5 minPolitics
‘Halo’ composer and GOP candidate says Las Vegas venue canceled tournament over political ties
Republican congressional candidate Marty O’Donnell, known for composing the “Halo” video game soundtrack, said a Las Vegas venue canceled his planned gaming tournament because of his political affiliations. He plans to host the event elsewhere.
Republican congressional candidate Marty O’Donnell, the composer behind the iconic “Halo” video game series, said a Las Vegas venue canceled his planned gaming tournament because of his political affiliations. O’Donnell, who is running for Congress in Nevada’s 3rd Congressional District, said he will host the event at another location instead.
O’Donnell told Fox News Digital that he had been organizing a “Halo” LAN party and tournament at the HyperX Arena, a venue on the grounds of the Luxor Hotel. The event was intended to celebrate the franchise’s 25th anniversary and encourage civic engagement among younger voters. “We spoke to them for over a month and all of a sudden, out of the blue, they came back to us, and they said, because of your political affiliations, we’re going to have to cancel,” he said.
The campaign provided an email from HyperX Arena representatives denying the cancellation was due to O’Donnell being a Republican. Instead, they cited “the political affiliations and election-related nature of the proposed program.” The Luxor Hotel, which rents space to HyperX Arena as a vendor, has hosted numerous political events in the past, including a Bernie Sanders press event, a Democratic Party caucus, and a California College Republican event as recently as 2024.
This is not the first time O’Donnell has faced a cancellation. He said he was also uninvited from a “Halo” 25th anniversary reunion at the SacAnime pop culture convention in California after comments he made about the alliance of the far-left and Islamism were taken out of context. Fox News Digital reached out to both HyperX Arena and SacAnime representatives but received no immediate replies.
Despite the setbacks, O’Donnell said he is determined to move forward. “Once we were rejected a couple of times now, we decided to take matters into our own hands,” he said, adding that he is searching for another venue. “I want all the fans out there to know that we are going ahead with this plan anyway. We are going to do this, it’s going to be a lot of fun.”
O’Donnell said a sign-up link will be posted on his congressional website, and the event is expected to take place around Oct. 9 or 10. He described it as a nostalgic gathering for gamers, complete with Doritos and Mountain Dew, and said he would play a few games himself.
The composer, who entered politics after a decades-long career writing music for video games, television commercials, and jingles, also had a message for fellow Republicans: do not underestimate gamers as a political force. He traced their growing political engagement back to GamerGate in 2014, when previously apolitical gamers pushed back online against what they saw as left-wing politics seeping into video games and gaming journalism. He said that movement resurfaced in 2024 amid controversies over consultancy firms promoting DEI initiatives in video games.
“There’s a very interesting phenomenon going on, and I saw it starting back a little over ten years ago with GamerGate,” O’Donnell said. “Gamers are tired of being taken advantage of by these corporations, and especially once what I would call the woke mind virus got into the corporations, and they started changing the games from being based on having fun with your friends, having heroes to play as your characters, and suddenly… All the things you loved are being changed, and you’re being preached at.”
Christina Hoff Sommers, senior fellow emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute, described GamerGate as a reaction to gaming journalists imposing a “social justice agenda” on games and accusing players of being “sexist,” “racist,” and “homophobic.” She said gamers fought back because they knew their world and recognized the criticism as a caricature.
O’Donnell suggested that many disaffected gamers, now aged 25 to 45, have become influential streamers and cultural commentators, changing how online political debates are waged. He argued this group is willing to vote for Republicans who push back against far-left politics, “because they are tired of being taken advantage of and preached at by the lefties and the woke people out there.”
