FILE PHOTO - Visitors play use keyboards as they play during the Gamescom 2012 fair in Cologne August 16, 2012. REUTERS/Ina Fassbender
Spend enough time hunting terrorists or wandering dystopian wastelands in online games and you’re bound to come across players hurling xenophobic and racist taunts at each other – from the openly Islamophobic in Europe to Korean and Japanese gamers bickering over disputed islands.
Take survival-shooter H1Z1: King of the Kill, currently the third-most popular on the world’s biggest online games platform. Matches in Asia are sometimes interrupted by the Red Army, a band of Chinese players who’ve won praise from local media for championing in-game nationalism. One tactic involves cornering rivals and forcing them to pay tribute to the motherland by saying “China number one.” Those who fail to comply are swiftly dispatched.
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