people, would have access to the streamers and actual recruiters. The thing with these "not recruiter" streamers is they generally had the same training as recruiters and served the same purpose. If it looks and quacks, and walks and has all the biological functions of a duck, then does it matter if it is not technically a duck to anyone but an ornithologist? This is what we had an issue with. There was a lack of transparency and also honesty. They would block people or punish them for asking about atrocities committed by the Army or any other military branch.
Nowadays they are less active on Twitch. I cannot help but feel the media attention on them has played a role in this decision. Some of our bigger wins were getting our expertise and narrative on it in major news media so whatever caused it, it feels like a win.
Recruiting in these spaces still happens. The Army and now Space Force still have Esports teams that compete in competitions and go to conventions. They put on a certain rosey view of the military and what life is like. Similar to playing a game of Call of Duty, the inherent assumption is that what you're doing is right or at least well-intentioned. You have to kill the "bad guys" right? And in this way, with the Esports teams and such, any pushback can be met with, "we're just playing games." It becomes insidious because it is no different than taking a kid to see some tanks and how cool they are without providing any context when they are old enough to understand. It's about making informed decisions, and if you are dominating a narrative in hobby spaces like this, then you aren't allowing for that.
Lil Pistons: The military is capitalizing on a phenomenon known as parasocial interaction, and they aren't trying to hide it. Business Insider ran a few articles on Army eSports and they have some real gems. For example, this quote from Lt. Col. Kirk Duncan, Army eSports:
"There are certain young people that game that we can't actively recruit because of their age but if we can build that interest in them when they are young, when it comes time for them to make decisions about what they want to do with their future, we hope that their experience interacting with the esports team will plant a seed that, hey, maybe I can be a soldier."
Parasocial interaction is when an individual forms a strong emotional bond with someone who doesn’t even know they exist - think people who feel extremely close to celebrities and pop stars. These military esports personnel stream for hours every day on Twitch, post on social media, and develop an on-screen persona to connect with viewers, and very young viewers at that!
Another gem from a 2019 Business Insider interview:
“We have to confront this question of, will we wait until they’re 17, or will we start talking to them at age 12, 13, 14, 15, when they form the set of things they are thinking about doing with their life? And, particularly if their parents or other close family members never served, the option either may not occur to them or could be completely written off. If we wait until they’re 17 or 18, we will not be the first impression. . .Others will have made that for us.”--Dr. E. Casey Wardynski, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs under Trump
PitaBreadFace: What tactics do you undertake to meet your opposition in online gaming spaces and how do you meet new people?
“It’s incredibly difficult to break the algorithm bubble because of the sheer volume of content out there, so working with organizations and people who are established online is essential. Our best successes have come from partnering with other organizations and having good branding.”
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Plantifa: We tended to steer clear of directly meeting opposition unless we had some numbers. We would have a couple of us go into chat and share a more realistic view of what joining the military is actually like. We've gone to gaming conventions and simply talked to people about what we're about and our perspective. Most are really engaged once we mention it. A lot of times people would join in after reading an article or hearing about us on a podcast.
Lil Pistons: It's incredibly difficult to break the algorithm bubble because of the sheer volume of content out there, so working with organizations and people who are established online is essential. Our best successes have come from partnering with other organizations and having good branding. The episode of the podcast "It Could Happen Here" that featured two Gamers for Peace members is still one of the top ways people find us and our Discord.
We also attracted a lot of attention right away from organizations such as the US State Department and the Council on American-Islamic Relations who, during Covid lockdown, were trying to figure out how to connect with younger people virtually. We come up easily because it's not very common to see the words "gamers" and "peace" together. We've had members participate on national panels and news articles. Finally, we had a Gamers for Peace member who designed our very eye-catching logo and our Twitch streaming overlays were designed around the logo, so we had a good foundation to start from in a realm where aesthetics are very important. We also had the support of Veterans for Peace at the start of the project, which was huge.
PitaBreadFace: Are there any notable wins (successful disruptions, community formations, resource sharing) that have come of this group that feel important to uplift?
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Plantifa: I remember getting a handful of young folks come in saying the old adage "I'm thinking of joining, what do you guys think?" We would share our perspectives, our experiences, and just tell them the truth a recruiter wouldn't. That way they can at least make the right choice for them with less coercion. We cannot compete with the push factors of no universal healthcare, a crap job market, exponential college costs, and etc. We can only tell them what to expect. That always felt like a win. We have gotten a few folks who have watched our streams and self-reported feeling like they have changed perspectives. We are in the process of making zines and table kits for truth-in-recruitment purposes now!
Lil Pistons: We have a campaign on Twitch titled "Streamers/Creators should be able to opt-out of military recruitment ads" that has over 500 signatures right now, and these were collected without paid advertising. I think with a little advertising money, we may be able to hit the 1,000 mark.
PitaBreadFace: Could you share any anecdotal stories that have come from this group? Specific and personal interactions that gamers have had that hit at the core purpose of this group?
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Plantifa: Being able to go onto a known Al Jazeera program and talk about the harms that unfettered recruiting can do for all communities was a really defining moment. I was there with other veterans who were making great differences. It felt really surreal to be sharing expertise I had on online/gaming recruiting, and being able to have that be put in context of a militaristic system by an actual journalist was incredible.
Lil Pistons: To do truth-in-recruitment is to ask veterans to relive their trauma and regrets over and over for the sake of informing young people about the very real risks of military service, risks that recruiters will do everything they can to minimize or exclude. One of these risks is military sexual trauma, and a few of our veteran members came on the Rocket League stream to talk about their experiences. I think that was an extremely powerful example of truth-in-recruitment and those who participated are extremely resilient people.
PitaBreadFace: What advice would you give to newbies who want to use discord to create community around a common set of values or for people who have a shared experience?
“Don’t be afraid to literally just talk to people about it. “oh if you’re passionate about ___, I know this discord that people are in that talk about it/share resources/organize.” It really goes a long way”
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Plantifa: Don't be afraid to literally just talk to people about it. "oh if you're passionate about ___, I know this discord that people are in that talk about it/share resources/organize." It really goes a long way and the worst case scenario is they would never open the link. Realistically though, they probably will. People are desperately seeking something to grasp to make them feel like they can make a difference.
Lil Pistons: I would say if you want to use Discord or any technology as your main source of organizing, beware of burnout. As a group we were very intense in the beginning -- lots of messages, Zoom meetings, streaming, showing up in the chat in other streams either to counter-recruit or show support, etc. -- and the workload for the projects and goals we had was a lot for the number of people involved. I would say it was pretty rare for someone to at least not check-in on Discord every day to see what was going on, answer a question, etc., and soon people were maxed out. Using tech, especially tech that can go with you everywhere, means you have to be really disciplined about taking time away from the work each week. Establish as a community that one of your values will be stepping away regularly in order to rest and recharge.