National Committee for Games Policy’s backstory: politics, religion, and ‘The Art of War 2’

Kenneth Tran wants you to believe that he is going to Washington, D.C. to solve gaming’s loot box problem. He is the director and founder of the National Committee for Games Policy, which announced its formation earlier this week with a press release that I reported on. At the time, I noted the sloppy language of the PR copy and tried to get in touch with Tran. Since then, I’ve spoken with him, exchanged several emails, and communicated with NCGP’s former vice chair, who is a teenager. What I’ve found over the past week is that Tran is an ambitious 27 year old who references books like The Art of Persuasion and Rules for Radicals. I’ve also found that he has multiple startups running at the same time covering religion, education, Republican election financing, and more his gaming organization is his latest scheme.

The NCGP story nagged at me since I published it on Monday. I began looking into it more on Tuesday morning and, on Wednesday, Forbes contributor Erik Kain, published an excellent story that focused on some of the inconsistencies, quirks, and past comments of Tran and the NCGP. Kain found a blog post where Tran spoke about his plans to start a “public policy think tank” with “Jack” (who I’ve confirmed is a 17-year old).