Video games can be great place to escape the drudgery of the
real world. No need to think about tax rates, paying utility bills or contractor
rates when you’re in a Halo multiplayer match. But the dirtiest competition in
the real world—jockeying for elected office—might be landing up on an Xbox near
you, if Microsoft can get political ads running on their platforms.
While ads for body spray, foodstuffs and movies are all too
common on an Xbox dashboard, pitches for people running for elected office are
still relatively rare in video games, with then-candidate
Barack Obama’s 2008 in-game ad in Burnout
Paradise as a notable
watershed moment. The Wall Street Journal reports that Microsoft is trying to change that. They’re currently trying to
bend the ears of political
operators at the annual CPAC conservative conference:
https://lastchance.cc/barack-obama-campaigns-on-burnout-paradise-5063001%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
This is still in the embryonic stages, though, and it
remains to be seen if any such advertising campaigns would significantly engage
gamers to get out the vote. One also has to wonder if the next step up from
this is custom-built political advergames
where opponents would trash each other.
