1up Details Game Biz Campaign Contributions

February 15, 2008

1up has a story detailing the presidential campaign contributions made by a variety of video game industry employees.

Both big fish (like Activision CEO Bobby Kotick) and worker bee programmers and artists are listed.

It's worth noting that a fair amount of the money donated went straight into the black hole of failed campaigns.

Kotick and his wife, for example, each gave $2,300 to Republican Mitt Romney's ill-fated bid. Valve's Gabe Newell, creator of the Half-life series, gave Democrat Chris Dodd $2,300, while Spore designer Will Wright sent $3,500 Rudy Giuliani's way (and made us wonder what Will thought he saw in the irascible former Big Apple mayor).

EA exec Steve Schnurr shipped $4,600 to Hillary Clinton, which was no surprise. Longtime GamePolitics readers may recall that Schnurr and former ESA boss Doug Lowenstein organized a thousand dollar-a-plate fundraising breakfast for Clinton in September, 2005.

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Comments

I take it we can assume that the politicians taking game industry $$ are "taking a stand against families".


@ Jes

I'm sure JT is hard at work on his press release on that one...

@JimK

Good point, Michigan is doing bad enough with Granholm at the Govenor's seat...

I saw this last night and I still can't believe people supported Romney and Clinton.

These people hate the game industry. Why would you support them?

I guess it all comes down to the fact that they look at the big picture and know that any kind of restrictive bill they would try to pass would always fail. So they actually liked their other policies.

So I ask again, How can anyone support Romney or Hillary?

@EZK

My thoughts exactly...We all know Romney is a hypocritical politician along the lines of a Republican Bill Clinton, and Hillary....well that goes without saying

WTF? EA is supporting Hillary?

There are bigger issues out there than Video Games in politics. (Which is a good arguement against wasteing time legislating the game industry to death!) So I'm assumeing these people donated to candidates who shared more views with them than the others.

Everyone has a right to their opinion (even if they are wrong hehe) so things like this will happen.

EA is supporting Hilary because, well, it looks like she has no chance of being nominated now. Obama is pretty much pwning the competition right now, remember, he was declared winner of Virginia with 0% of the vote counted.

Not like it matters much, come 2009, it's going to be all hail President McCain.

Well, if I hated someone and they gave me a plate of cash, I'd warm up to them a bit.

@ -Jes-

Oh... Son of a... well, thanks for the heads up.

The gunman was identified a few hours ago, but guess what?

http://kotaku.com/356999/jack-thompson-blames-niu-shooting-on-video-games

Its soooo cute when he tries to be relevant!

Please try to keep this discussion on topic. One of the reasons John Bruce was banned was because he constantly derailed threads.

If you would like to discuss the shooting there is athread for it in the Forums.

Their money should be going to Barack Obama, not Hillary or Mitt. What are they smoking?

@Macboy

Agreed.

Hey now, there's no shame in supporting Rudy...

@EZK

Me. Friggin. Too. May as well get in bed with Lieberman at that point.

@Macboy: Why, so he can cripple the country with massive tax hikes? That'll sure help. Soon none of us will be able to afford that new console and list of AAA titles because President Jesus Kennedy Obama just skyrocketed the payroll tax to almost 60% and cranked income tax up on "the rich" even though "rich" in his plan is really middle class. Not to mention that stealing more tax dollars from the "rich" isn't any more moral than it is to steal the tax dollars from anyone else. It's all still government stealing your money at gunpoint. Literally.

That's all good and dandy, but WHAT ABOUT RON PAUL!?!?!?!?

It makes perfect sense for a video game company, moviemakers, etc... to support Hillary Clinton because she would nominate judges to the supreme court and lower courts that have a liberal view of the 1st Amendment. The legislation she proposes and supports wont become law anyhow, even she probably knows that. And if it ever did, her own judges would likely rule it unconstitutional.

Romney, on the other hand, would nominate judges that have a very narrow, conservative intperpretaion of the 1st Amend. That matters a hundred times more than what kind of legislation a candidate is for or how they demagogue the issue. In Romneys case, I think the stuff he said about video games, his \'sewer\' commercial,.. were just pandering to the religious right. I doubt he really cares about video games. But he is worse than a democrat (Hillary or Obama) because if he were elected he\'d owe conservatives and the religious right conservative judges. That applies to McCain too.

Clearly Wright supported Rudy because the creator of SimCity has always had an intense fascination with the way mayors handle catastrophic disasters affecting their cities, and 9/11 was as close to the game's Godzilla button as you're going to get.

Also, I call bad form on reporting on the donations of people on that list who aren't established public figures. They shouldn't have expected to have their personal political beliefs "outed" like this, and you could cover the trends of how developers break down along party lines without using their names. The invasion of assumed privacy and possible negative impacts of telling the whole world that random code monkey Joe Schmo is a Ron Paul supporter far outweighs the good it does the readers. Just because something is public information doesn't mean it should be broadcast as news.

@Digdug

Conservative? Romney is the guy that ran to the left of Ted Kennedy in 1994. God only knows what his real views are, or if he has any.

Alyric,

It is hard to tell with him. He ran as a liberal for senate in a liberal state, and governed as moderate/liberal as governor. Then ran as a conservative for president in a conservative party. Thats probably why he didnt get the nomination, he seemed to much like phony.

I think he\'s a capitalist, thats what he really believes, and he\'ll change on all the other issues if thats what the thinks he has to do to win.

@ Sleepy

Well said, well said. Couldn't agree more.

@Alyric re: Romney

"God only knows what his real views are, or if he has any."

Excellent point. Something I wish more Romney supporters took notice of.

@DigDug

Both are lying, scheming politicians, and the point is that no one here wants either of them, for good reasons

[...] As Gamepolitics remarks: It’s worth noting that a fair amount of the money donated went straight into the black hole of failed campaigns. [Activision CEO Bobby] Kotick and his wife, for example, each gave $2,300 to Republican Mitt Romney’s ill-fated bid. Valve’s Gabe Newell, creator of the Half-life series, gave Democrat Chris Dodd $2,300, while Spore designer Will Wright sent $3,500 Rudy Giuliani’s way (and made us wonder what Will thought he saw in the irascible former Big Apple mayor). [...]
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