Obama goes for the Xbox vote
Image provided by EA Games
Barack Obama is so down with the kids. His campaign is now advertising on Xbox games.
Players of the Burnout Paradise game had spotted the Obama ads, and chatter has grown about them online. It has now been confirmed that they were paid for by the Senator's presidential campaign.
A spokesperson from EA, the game's publisher, told the Gigaom blog:
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
As video gaming continues to grow - in fact, it seems to be a recession-proof industry - advertising in-game has gone more and more mainstream.
Even MI5, the British intelligence services, have used in-game advertising in the likes of Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Double Agent. Where better to get new spies than from those young guns already hooked on espionage games?
Apparently the image above was created using Photoshop e.g. the car is very detailed but the area around the "poster" is pixellated. Although it has been posted on various websites, it does not actually appear in the game.
[The new image above has been provided by EA Games.]
Posted by: Nobby Clark | Oct 15, 2008 9:42:50 AM
The MI5 comment reminds me of the book Halting State by Charles Stross where the intelligence services used gamers in live action spy RPGs to unwittingly do intelligence work. Art=Life Life=Art.
Posted by: Jordan Hatcher | Oct 15, 2008 4:40:46 PM
I don't know about anybody else but I think this is a bit much. the overexposure of politics in my videogames? come on, please, i play video games to get away from politics, not get in the middle of it. thanks obama, i know who i'm not voting for now.
Posted by: gmoney | Oct 20, 2008 5:27:13 AM