The White House website on Thursday unveiled Arcade, a collection of five low-resolution video games built to promote different parts of President Donald Trump's agenda, according to Fortune, which cited reporting from the Associated Press.
'Build the Wall' is a Tetris knockoff that turns the classic block-stacking game into an effort to 'Protect the border from the coming horde.' In 'Rio Run,' modeled on the mobile game Snake, an icon resembling Trump runs around gathering potential border crossers.
'Supply Line,' a condensed version of the arcade classic Tapper, tasks players with rejecting food items that don't meet 'Make America Healthy Again' standards as they move down an assembly line.
Two more games are set over the skies of the nation's capital. In 'Flappy Bill,' an eagle carries a bill across the National Mall. In 'Trump Savings Tycoon,' players collect money flying through the air to 'Fill your kids' Trump Accounts' — the administration's savings plan that offers $1,000 to every child born during Trump's term.
The rollout was announced on social media with animations parodying the loading screens of Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo consoles. In one post, the Sega logo morphs into the word 'MAGA.'
The Tetris Company pushed back within a day. In a Friday statement, it said it 'was not involved in the creation of Build the Wall and did not authorize or license the Tetris brand or intellectual property for the game.' The company noted that the object of the original Tetris is to avoid building a wall, adding that 'for more than 40 years, Tetris has brought people together across generations and cultures through play and joy.' It said it is 'currently reviewing the matter.'
The games are free to play on the White House site and require no purchase or download.
Behind the pixelated wrapper sits a real policy the White House wants voters to remember: Trump Accounts, which put $1,000 of taxpayer-backed seed money into a savings vehicle for every child born during this administration. That is the kind of tangible, individually owned asset — not a bureaucratic entitlement — that gives families a stake in markets from birth, and it is worth more column space than the retro graphics wrapped around it.
The Tetris dispute, meanwhile, is a private intellectual-property matter, not a scandal. A company defending its trademark is exercising the same property rights this outlet defends everywhere else; the White House would do well to settle it quickly rather than let a clever messaging tool become a distraction. The administration's instinct to meet voters in casual, low-stakes formats instead of press releases is sound. The execution, this time, cut a corner it didn't need to cut.
