DasGamer has an entertaining feature on what they bill as the The Top 20 Video Game Moments In The 2008 Presidential Election.

Highlights include:

• the Ron Paul WoW march
• Barack Obama's XBL ads
• John McCain's Pork Invaders Facebook game
• the Sarah Palin All Your Base video
• a list of Game Biz contributions to candidates

Things turn out better for Republican John McCain in this user-created level from PlayStation 3 smash Little Big Planet.

Of course, you could play this level so that Obama wins, too. 53% of American voters would probably play that way, based on yesterday's popular vote.

The level was designed by Richard Windsor of gaming site Aeropause.

Via: Destructoid

The official Xbox color may be green, but when it comes to politics, online gaming venue Xbox Live is clearly a blue state.

According to a Microsoft rep, a final pre-election poll taken over the weekend shows Democrat Barack Obama with a commanding lead over Republican John McCain among XBL gamers. Here are those numbers:

• Obama 53%
• McCain 33%
• Undecided 14%

In a late September XBL poll, Obama led 43-31%. The new data seems to suggest that some XBL users who were undecided or who supported other candidates in the earlier poll have largely shifted to Obama.

As Xbox Live project manager Ben Vaught recently pointed out to GamePolitics, with 14 million subscribers, if Xbox Live was a state, it would be the seventh largest in the U.S. with 20 electoral votes.

Sad Ninja Comedy has released a preview of what they say will be an upcoming iPhone game spoofing Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

The planned game is the companion to the comedy duo's film Rock Obama: The Barack Obama Musical

Here's SNC's description of its iPhone game Rock Obama:

Play as Barack Obama as he tries to gain popularity at a rally.

Podiums start to rise from the floor, and you tilt the iPhone to guide Obama to the right spot to gain popularity points. Encouraged by catchy music and quotes from the movie, help Barack keep up as the podiums rise faster and faster.

Upcoming release on iPhone App Store will be FREE for a limited time.

GP: Interesting use of the iPhone, although we suspect excitement over games about the candidates to drop after tomorrow's election...

USC grad student John Brennan dropped GamePolitics a line to show us this amazing Half-Life 2 machinima featuring John McCain, Barack Obama, and an authentic HL2 head crab.

By way of explanation, John writes:

I'm an MFA student @ USC's interactive media program.  My thesis project is a series of modifications to Half-Life 2 that will operate in the same space as political cartoons.  I'm playing with format right now, but so far it is Modding and Machinima as self expression and political commentary:)

I have a process for quickly getting 'news-makers' (providing enough photography) into Half-Life 2, access to MoCap data, and some good people helping out.

I'm just launching my first piece now, but it is sizable enough that I'd like to bring it to your attention.  It includes McCain, Obama, a debate stage, and is just in time for the vote.

Maxis is serving up a preview of The Sims 3 engine with a pair of videos featuring a Sim Sarah Palin.

In the trailer embedded here on GP, the Republican VP candidate dances (in camouflage lingerie) at a rally. In a second video Palin tussles with her opposite number, Democrat Joe Biden.

John McCain and Barack Obama also appear. We enjoyed this little notation at the end of the trailers:

No candidates were injured during the making of this video.

Maxis has crafted the 2008 presidential tickets for Spore users.

From the press release:

For a bit of fun, EA’s Maxis studio has created the presidential and vice presidential candidates in the critically-acclaimed video game, Spore. Created with the game’s Spaceship Editor, players can download the characters, drag them into Spore to edit – even subscribe to the Sporecast and meet them flying around in Space! 

CLick here for more info...

Wired reports that the McCain campaign bailed on a technology debate scheduled for Thursday just hours before it was to begin.

According to Wired's Nicholas Thompson, a debate on tech issues had been arranged between an Obama rep and McCain adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin. Tickets to the event sold out quickly. Thompson writes:

Then, oops, yesterday morning, a couple hours before the event began, the McCain camp emailed to say that, actually, no, sorry, Holtz-Eakin can't make it for the 12:30 debate. Apparently he had very important meetings to attend. Right. Apparently, though, he stepped out in the middle. At 1pm he was on MSNBC attacking Obama, trying to tie him to George Bush's economic policies...

 

In short: the McCain camp chickened out. Spinning is easy; debating is hard. And defending John McCain’s record on broadband deployment, spectrum issues, and net neutrality is particularly hard...

Political cartoon site Filibuster takes a look at current presidential campaign poll results through the lens of Guitar Hero...

Thanks to: Sharp-eyed GP correspondent Andrew Eisen. No worthy webcomic escapes his all-seeing eye!

Some pundits are saying that high profile GOP vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin has hijacked the Republican spotlight from John McCain.

No argument here.

But if you require proof, consider that Pandemic Studios is releasing two playable characters as DLC for its controversial Mercenaries 2: World in Flames. The characters are Barack Obama and Sarah Palin, not Obama and presidential rival John McCain.

Among other combat activities, Obama struggles with a tank commander before dropping a grenade into the turret. Palin, clad in a designer red jacket and fashionable black skirt, wields an RPG and beats a helicopter pilot into unconsciousness.

It's all very presidential.

G4's Adam Sessler has a video report (at left). Pandemic exec Tom Stratton offers an explanation, of sorts:

Mercenaries 2 is a game seemingly ripped straight out of today's headlines and fueled with the same type of over-the-top action found in the best summer blockbuster films. It only makes sense we inject the game with a spin on current affairs. The timing was too good to let pass.

Venezuelan government officials and others have protested Mercs 2's invasion narrative in the past about. Placing Obama and Palin in the game will likely generate another round of outrage from the Hugo Chavez regime.

Nor is this the first appearance for 2008 candidates in a controversial video games. Last month GamePolitics reported on the inclusion of Obama and McCain in a trailer for GTA knockoff Saints Row 2

Watch Adam Sessler's report here... Additional Obama/Palin Mercs 2 footage can be seen here...

If World of Warcraft was a U.S. state, its 11 million players would give it the eighth largest tally of electoral votes.

That being the case, which candidate will carry Azeroth on election day? Do the polls show a split between Alliance and Horde voters? Between Dwarves and Night Elves?

In the video from Machinima.com comedian Rich Kuras polls WoW players on their presidential preferences.

GameSpot has learned that Barack Obama's in-game ads on Xbox Live set the Democratic nominee's campaign back $44,465.78.

That amounts to pretty good bang for the buck, especially when factoring in the widespread mainstream publicity generated by the ads after GamePolitics broke the news of their existence on October 9th.

The Obama XBL ads were covered by, among others, the New York Times and Associated Press as well as most of the major news networks.

Is McCain gaining ground on Obama? 

Is Obama surging ahead?

Second Life users can check out the latest presidential poll data, thanks to a clever, interactive polling map created by Steve Nelson, who also devised the SL-Twitter mashup we reported on earlier this month.

At his Clear Night Sky blog, Steve describes some of the tech behind his latest creation:

Capitol Hill in Second Life continues to draw visitors from around the world interested in the political season... I’ve added an electoral map that shows most recent polling on a state-by-state basis...

I may channel my inner Brokaw and use the map in manual mode on election night, or I might challenge myself to quickly find a site that can be Dapper-scraped and feed the board automatically.

A new get-out-the-vote ad for Barack Obama includes a shot of a Wii controller accompanied by the words "You Can't Make History From Here."

In other words, put down your video game for a while and go vote. A sofa and a cubicle also serve as reminders to leave home or office to cast your ballot.

Obama, of course, made big news a couple of weeks back by embedding campaign ads in more than a dozen EA games on Xbox Live. In his campaign speeches he often uses video games as a metaphor for scholastic underachievment.

And, as GameCulture notes, the music in the ad "is pure 8-bit."

Over at the The AT Wire, gamer/blogger Alex Taldren picks a bone with the Video Game Voters Network.

It seems that the VGVN (which is operated by game publishers lobbying group ESA) took those now-famous Obama XBL ads as a hopeful sign:

Sen. Obama’s advertising leaves no doubts about the political significance of gamers. This outreach to the gamer community sends a clear signal to gamers that their voices are being heard and that the work of the Video Game Voters Network is having an impact.

Taldren doesn't quite see it that way, however:

Some politician uses some of his campaign money to place advertisements in video games and suddenly he is our savior?  Does anyone really think that Obama is going to remove video game bans and take our side just because he has a .JPEG on a billboard in Burnout?

 

...Does anyone really believe that Obama’s focus on video games can becomes anything more than problem?  The more attention politicians give us and the industry, the worse it’s going to get...

 

And, what I thought was once a network of gamers who wanted to keep politicians out of video games, has become nothing more than a Obama lap dog–a perpetuator of the problem.  I’m removing my Video Game Voter Network ad banner...

GP: Although the VGVN wildly overstates its contribution, we'll have to agree that the Obama ads are, on balance, a very positive development.

What do you think, GP readers?

Boston-based Metaversal Studios has released Rock the Quote, a web-based game which challenges how much players know about remarks made by November hopefuls John McCain, Sarah Palin, Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

Players earn two points for correctly identifying a quote and one point for getting just the party right. Three wrong answers leads to game over.

Metaversal Studios' founder Jay Laird, lead designer on Rock the Quote, talked about his game:

With over 100 questions, we have yet to see anyone finish the game... [While watching the debates] I noticed how many of the candidates' sound-bites seem interchangeable. Sure, there are things like the hockey-mom references that make it easy, but when it comes down to the bigger issues, I wonder how many people can tell the difference.

 

[For example,] McCain says he won't raise taxes, while Obama says he'll cut them for 95% of Americans.  In the past, you'd expect the latter promise to come from a Republican, and I bet a lot of people would still make that assumption.

It was pretty depressing to hear Biden say so forcefully that he doesn't support gay marriage.  I know it's a political maneuver to try to hold on to some socially conservative votes, but now that 3 out of 50 states have legalized it, you'd think they'd make it part of their 'change' initiative.

Rock the Quote is planned as a trilogy, with the second part launching on Tuesday. Check Metaversal's Burning Village site for updated news on RTQ.

Since GamePolitics broke the news about Barack Obama's Xbox Live ads last weeks, they have become an international media sensation.

But, GP didn't actually find the ads; we were just first to report on them. Credit for the actual discovery goes to "Jeff", a 39-year-old gamer who lives in one of the 10 battleground states in which the Obama ads are running. He'd prefer that we not say exactly which state, for privacy reasons.

Married with a family, Jeff works in a machine shop and of this he told GP, "It's far more interesting than anyone will give credit, and more honest than most professions."

But life has not been all fun and games for Jeff. A couple of years back, he was involved in a high speed, head-on crash caused by a drunk driver, suffering horrendous injuries. Afterward, he spent nearly three months in a wheel chair and endured several surgeries. Despite it all, Jeff has managed to maintain his sense of humor:

I've had so much hardware installed and removed that I was feeling like a catch-all bin at Home Depot...

While recuperating and doing battle with insurance companies, Jeff kept himself busy by writing, drawing - and gaming:

I've always been something of a sideline gamer, dating back to the Atari 2600... but spending 14 hours a day watching Discovery Channel while waiting for my bones to knit together bored the crap out of me so I convinced my wife that we needed an XBox to supplement the PS2.  It allowed me to connect directly with other members of the Rooster Teeth community who had helped me stay sane through everything.
 

It's ironic that Jeff's now-famous pictures of the Obama ads were very much of a random occurrence:

The funny thing is that I had already played through 97% of the game months ago and it was collecting dust on the shelf.  I had only tossed it in [the Xbox 360] because we just bought the new TV and one of my daughter's friends wanted to see the motorcycles in action.  We'd been buzzing around the city in various vehicles at high speed for about half an hour before I happened to crash right in front of one of the billboards. Burnout's in-game camera induces vertigo if you try to manipulate it so you normally have to get a car airborne before you can actually read any of the signs close up.  It was a genuine "WTF?" moment.

Jeff snapped the pictures directly from his TV screen (left) using an Olympus 550UZ camera. He never imagined that they'd go very far:

The only reason I took the photos to begin with was to share them with my friends. [My friend] Claude asked if he could show it to a few people to get confirmation, because he was rightfully skeptical too. I agreed and now this thing is just taking on a life of its own...

I just saw [the Obama ads] on a blurb on MSNBC. That's crazy. I'm actually a little glad they aren't mentioning my gamertag anymore, though part of me is a bit pissed that they aren't giving [GamePolitics] proper credit for breaking the story.

 

The truly ironic part of this entire ride is that I find myself being the catalyst for Obama's media exposure.  As you said, I was the only one to say anything about it and now it's being picked up across the web - far outside the original 10 states that the ads were planned for.  That's exposure that exceeds the original investment of his campaign by an order of magnitude.  For that matter EA must be clapping their hands at the prospects of increased revenue to their checking accounts.  As they say, "you can't buy this kind of advertising..."

 

Granted, anyone could have done the same thing, but this time it happened to be me.  That's an odd feeling that I'm still trying to get used to. 

Ironically, Jeff is neither an Obama or McCain supporter. He's just an average guy who games.

The Associated Press reports that Barack Obama's Xbox Live ads have sparked some humor.

According to an AP report, Seth Meyers of Saturday Night Live Weekend Update Thursday quipped:

Barack Obama has begun running ads within video games. Obama ads can be seen in video games such as `Madden NFL '09' and `Burnout.' Not to be outdone, John McCain has begun putting ads inside many MRI machines.

GP: Look for Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert to have some fun with the Obama ads as well...

Via: GoNintendo

Thanks to: Sharp-eyed GP correspondent Andrew Eisen for spotting this one!

MTV Multiplayer's Stephen Totilo has a couple of points to make regarding the now-famous Barack Obama ads on Xbox Live.

Stephen reports that if you're playing Burnout: Paradise on PlayStation 3, for example, you won't see the Obama ads. They are running only on Xbox Live. Instead, you'll see a faux car ad. For XBL players who want to check out the Obama ads, Stephen provides detailed instructions on how to locate them in-game.

Pictures of Obama ads in additional EA games are starting to pop up. Examiner.com has shots from Madden 09 and NBA Live 09. Destructoid has a Madden pic as well.

It's interesting to note the diverse opinions of gamers on the ads. Examiner's Tom Hall, for example, hates them:

Shouldn't we be allowed to escape this 3 ring ring circus once and while?  Do we really have to have this crammed down our throats 24 hours a day?  I'm pretty thankful that they have yet to discover the technology that lets them beam ads into my dreams... Video games, at least for me have always provided me with the escape from reality that I just plain need sometimes.

Meanwhile, Destructoid's Brad Nicholson seems to like the in-game ads:

After the Burnout piece, I found myself wondering the impact that political ads can actually have. Have any of you been swayed to vote early, or consider Obama over that other candidate? Do you consider this intrusive? Personally, I enjoy this ad much more than a Nike one because it at least has a message that is important. I like sneakers and all, but politics and blueberry pie are higher on my priority list.

As for GP? Since I run GamePolitics, it should come as no surprise that I love the idea of political ads in games. Here's what I told the Dallas Morning News:

Some gamers are saying, ‘We don’t want politics mixed in with our games,’ and some think it’s a very cool use of the medium. It’s a defining moment for not only advertising in video games but the political connection with video games.

GamePolitics speculated yesterday as to whether Barack Obama's highly-publicized video game ads might come up in last night's Presidential debate at Hofstra University in New York. They didn't, but that's only because Republican John McCain missed a perfect opportunity to get some mileage out of Obama's Xbox Live ads.

Toward the end of the debate the topic of education came up. At that point Obama delivered, word-for-word, a theme he has repeatedly mentioned in his campaign speeches:

Parents are going to have to show more responsibility. They've got to turn off the TV set, put away the video games, and, finally, start instilling that thirst for knowledge that our students need.

Not that Obama is necessarily wrong in this view, but his citing of games as a metaphor for underachievement offered McCain an opportunity to score some debate points by turning the issue around on Obama. If McCain had pressed the Illinois senator as to why, given his earlier comments, the Democrat was in turn buying ad time in video games, Obama might have been faced with a sticky situation.

Since my beloved Phillies advanced to the World Series last night, I'll couch this in baseball terminology: McCain failed to swing at a hanging curve ball. Was he not aware of the video game ad issue? That would be hard to fathom, since the story - broken here on GamePolitics - has been all over the mainstream media in the last few days.

Last week GamePolitics broke the news that campaign ads for Barack Obama were showing up in EA's Burnout: Paradise on Xbox Live.

Since that time the story has gone national, with coverage by among others, the Associated Press, New York Times, Washington Post, and USA Today. ABC News and CBS News have mentioned the Obama ads on their websites, although not on the air - so far.

With tonight's final Presidential Debate taking place at Hofstra Unoversity in New York, will the XBL ads come in for a mention? If they do, it will almost certainly come from McCain. There is speculation that McCain's debate strategy this evening will seek to raise questions about Obama's readiness for the White House.

Could McCain use the XBL ads in an effort to paint Obama as geeky or frivolous? If he does, will such charges resonate with voters? Or will McCain come off as out of touch and, well, old?

It's all speculative, of course. We'll find out tonight.

GameSpot's Brendan Sinclair is reporting that those now-famous Obama ads running in Burnout Paradise are visible only to gamers who are connecting to Xbox Live from 10 potential battleground states. From GameSpot's coverage:

The EA representative said the ads would only appear in 10 different states, most of them contested battleground states. Paradise City residents in Ohio, Florida, Iowa, Colorado, Indiana, Montana, North Carolina, New Mexico, Nevada, and Wisconsin are being targeted by the campaign...

The Obama campaign is only running on the Xbox 360 version of the game, as it was handled by Microsoft-owned in-game ad firm Massive Incorporated... As for the absence of Republican presidential candidate John McCain, the EA representative said Massive had approached the Arizona senator's campaign about Burnout advertising.

GamePolitics broke the news of the ads last Thursday.

UPDATE: The Seattle Times is now quoting EA PR rep Holly Rockwood to the effect that the Obama ads are running in eight additional games:

• Madden 09
• Nascar 09
• NBA Live 08
• Need for Speed Carbon
• Need for Speed Pro Street
• NFL on Tour
• NHL 09
• Skate

Last week GamePolitics broke the news that in-game ads for Barack Obama were apparently running inside Burnout: Paradise on Xbox Live. Although we sought comment several times from publisher Electronic Arts before running that story, no confirmation was forthcoming.

GigaOm, however, managed to get the official word from Holly Rockwood, EA's director of corporate communications, late yesterday:

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.

In the meantime, we've got an exclusive follow-up with Dragunov765, the gamer who took those great photos which originally brought the ads to our attention:

The photos were taken Oct. 6th, 2008 in my living room with an Olympus 550UZ... I imported them directly from the camera into Photoshop because Photobucket won't handle any images over 1Mb and I generally shoot in super HQ...  Beyond reducing the file size for posting to the internet, no other adjustments were made to the images.  The files I sent you were the images that came off the camera.  I would have taken more, but I didn't even have the memory stick in there because I'd just completed downloading some other photos and hadn't put it back in.

The funny thing is that I had already played through 97% of the game months ago and it was collecting dust on the shelf.  I had only tossed it in because we just bought the new TV and one of my daughter's friends wanted to see the motorcycles in action.  We'd been buzzing around the city in various vehicles at high speed for about half an hour before I happened to crash right in front of one of the billboards (Burnout's in-game camera induces vertigo if you try to manipulate it so you normally have to get a car airborne before you can actually read any of the signs close up).  It was a genuine "WTF?" moment.

Well-known Second Life blogger Rik Panganiban has unabashedly come out for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

In a post titled Barack FTW 11/4! -- Why Gamers Should Back Obama, Panganiban writes:

I think it's high time that people get past this notion of gamers as passive couch potatoes divorced from the world around them. I've seen gamers raise thousands of dollars for worthwhile causes like Penny Arcade's "Child's Play" charity and games for US troops overseas. 

 

Gamers can be ardent defenders of Net Freedom or even protestors for Chinese nationalism.  Heck, they have their own blog devoted to politics.

Among Panganiban's reasons for backing the Obama ticket (these are his words):

• Obama Groks the Power of the Internet: ...No, [Obama] didn't invent the Blackberry, but he does understand that the Gamer Generation connects with each other in substantially different ways than generations before.
• Obama Defends Net Freedom: ...The ability of next-gen game developers to create online games depends on a vibrant and open internet environment, unfettered by artificially throttled and filtered access.
• Obama Knows We Need Broadband: ...you know how sucky it is to play Halo over a sketchy internet connection... 
• Obama Supports Stronger Math & Science in Schools: America lags way behind the rest of the industrialized world in math and science aptitude in its high schools...
• Obama Totally Pwns in Unreal Tournament:  He's the only player I know who can go head to head in a Scavenger against a Fury equipped with Berserk and come out ahead.  Talk about presidential.  (Ok, maybe I made that up. But I hear his Wii Bowling score is 278.)

Rik is having some fun with that last bit. Actually, as GamePolitics has reported, Obama remarked publicly that the last game he played was Pong.

GP: If an established game blog presents a case for the McCain ticket, we'll gladly publish that as well.

A clever online game offered by Peritus Public Relations of Louisville, KY challenges players to predict which states will be carried by Republican John McCain or Democrat Barack Obama in November 4th's presidential election.

Peritus will send $1,000 to the winner's favorite charity. And, no, your PS3 acquisition fund is not among the list of eligible charities...

I registered and gave it a try. It's fun to use the interactive map of electoral votes to make a prediction, although the registration process was slightly intrusive. Why do they need my address? Confession to Peritus: I lied.

Here's some info from the press release:

We are a firm of veritable political junkies... We created this game because we wanted to inject some fun into the political season while benefiting a charity at the same time. We felt by creating a game that was essentially unprecedented, and entertaining we would be able to reach to people who are generally politically apathetic. So we asked ourselves, why can’t politics be fun for everyone?

The Peritus Pundit gives the user an opportunity to compete against a national audience of political enthusiasts in picking the next President of the United States. The winner picks a charity of their choice and our firm will donate a $1,000 to the organization...

A press release posted at examiner.com describes an upcoming five-day gaming marathon which will raise funds for the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama.

The “Gaming for Obama” marathon kicks off at noon on October 20th and runs until midnight, October 25th. A live feed will be provided by Justin.tv (GP: the site which ran the leaked GTA IV game play footage).

VH1 personality Rey Gutierrez (left), who will host the marathon, commented:

‘Gaming for Obama’ is not just a fund raiser, but also a way to raise awareness in the gaming community to go out and vote for their favorite candidate on Nov. 4. Instead of hitting the streets with banners, we’re using modern technology and tools no one has really tapped into to reach a demographic that historically has had a low voter turnout.

 

We’ll be playing next-generation and past-generation games, including Rock Band, Halo, Call of Duty and many more titles, on all gaming platforms. Viewers will see everything through multiple cameras set up around my house. Gaming. Sleeping. Eating. Showers. No, kidding. No showers.

Local Miami gamers are invited to drop by while other gamers are welcome to join in online. Gutierrez, who also hosts justin.tv's R3Y’S GAMEDAY EXTRAVAGANZA (R.G.D.E), hopes to reach out to Hispanic voters as well during the Obama marathon:

 

Two of the R3Y’S GAMEDAY crew are fluent Spanish speakers, so we hope to attract that market since it is the fastest-growing minority in the United States and a critical group of voters in the upcoming election.

Stretching back to the Democratic primary season, Sen. Barack Obama has been referencing video games as a sort of code for underachievement by America's youth.

With his campaign in the home stretch, Obama continues to hit that theme. The Chicago Sun-Times provides the text of a speech delivered by Obama in Columbus, Ohio on Friday. Ohio, of course, is a key battleground state and both the Obama and McCain campaigns are going all-out to woo voters there.

Here's the game-related language from Obama's speech. It differs little from comments he has made throughout the campaign, and drew cheers and applause, according to the Sun-Times's transcript:

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.

Okay, so that's two words. But still...

Day of the Dreamweavers yesterday mentioned the term "Atari Democrat" and it is one that I'll confess to not having heard before. According to DotD, here's the definition:

...a phrase first popularized during the early 1980s, references both the video game company Atari and Democratic legislators who suggested that the support and development of high tech and related businesses would stimulate the economy and create jobs.

Wikipedia has more, including this definition from the Philadelphia Inquirer, circa 1984:

...a young liberal trying to push the party toward more involvement with high-tech solutions.
 

It seems to be primarily a 1980's term. Major examples include Al Gore (after all, he did invent the Internet).

GP: Under either definition, would Barack Obama qualify as an Atari Democrat? Of course, Atari is far from the powerhouse that it was in the eighties. Apple Democrat, perhaps?

We've only gotten one report of this, which seems a bit odd, but an Xbox Live gamer who goes by Dragunov765 has posted photos of what appear to be in-game ads for Barack Obama.

Dragunov (we know his real name, too) says he came across the ads while playing Burnout Paradise earlier this week and posted them on his Rooster Teeth journal page. We were tipped to the pix by a GP reader who vouches for the guy. In turn we contacted Dragonuv, who commented on the ads:

Here's the photos I took while playing Burnout: Paradise on the XBox 360.  I don't know how often they rotate the in-game advertising, but I imagine they are still up.

 

I gotta give [Obama] credit for covering all the bases.  I also think this is an interesting endorsement for adults as gamers (or maybe he's planting the seeds for a re-election bid in 4 years...)
 

The ads mention that early voting has begun and reference voteforchange.com. That site says that it is "Paid for by Obama for America" and helps voters find early voting locations in states that permit the practice (which has indeed begun).

EA reps did not respond to several attempts by GamePolitics to verify the ads.

GP: Bottom line? If the ad pix are Photoshopped, ya got me, Dragonuv. But I don't think they are. Dragonuv is no kid and my gut tells me he's on the level. 

And in any case, why couldn't - why shouldn't - a candidate make use of in-game ads? After all, it's the new, new thing, and Obama has been courting the youth vote all along.

The concept of in-game political ads does raise some issues, however. Does the campaign get to choose the games in which their ads appear? We have to think they do. Having one's campaign ad appear in GTA IV, for example, might hand an opposing candidate an opportunity to sling mud.