Playing A Political Game

This Yahoo News story tells us that the Obama campaign has come up with a new way to expand its online presence…

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has opened up a new front in his battle with Republican John McCain for the White House: videogames.

The Obama campaign has placed advertisements for the candidate inside the online versions of some of the hottest-selling videogames in the United States.

Holly Rockwood, a spokeswoman for videogame giant Electronic Arts, told AFP the Obama campaign had purchased ads inside nine of EA's top titles.

The ads are appearing from October 6 to November 3 in Xbox 360 games such as "Burnout Paradise," "Madden 09," "Nascar 09," "NHL 09" and "Skate," Rockwood said.

She said the ads would be visible to players in 10 US states who play the Xbox games online against each other using Xbox Live.

Among the 10 states are several expected to be among the most hotly contested in the November 4 showdown between Obama and McCain.

"Not all of our games support dynamic in-game advertising but these ones lend themselves well to this kind of opportunity," Rockwood said.

"You're driving down the freeway, you're passing billboards and one of the ads you will see is for Obama.

I would say that that takes “product placement” to a whole new level.

As I read this, I realized that some enterprising game designer out there could have come up with something for this presidential election; I think they would have cleaned up. It wouldn’t have been as graphic as, say, “Grand Theft Auto” (fortunately), and it wouldn’t have had the same degree of action, but I think it would have worked.

Imagine selecting either the McBush or Obama candidate, and you have to work your way through progressively bigger crowds of people (shaking hands, kissing babies, cutting blue ribbons, signing autographs), either at campaign stops, supermarkets, train stations…you name it…within a fixed period of time. Along the way, you character has a chance to chug a water bottle for more energy, or something like that.

Also, when your character reaches a certain point, he has the chance to either continue working the crowd or stop and make a speech (giving the speech provides more points). However, during the speech, either the McBush or Obama candidate has to choose from a list of keywords to continue the speech and keep accumulating points; selecting the wrong keyword results in losing points and/or having to start over.

Just imagine this with a Wii, by the way, as opposed to Xbox or PlayStation (TMs for all three). If you thought bowling required a lot of effort, this would probably have doubled that (the only catch is, though, that nobody would want to play the game after the election).

As for the McBush candidate, he would have to point to the nitwit in the crowd holding the “Obama Equals Osama” placard while giving a speech to earn points, as well as the human mistake who calls out “Obama Is A Muslim!” on cue.

There are also all kinds of other ways to “juice it up” that I haven’t thought of, I’m sure.

And by the way, choosing the phrase “my friends” for the McBush character more than three times when giving the speech would automatically initiate system shut down (but just remember, it’s a feature, not a bug).