Network now...NEWS
Obama Takes In-Game Ads
Electronic Arts has confirmed that presidential candidate Barack Obama's team have taken ads in its Xbox 360 racer Burnout Paradise.
An EA spokesperson told Gigaom, “I can confirm that the Obama campaign has paid for in-game advertising in Burnout. Like most television, radio and print outlets, we accept advertising from credible political candidates. Like political spots on the television networks, these ads do not reflect the political policies of EA or the opinions of its development teams.”
Obama's use of games is just one facet of a campaign that has been noted for its innovative use of media. No presidential candidate has used a game before.
Nevertheless, Obama has consistently used videogames as short-hand for parental negligence. Again this week, he told an audience in Ohio, "You know, I will invest in education. We'll make sure government gets behind the schools. But it won't make much of a difference if parents aren't turning off the television set and putting away the video games and making sure that our children are doing their homework.
Image credit: 360 gamer “Jeffson”, from his Rooster Teeth journal.
nObama
It's good for a number of reasons:
+ Obama pays little money to EA and gets a lot of coverage in other media reporting on it. That's considerably more "bang for the buck" then if he bought another radio spot.
+ If Obama gets elected, EA have the biggest possible showcase for their online advertisement operation. This will legitimize it to some degree.
+ Gaming itself profits by moving closer to other entertainment platforms and their ways of generating revenue.
- A big Minus for Sony and MS. They really tried to control all the online aspects of their consoles (MS even more than Sony) and yet EA successfully launched something like that. You would think that MS and Sony would rather have the ingame advertisement features all for themselves.
All your arguments just point out the absurdity in all this. He puts up a banner in a game that says "VOTE FOR ME" and that is supposed to get him elected? Whatever happened to actual information that means something? This just commercializing politics.
Bashing America is very cliche and that's not really where I stand, but in this case I have to say this is all so typical the US. In Europe, at least in the countries I follow during election times, election campaigns are about concrete issues and what the various parties is going to change and do different. In America, the presidential campaigns is about being everywhere all the time -- marketing. If this trick with ads in-game will get any voters, that just highlights the flaws in all this.
It doesn't just say "Vote for me" though does it? It's clearly looking to drive people to his website.
Stupid. It'd be naive to think that they can't afford it, but it still feels like a waste. How many people have their political standpoint decided when they're driving a virtual car?
This is just a big, pointless publicity-stunt, and won't mean anything to voters or anyone else for that matter. The campaign workers must be bored.