I was watching an interview with Bill Gates and he said the "Video Game Industry is BIGGER than Hollywood." There are lots of reasons why this may not be true and the messenger is biased (not counting DVD and VCR sales) but the point is that there are lots of games and people who game out there in America.
I know that many movements are working on product placement in Hollywood stories (safe sex, environment, anti-gun, pro-gun, etc) They really are working to place products and ideas in the TV and films we watch but do we have an equally talented groups of people working the gaming industry?
I can think of lots of ways that we fight over liberal and conservative dominance of Hollywood and movies but I am not sure folks are really paying much attention to the video game industry as a channel for advocacy and political communications. (Army games recruit)
Unfortunately, I don't play games much. (My family rents units around Thanksgiving so we can whack each other in a game of 007, but generally my nephews kill me quickly and I jump back in line with the other 14 kids, brothers, wives rotate in to play winners.) I started to Google for political games and games with causes and ran across interesting articles on Slate ,
Salon
and games like Political Tycoon, and State of Emergency.
Gaming is a new communications channels. We need to continue to look for ways to plug into the opportunities that this represents and find ways to give voice to the audience. Bill Gates is interested in building new games that foster interaction and leverage the connectivity of modern culture. to speak and connect in to new audiences and speak the language of our people have looked at each major
NewsGaming. This company gets it.
We need to spend sometime gaming our scenarios so that the game world can include progressive messages. Can we actually use games to create valuable work products? The army is using games to recruit teenagers.
http://www.newsgaming.com/faq.htm
