Episode Details

The UK government funded a chilling “anti-radicalization” video game called Pathways that’s being pushed into schools across the country. Don’t believe us? Play it.

In this Based Camp episode, Malcolm & Simone Collins play through the game and reveal how it psychologically punishes curiosity, punishes looking things up, punishes even moderate/middle-ground choices, and funnels every player toward “reeducation” counseling services run by the very company that made the game.

From demonizing basic questions about immigration, to warning kids they can go to prison for watching the “wrong” video online, to turning a hot goth girl (Amelia) into the face of evil right-wing radicalism — this is one of the most dystopian pieces of state-sponsored propaganda we’ve ever seen.

Is this the future of “preventing extremism”? Or is it straight-up psychological conditioning + chilling effect rolled into one creepy edutainment package?

Watch us break down every major choice path, the psychology behind it, and why even “just looking it up” gets you marked as radicalized.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. So. If you guys are on the internet and you’re like me, you’ve probably heard or seen videos talking about this video game that was made by the UK government designed to brainwash kids or augment kids political beliefs. Specifically, or, or, or from the perspective of the government.

Counter extreme beliefs. And I sort of blew it off when I first saw it. I thought it would be like dust born or something like that. Or one of the other. What

Simone Collins: is Dust born? I don’t know that,

Malcolm Collins: Dust Born was a game that somebody that USAID was funding gave a bunch of money to, that was just horrible.

The main character was just this horrible black, racist person. And they were. Pregnant and it was weird. But it was, it was more sort of funny to go through. Right? Yeah. Because they tried to compete in the mainstream gaming market and just nobody bought it, so it’s kind of irrelevant. Right. Okay.

The problem with this one is, is they’re learning and they’re adapting. And with this game. And I, and I had [00:01:00] seen it and I didn’t think anything of it. I was like, it cannot be that bad. I watched it and it’s, and then after I watched it, like, ‘cause I watched Adam go play through some of it. I’ll play some of those clips like really cut down for you guys.

I then played through every choice myself.

Simone Collins: So anyone can access the game. How did you find the game? Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And I realized it’s way more insidious than you would think. Just Google it. It’s, it’s called pathways. Really? Wow. Okay. It’s way more insidious than you would think about the way it structures things, the way it handles psychology, what it punishes players for.

And, also the way it gets to people. So unlike other games where it’s like, we’re just gonna put this out there and anyone can play it. This game is something that is given to educators in the, the whole district in the uk and they’re actively encouraged to like put it on school computers, have kids play it, you know, as part of classroom exercises.

And it. A really interesting thing about it that you may not get if you’re just watching the video, is the group that made it. The main other thing they do is like counseling for kids who [00:02:00] they, who are becoming radicalized. And a lot of the game is pushing you towards saying you need counseling,

Simone Collins: right?

Because the, the game centers around you plays Charlie and. They’re