Reminder to the media: Research video games before reporting on them

Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old charged with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, once pursued a career in video game development. This raises many genuine questions, like what Discord communities he frequented, how gaming culture may have influenced his political beliefs, and whether or not he used multiplayer gaming’s notoriously unmonitored communication tools to share his plans with others. 

It does not mean Among Us turned him into a killer. 

This is a short, sincere reminder to reporters unfamiliar with gaming to learn about the medium before they report on it — the same way they would attempt to research the particulars of their subject before publishing a story, whether that’s a foreign war, a scientific breakthrough, or the behind-the-scenes drama of city hall. A reporter can’t be expected to be an expert in everything they cover; they can be expected to speak with experts and learn from them.

Unfortunately, mainstream reports have a decades-long history of broadly failing to report confidently on video games, particularly as they relate to real-world violence. In the late 1990s and through the 2000s, local news and network news alike infamously responded to shootings by flooding televisions with stories of Doom training a generation to kill. These days, the moral panic is often subtler, though no less absurd, often nodding to a connection between games and violence without explicitly stating one.

It’s also a reminder for media consumers to be skeptical of false or reaching connections made between video games and murder. There is no causal link between violent video games and real-life violent behavior, according to research from the University of Oxford in 2019, the American Psychological Association in 2020, and the University of London in 2021.

The author of that third study, Dr. Agne Suziedelyte, said, “These results suggest that violent video games may agitate children, but this agitation does not translate into violence against other people — which is the type of violence which we care about most.”

Which brings us back to Among Us. Today, NBC News reported that a member of a Discord group in which Mangione participated claims the suspect had played Among Us. NBC News builds an entire story around this detail:

Luigi Mangione, who was arrested and charged with murder in the shooting death of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, once belonged to a group of Ivy League gamers who played assassins, a member of the group told NBC News.

In the game, called “Among Us,” some players are secretly assigned to be killers in space who perform other tasks while trying to avoid suspicion from other players.

But context is key. Among Us has been downloaded 500 million times and is popular among people of all ages — many (if not most) of them being children. That’s because Among Us is a family-friendly game in which players use social deduction to spot a “killer” amongst their crew of astronauts that look like colorful, anthropomorphic beans. It’s much like the classic in-person party games Mafia and Werewolf. Among Us became popular during the COVID-19 pandemic thanks to its simple gameplay and cartoon aesthetics that have more in common with Looney Tunes than military training simulators. 

In the NBC News report, the Discord member noted the irony of a suspected assassin playing a game that involves assassination. And it is ironic. But it’s not a national news story without more context, in the same way it’s not a national news story if a corrupt landlord once played Monopoly.

Video games have become the dominant entertainment medium of the moment. Mangione’s connections with the hobby will and should be part of the reporting about his identity. But as with anything else — his upbringing, his schooling, his relationships, his politics — Mangione’s gaming habits should be treated as a piece of a greater whole.

It’s not national news that someone simply played one of the most popular games in the world. Even if they’ve been charged with murder.