Gamification of Terror—Power Games as Liminal Spaces

Cases of domestic terrorism have increased in the last few years. Although executed in often remote locations worldwide, they share a lot of resemblances, the most striking ones of which have resulted in their recent gamified character as seen in achievement systems and first-person shooter esthetics. This chapter is an attempt to understand the so-called “gamification of terror” by looking for answers not in videogames per se but in their capacity to build communities, however destructive they might turn. The authors propose to see gamified acts of terror as dark rituals “played out” in liminal spaces to argue with the anthropologist Victor Turner.