This is wild: Barack Obama's campaign is using in-game advertising in "Burnout Paradise," a new Xbox 360 racing game from Electronic Arts, according to a report on GigaOm.

"Like most television, radio and print outlets, we accept advertising from credible political candidates," EA spokeswoman Holly Rockwood told the blog.

Will it persuade any more 18- to 24-year-olds to put down their controllers and go vote next month?

I wonder if we'll eventually see online voter registration -- maybe even voting -- through Xbox Live.

Update: Rockwood just gave me a bunch of details on the ads, which were sold by Massive, a game ad agency owned by Microsoft.

She said Massive approached both the Obama and McCain campaigns but McCain's declined.

Obama's campaign bought a highly targeted set of ads running mostly on sports titles in swing states. They began airing Oct. 6 and run through Nov. 3, with varying lengths depending on the state.

The ads are dynamically placed in games when playing on Xbox consoles connected to Xbox Live. They're appearing in games with realistic settings, so they can show up in a billboard in a driving game, for instance.

They're running in 10 states, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Montana, North Carolina, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio and Wisconsin -- for longer periods in the bigger states.

Dynamic in-game ads have only been around for about 18 months, Rockwood said, so "I think it's fair to say it's the first presidential campaign" to use them.

Titles with the ads are:

Burnout Paradise
Madden 09
Nascar 09
NBA Live 08
Need for Speed Carbon
Need for Speed Prostreet
NFL on Tour
NHL 09
Skate

Rockwood noted that the ads "do not reflect the political policies of EA or the opinions of its development teams."

Posted by Brier Dudley, source here.

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Discuss?

Yeah I saw some political ads on Xbox Live not too long ago, it was for both candidates though. Some people have even changed their gamer tags to reflect their political views...

As for Burnout Paradise, isn't that game not so new lol? I believe it's been out for sometime now..

Anyway, back to the original topic it doesn't surprise me at all. It's only a matter of time until they pay me off to post their ads here lol jk.

Yeah, I noticed that he said it was new, but to my knowledge it's been out for at least half a year.

That's crazy though. I wonder if it's actually going to influence anybody though.

what teh ef lol... this is kinda weird. i dont know if i should hate obama more or like my games less....... wait... what am i saying...

I take it you are leaning toward option number one?

I wonder just how much his advertising is costing him. I was browsing through my satellite channels the other day, and there's a whole friggin' channel dedicated to him. It's called the OBAMA channel. Lulz.

Holy crap. Somewhere around 320 million US dollars has been spent merely on advertising for his campaign. Jeez.

(10-15-2008 01:46 PM)Mz. Malicious Wrote:  Will it persuade any more 18- to 24-year-olds to put down their controllers and go vote next month?

Couldn't help but notice this line here... Do you get to decide NOT to vote?

Well, I only just registered this year, and I'm 21. For three years, I just didn't register at all, because I don't tend to be too political in any kind of view. Not to mention with me being gone for a while with the army, I didn't really have time to deal with politics.

Well technically you're not forced to vote, so yes you have the right to NOT vote.

Although honestly the way our political system works I can see why many people choose not to vote as it really seems like our votes don't really count.

And this is how it really works: "The Electoral College consists of 538 popularly elected representatives who formally select the President and Vice President of the United States." Source: Wikipedia

So basically our votes just are supposed to influence these elected reps. but the keyword is influence. But at the same time there is some value in our vote, it's just that it's not as influential as it appears to be.

Not only that, but there is so much corrupt voting going on right now. Granted, it happens every election, but this year, they've all gone insane.

ACORN, anybody?

I heard of one guy who was a bum on the street that ACORN got to sign up 60 times (including absentee ballots, with Obama's name on the ticket as his choice) by promising him either a dollar for each sign-up, or a cigarette.

EDIT:

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/rn...&dist=hppr

Story about ACORN and how many voter fraud incidents have happened.

Yep.

Some states are even under investigation for fraudulent activity going on in the voter registration offices.