Who would you vote for — Mario or Luigi?

Winda Benedetti Citizen Gamer • E-mail

First it was porn. Now it’s politics.

When the epic life-simulation game “Spore” first made its way onto home computers this year, players promptly got busy using the game’s Creature Creator to design a startling variety of anatomically explicit beings from another world.

But play the game these days, and you’re more likely to bump into Sarah Palin or Barack Obama than a giant dancing penis.

OK, sure, Electronic Arts put the kibosh on the so-called “Sporn” in its game, but still, it’s easy to see what’s on game players’ minds (besides sex) when you peruse the world of “Spore.”

The game encourages players to create beings, buildings, vehicles and spacecraft of their own design and to then share them with other players via the Sporepedia – an online encyclopedia of sorts. Search this Sporepedia for the name Sarah Palin, for example, and you’ll find more than 1,800 entries.

One such Palin creature comes with bulging, lash-lined eyes, a pink pig’s snout and hair made of feathers. Her creator – a player by the name of BleauBoy – describes his creature thusly: “The right wing pig in lipstick. Really likes to kill other animals with her bare hands. Uses her snout to hunt for potential oil wells.”

And this Palin creature is just one of many thousands of politically inspired creations within “Spore.” Here you’ll find Barack Obama- and John McCain-looking creatures – some of them flattering, some of them not so flattering, and many of them just plain ol’ amusing. (My personal favorite: The giant Obama-shaped space ship.)

But as the presidential election draws near, “Spore” isn’t the only game giving a voice to game players’ political opinions, concerns, jabs and jokes.

From political rallies organized in “Second Life” to candidate caricatures made using the Wii’s Mii avatar tool, to home-brew flash games with a political ax to grind, video game fans are leveraging that thing they love the most as a way to let the world know what they think about perhaps the most important presidential election in their lifetimes.

“Our generation grew up with video games as a constantly evolving artistic medium, so while some people might view gaming as a mindless orgy of beeps and pixels, we see it as an evocative platform for progress, storytelling, and potential satire,” says Brian Altano, one of the “jaded, politically informed gamers” behind gaming humor site The Minus World.

His crew has been putting its own spin on the presidential election with “Thwomp the Vote ‘08” – an election satire that envisions a race between Nintendo characters Mario (a mustachioed McCain) and his brother Luigi (Obama done up Italian-plumber style).

According to the site: “Warp Pipe reform, gold coin taxes, the threat of Koopa extremists, and bringing the Toad troops home” are the issues that matter most in this election.

“We're hoping it brings gamers closer to the political world out there while giving the people who are actively following the election a new and entertaining spin on things,” Altano says.

Gaming the election
Dennis McCauley, editor and founder of GamePolitics.com, launched his Web site documenting the convergence of video games and politics in 2005.

“When I first started people said, ‘Games and politics? What’s the connection?'” But these days, he says, the two intersect so frequently there isn’t enough time in the day to write about it all.

McCauley says he's been especially pleased to see the abundant and enthusiastic use of gaming content as a means of jumping into the election conversation.

“Some of it is really really, good,” he says. “It’s heartening to see them getting involved at this level.”

But why now? Why this particular election?

For starters, McCauley says, “the technology is so much more accessible than it was even four years ago.”

Indeed, today just about anyone with a computer and some free time can make a flash game or a bit of machinima (“machine cinema” created using computer-generated graphics, often from video games). And so over at Machinima.com, you’ll find “Broken Obama” a short film that lampoons Obama’s use of teleprompters created using graphics from the online world “Second Life.”

Meanwhile, you can’t surf the Web these days without tripping over an election-themed mini-game. “Commander n’ Chief,” for example, asks players to vote on a candidate by selecting which one they want to take into armed combat against gun-wielding bad-guys. (Obama, with more than 7 million “votes,” is winning 63 percent to McCain’s 37 percent.) And then there's “Rock the Quote,” a game that puts players’ knowledge of the candidates to the test by asking them to correctly identify which would-be world leaders said certain phrases.

McCauley also believes that the fascinating figures cut by both Obama and Palin have helped fuel this onslaught of gaming commentary. After all, this duo seems to have energized the youthful electorate (those typically more savvy with games and technology ) in a way rarely seen before.

He notes that Palin in particular has inspired a glut of Flash games – “Hunting with Palin,” “Puck Palin” and “Sarah Palin Guardian of the Northern Frontier” to name a few.

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