As it has been detailed earlier this week by numerous publications, it seems that Barack Obama’s campaign has extended its reach into video games. Initial reports stated that gamers were seeing campaign advertisements in Burnout Paradise, but it looks like that was only the beginning…
According to Reuters, that was just phase one of the campaign blitz. A campaign spokesman said that based on the successful response of the first wave of advertisements, they were planning to expand to eighteen different Xbox 360 titles. It should be noted that this is not something nationwide. They have decided to focus on ten key battleground states which include Ohio, Iowa, Indiana, Montana, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Nevada, New Mexico, Florida and Colorado.
Gamers can expect to see political ads appearing as soon as today in games like “The Incredible Hulk,” “Guitar Hero 3,” “NASCAR 09,” “NBA Live 08,” and “NFL Tour.” While the games affected seem to be a bit scattershot, the campaign organizers have a specific demographic that they hope to hit:
“The 18-to-34-year-old male is the mainstream demographic for the hard-core video gamer,” said Van Baker, an analyst for Gartner Inc., a technology market research firm in San Jose, California. “They’re hard to get to because they don’t watch much TV and they don’t read a lot, so it’s a good venue to get that segment.” — Reuters
It is awesome to see that politicians are starting to see us as a demographic that is worthwhile. (Let’s just hope we’re not on the road to this.) Unfortunately, if this quote is an accurate reflection on the candidates opinion of gamers, then we have a long way to go. As far as I am concerned, the quote above gave the impression that politicians think of gamers as a collection of uneducated slackers, that are oblivious to the world around us. While I find this to be truly disheartening, I hope that one day we can shake this inaccurate stigma and be seen as what we really are: normal people.
Here at Games Are Evil we do not endorse any specific candidate, but we hope that you will take this message to heart and do your civic duty on election day.
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