Guest post by Rafi Santo, via HolyMeatballs.org
A couple of weeks back I came across a fascinating post on the blog GamePolitics. It reported that a player of the game Burnout, on Xbox Live, had seen and taken a screen shot of an Obama campaign ad within the game. The initial post raised the possibility of a photoshop job at work, but the blog soon confirmed that the Obama campaign had indeed bought ads in a spate of Xbox Live sports games, and even had the ads specifically targeting players in swing states.


This got me thinking about one of the phenomena that has always fascinated me about the work we do here at GK; adults can show up in youth and play spaces in ways that allow them to make positive social impact in realms where it was thought the only potential was for entertainment and/or socializing. Whether it be games, virtual worlds, social networks, etc. I’ve always enjoyed the fact that we go to places previously considered to be “off limits” to social change makers. This is an act which, if done badly, can alienate the people we’re aiming to reach (Jared Stein, an educational technologist, talks about this “creepy treehouse” effect), but if done right can be a powerful way to facilitate positive cultures of social responsibility.
I wonder now what effect this campaign entering these play/social spaces will have on the way that mainstream culture thinks about what these spaces are for, whether there will be any negative effects such as resentment by players for encroaching this space, and most importantly whether this kind of engagement could be a portent of how Obama might consider promoting or at least supporting unorthodox methods of education and social change if he does become president. On closer analysis, we can also of course note that the way that the campaign is engaging in the gaming space is actually a quite traditional, top down, broadcast method, rather than the way that typifies his “real life” campaign of participatory and grassroots engagement in the process of political life. But I’ll cut him some slack for now. 😛