If Hillary Clinton had won the Democratic nomination, the question of whom the avid gamer should vote for in the next presidential election would have been easy: anyone but Hillary Clinton. Her Senate history was scattered with failed attempts to regulate games and frequent calls to investigate industry bodies, leaving no question that a new Clinton White House would challenge the industry status quo.

But Clinton didn’t win, and with her defeat the situation has become murkier: To the voter whose single issue is videogames, who is now a better choice for president? Though the situation is no longer so clear-cut, Senator Obama and Senator McCain (as well as running mates Senator Joe Biden and Governor Sarah Palin) do differ in opinion on several political matters that are critical to industry health. These are the things you as a gamer should know before you cast your ballot in November.

Note: None of the text in this article should be taken as an endorsement from Edge-Online. Edge-Online has not endorsed either candidate.



Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL)

Of all the politicians involved in the presidential race, Obama has spoken the most frequently about videogames. He has publicly expressed his love for Pong, though he also admitted that Pong was the last videogame he has actually played. Still, a politician willing to admit to playing any sort of game is rare.

But then Obama has always been quick to show that he doesn’t hold the medium in the highest respect. He frequently references videogames as shorthand for youth inactivity and apathy, the most famous example of this being from a speech he gave in Austin in February 2007. There, he implored young people to “turn off the TV and stop playing GameBoy” because “we’ve got work to do.” In 2006, Obama’s campaign returned a $500 contribution from then-ESA president Doug Lowenstein. No reason for the act was ever given.

Obama does actually have an official stance on federal videogame regulation. Speaking to Common Sense Media in late 2007, he expressed his belief that the industry has the opportunity to regulate itself via better informational campaigns and tools for parents. If the industry does not take the chance to improve this system, however, he said his administration would indeed step in. In the same interview, the Senator stated that he would back a federal study examining videogame’s effect on childhood cognitive development.

According to the Obama campaign’s official stance, Obama is against levying additional taxes on the Internet. He is also the politician at the forefront of supporting federally mandated net neutrality—such laws would keep the Internet from becoming a tiered service where only certain content (from content providers willing to pay an additional fee) would be delivered at maximum throughput. These two issues could have a significant effect on the future of digital distribution, particularly for smaller, independent distributors. The senator is also strongly in favor of rigorously protecting intellectual property rights and redefining the FCC standard of “broadband” to a higher minimum bandwidth.



Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE)

Biden does not have a significant history with videogame-related issues, but he is notorious for being anti-consumer on issues of technology. He has historically been vague on net neutrality, and fought vigorously for the intellectual property concerns of the RIAA and the MPAA.

Next: The Republicans