World of Warcraft hobby sparks US political row

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19842704

by zappy • 14 years ago

47 53 14 years ago

bbc.co.uk

tatsuke95• 14 years ago

The despicable world of American politics continuously out-does itself.

Who cares what the politicians are doing when not at work, especially if it's a harmless hobby?

sp332• 14 years ago

Nobody. As a native of New Hampshire (right next to Maine), I can attest that no one really cares.

sirclueless• 14 years ago

I'm curious how this will turn out. Is videogaming as much of a campaign-killer as atheism?

pi18n3• 14 years ago

I'm sure you'd get the stigma from atheism as well since the game is full of goblins etc.

efnx3• 14 years ago

No, most definitely not. Atheism will get you nowhere in American politics. We'll have a gay president before we have an atheist president. Which, truth be told, I would love a gay atheist engineer for president. Let's get our priorities straight :)

cpeterso• 14 years ago

American voters would rather elect a gay or Muslim president than an atheist. Here is a 2012 Gallup poll:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/155285/Atheists-Muslims-Bias-Pres...

jiggy2011• 14 years ago

The main thing that this will probably achieve is pissing of WOW players who are eligable to vote in US elections.

enraged_camel3• 14 years ago

Personally, knowing that a politician plays video games in their spare time makes me want to vote for them! It means they are more likely to be able to identify with my demographic.

mibbitier3• 14 years ago

Video games are fine. For me, WoW crosses a line to addictive obsession. I don't think games like WoW are good for society in general, just because they are too addictive and consuming. Before you know it, you've lost 5 years of your life and achieved nothing.

enraged_camel3• 14 years ago

As a former WoW player, I sympathize with your concern. However, there are many people who play WoW casually without being obsessed and addicted.

cjrp• 14 years ago

I think that's more about the player than the game. Most people would consider Halo a pretty casual game, but I've lived with people that played 4-5 hours of it per day (on average). Similarly, I used to play WoW for a few hours per week, and then just got bored and stopped. Not exactly addictive.

jeffool• 14 years ago

While I absolutely get your point about addictiveness (indeed many games are designed to be addictive) I've always found it odd when people complain that time spent gaming is "wasted" moreso than other hobbies. I don't think I've ever looked at someone who makes model train sets and thought "now there's an accomplishment!" I've never heard about someone buying a stamp and went "well, I bet their parents are proud!"

Both of those are perfectly fine hobbies, and I bet people interested in them absolutely have skills and accomplishments they're proud of. And that's fine. I may not get the hobbies, but I'm certainly not going to judge the value of how they spend their spare time. That's for them to determine if they're happy with. And I'll worry about my spare time.

blindhippo• 14 years ago

Key words "for me". Just because you can't manage to control your habits doesn't mean the game is "bad for society in general".

I played WoW for 5 years - usually never for more then 5-6 hours a week. In that time I freelanced and was rather successful for it. I also got married, bought a condo, and did many other things happy productive people did.

I got mocked by friends who insisted I was addicted when they were paying 100-200 dollars a month on new games and spending upwards of 20+ hours a week playing them.

edit: don't play anymore because that type of game is now like melba toast to me. No amount of jam can make melba toast taste good.

jetti3• 14 years ago

You state that video games are fine. WoW is a video game, therefore it is fine. But then you go on and state you think that WoW is not good for society, blatantly contradicting your first statement.

To bring an overdone statement in to the mix: "guns don't kill people, people kill people". It isn't the game, it is the individual who already has addictive tendencies. It doesn't matter if it is WoW, another game, or another activity people who are predisposed to addictive behavior will tend to go overboard on their chosen activity. It isn't WoW's fault (because if it is, then many other games should be brought into this blame list).

ryanisinallofus2• 14 years ago

And here we have a live example of the target demographic the political advert was target towards.

I'm surprised that a WoW player running for political office doesn't in and of it's self alter your expectations of players.

duiker101• 14 years ago

I really hope that what will happen now is that those who do not care about games will do not care about this, and the gamers will be pissed, voting for her. Also as others have pointed on reddit the fact that she managed to get in a good position have a family and play a game show that she knows how to manage her time.

think-large2• 14 years ago

I can't believe how ridiculous this is. I think that this will definitely just earn her a bigger following among her fellow players and only alienate the older crowd who wouldn't like her anyway.

Politics makes me sick.

mibbitier3• 14 years ago

> bigger following among her fellow players

Most of which don't vote.

> and only alienate the older crowd

Most of whom do vote.

cciesquare• 14 years ago

"who wouldn't like her anyway" Yea you missed that part, because it's true. Most of the older crowd in Maine are hard core conservative republicans.

efnx3• 14 years ago

Isn't the average gamer a 30 year old male, fully capable of voting? In this case I think the "older crowd" are baby boomers. People born in the 70's and 80's grew up with video games, so I'm guessing they played/still play them/can identify with gamers.

Xion• 14 years ago

Bringing up quotes with game-specific terminology without proper context - like "I got deeper into assassination" - makes me wonder how you could twist the perception of, say, programming in a similar way.

Maybe "She puts children on a tree and removes their parents!".

UnoriginalGuy• 14 years ago

maybe a better example would be anything to with "master" "slave" relationships.

aristidb• 14 years ago

And then there's the Chaos Monkey who randomly kills anything in sight.

tlrobinson• 14 years ago

Los Angeles county tried to ban master/slave terminology on computer equipment... http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/11/26/master.term.reut/

ryanisinallofus2• 14 years ago

A coworker and I were de-duping records in a database. One of us said while pairing on the script "well, every slave needs a master."

An african american woman in the office turned to us and said "maybe it's the master who needs the slave?"

She wasn't really offend or anything and she said it with a sincere smile. She was just calling out our idiotic computer lingo for what it was.

After apologizing feeling like complete idiots we quickly changed our terminology both in words and in the script to parent/child.

mediocregopher• 14 years ago

I've had a lot of fun explaining why it's important to reap your zombie children on many occasions.

archgoon• 14 years ago

"Is there a good way to ensure that all the children are killed when the parent dies?"

patrickk• 14 years ago

"Oh so you believe in automatic garbage collection? You despicable, good for nothing 47%er! Take out your own garbage by hand!"

blktiger• 14 years ago

Is it just me, or has there been a more-than-normal amount of mud-slinging in politics this year?

protomyth2• 14 years ago

nope - same old same old http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_zTN4BXvYI

at least nobody called anyone a "hatchet-faced nutmeg dealer" yet

dagw• 14 years ago

The level may be the same, however the sheer volume of mud slung in this campaigns cycle dwarf anything seen before, thanks largely to super PACs. We're probably not going to see anything like this again, until the next election cycle.

nicholassmith2• 14 years ago

If you're resulting to insulting someones orc in a political campaign, you're clearly running desperately.

sonnekki• 14 years ago

Correct!

What matters is whatever they are blabbering about actually gets them out of office or paints a negative picture to enough people that it makes a difference.

If it is not effective, that's when things get interesting, I believe. It could mean a number of things; younger people are voting more, games are becoming more widely accepted as not a bad thing, for instance.

In the latter case, one could argue that the perpetrators are very much out of touch.

nicholassmith2• 14 years ago

If it works (and I hope it doesn't) then I guess it can be viewed as a successful way to win, but it's a bit desperate if they're resorting to attacking something like that over policy or similar.

If it doesn't work, I hope for the most part it means the wider population assumes she'd be good at her job and what she does online is her own business, but if it means younger people think of voting that's also a good thing.

tibbon• 14 years ago

If it didn't say BBC at the top, I'd assume this was an Onion article.

I'd vote for her because, you know, For the Horde!

revelation• 14 years ago

As much as I would like to attribute this purely to political banter, I think it reflects a general attitude in the broader society: video games are still not considered equal to the arts, often considered "a waste of time" and childish. Just look at the reporting when theres been another school rampage.

(Of course, the same crowd clamoring for a ban on videogames has no problems with splatter horror movies in the theater, which from my experience surpass any game in realism and pointless violence)

jeremyarussell• 14 years ago

Blizzard should make her a skin, and also a super PAC. That would be so great.

stevoski• 14 years ago

Obama, for one, plays poker and drinks beer. Both of which have a dark side. I bet he bluffs in poker.

Will someone make a website saying not to trust him because he is deceitful in poker?

World of Warcraft hobby sparks US political row

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