'Halo' composer, GOP candidate says venue canceled his event for political reasons; he will host it elsewhere

Marty O’Donnell, a Republican congressional candidate and composer for the "Halo" video game series, said his video game event was canceled by a venue in Las Vegas for vague political reasons, but he's resolved to host it somewhere else instead.

O'Donnell is running for Congress as a Republican in Nevada's 3rd Congressional District. The longtime video game composer entered politics after a decades-long career that also included writing music for television commercials and jingles.

O’Donnell spoke to Fox News Digital about how he planned to host a gaming event, specifically a "Halo" tournament where players gather to compete head-to-head in the same room rather than from their own homes. 

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This event would have been used to celebrate nostalgia for the iconic alien-fighting series and to boost civic engagement among young people as both a part of his campaign and a celebration of the franchise’s 25th anniversary.

"We were planning a Halo LAN (Local Area Network) party and tournament here in Las Vegas at HyperX Arena," he said. 

"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,' which, of course meant, 'Now it's up to us to figure out a way to still do what we want to do, but we just can't depend on HyperX Arena."

The HyperX Arena is a business on the grounds of the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas. O’Donnell’s campaign provided Fox News Digital with an email from HyperX Arena’s representatives denying that O’Donnell’s event there was canceled due to him being a Republican. Rather, it was due to "the political affiliations and election-related nature of the proposed program."

The Luxor Hotel itself, from which the HyperX Arena rents its venue space as a vendor, has hosted numerous political events over the years, including a Bernie Sanders press event, a Democratic Party caucus and a California College Republican event as recently as 2024. 

Fox News Digital contacted the HyperX Arena’s representatives and received no immediate reply.

O’Donnell said he was uninvited from the Halo 25th anniversary reunion at the SacAnime pop culture convention in California after he said his comments about the alliance of the far left and Islamism were taken out of context. Fox News Digital also reached out to the SacAnime team and received no reply.

While O’Donnell lamented that "it seems like I'm being canceled because I'm a Republican running for Congress," he declared he is resolute about hosting the "Halo" tournament.

"Once we were rejected a couple of times now, we decided to take matters into our own hands," he said, revealing he is searching for another event 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 there would be a link on his congressional website to sign up, and it would happen around Oct. 9 or Oct. 10.

This, he said, would be a nostalgic event for gamers, likely with some Doritos and Mountain Dew, and he will play a few games himself.

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O’Donnell had a clear message for his fellow Republicans that they should not underestimate gamers as a political force. He traced their growing political engagement back to GamerGate in 2014, when previously apolitical gamers revolted online against what they saw as left-wing politics seeping into video games and gaming journalism. 

This movement roared back to life in 2024 amid controversies about consultancy firms pushing DEI into video games.

"There's a very interesting phenomenon going on, and I saw it starting back a little over ten years ago with GamerGate," he said. 

"That is that 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, and there's an agenda to video games, there's an agenda to TV shows, there is a woke agenda to the movies that are out."

Christina Hoff Sommers, senior fellow emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute, described the Gamergate movement as having been sparked in the early 2010s when "the gamer journalists, many of the leading websites for gamers were imposing this social justice agenda on their games and telling them they were 'sexist' and 'racist' and 'homophobic,' and it was so unfair. 

"Games are so diverse, and the gamers, they know their world, and they knew this was a caricature," she added. "So, they fought back. I was very impressed because I have never seen anyone sort of successfully push back."

O'Donnell went on to suggest that, since Gamergate, many disaffected but social media-savvy gamers ranging from ages 25–45 have gone on to become influential streamers and cultural commentators online today, having changed how online political debates are waged. 

This group, he suggested, is willing to vote for Republicans who can actually push back against the tide of far-left politics "because they are tired of being taken advantage of and preached at by the lefties and the woke people out there."

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One key development in this demographic, he said, is that they are politically aware and tapped into culture and politics in an entirely new way, to the point they, like him, have chosen to get involved.

"The interesting thing that I've seen now talking to a lot of these folks, either on their podcasts or their streaming sites, is that they are now politically aware. They realize, as my friend Dean Cain likes to say, ‘You might not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you,’" he said. 

"These guys are starting to realize that if they want to make the changes, if they don't like the changes that have been forced down their throats, they're going to have to start to get involved."