The Wii's exergaming influence and the industry's overall sales and market figures are both cited as examples of video games' legitimacy in American society, in the form set up by the Entertainment Consumers Association. Of course, you're free to hit the backspace on all of it and write your own ode to how Saints Row II made you a better citizen, if you so choose.

"As a gamer and a voter, [the ECA is] asking you to email President Obama to point out some of the ways that video games have empowered and educated you, as well as their power to build teamwork and make people healthier," says the ECA's Brett Schenker, the online advocacy manager.

Obama's beaten up on games in a few speeches lately, asking parents to shelve the Xbox (by name) and make sure the kids observe a decent bedtime. Sounds like that has as much chance of solving the nation's problems as lecturing the president about scapegoating games.

ECA: Tell President Obama How Games Have Benefited You [GamePolitics]

Caryl Shaw, Senior Producer at EA's Maxis
To developers: "Who doesn't want to be a gay super hero? Are you thinking about this stuff when you're making your game? Well you should be!"

Dan Hewitt, Senior Director of Communications & Industry Affairs for the Entertainment Software Association
About the ignorance of the general public toward gaming: "We need to come together. We need gay and lesbian gamers to step forward. Come out, and then come out again as gamers."

Stephen Toulouse, Program Manager for Policy and Enforcement, Xbox Live
On expressing sexuality in Gamertags: "Who we choose to love is part of our identity."

Cyn Skyberg, Vice President of Customer Relations at Linden Lab
On expressing sexuality online: "The process for how we display ourselves as we really are [determines] what are the values we have as a virtual community."

Flynn DeMarco, founder of GayGamer.net and Kotaku alumnus
On blogs and gaming sites censoring the n-word, but not the other f-word in headlines: "They need to let people know that it's not okay [to use that word]."

There were two other issues that came to mind as a result of the panel that, sadly, I didn't encounter until after the Q&A ended. The first was brought up by my friend over at GamesRadar, Henry Gilbert: On Xbox Live, you can download McCain/Palin and Obama/Biden icons – so is the message that it's somehow more acceptable to express political orientation than sexual orientation?

The second issue stemmed from the part of the panel where moderator Justin Cole brought up the Flash game Watch Out Behind You, Hunter!, where players have to shoot gay men to keep from being raped: I thought to myself, what if you re-skinned the hunter to be a woman on her way home late at night from a club? Would that somehow make the game more acceptable because it removes the anti-gay sentiment? Or is it equally uncool because the game still advocates murder as a solution to sexual assault?

Discuss.

Moore, the EA Sports honcho, was motivated to pose a 30-day EA Sports Active Challenge by Obama's recent comments to the American Medical Association. And a need to sell more EA Sports Active.

Much of Moore's post reads like a press release, but he's probably right about this: "I'd be willing to bet there are more consoles getting far more use in American homes than there is exercise equipment, so it's up to us to continue to use the platform for good."

As for Obama, he and his speechwriters need to cut it already with the tendentious mentions of video games as something fundamentally slothful. Like anyone in that audience hasn't heard it before. In fact, that's three mentions in the past 10 days. If he, a law professor and lecturer, can't make the point that things like family togetherness, parental involvement, and physical fitness are positives on their merits alone, then how is shaming and cliché going to do much better?

EA's Peter Moore Challenges Obama [GamePolitics]

We got the link to this Flickr set, uploaded yesterday, but no explanation other than the location of the protest: Northampton, Mass., or so it said anyway.

I had a feeling Bowser is the kind of guy who supports a strong military. Of course, this is a funny picture in its own right. But once you make the sign, you gotta go wave it, and Bowser takes it downtown.

Here you can see Northamptonites wondering WTF a Tanooki suit is. Look, you can fly with it, you can turn into a statue ... never mind.

The protest culture in Northampton, Mass., must make San Francisco look like Pensacola, if three guys don't even bat a fuckin' eye at an anthropomorphic spiked turtle turtle picketing in front of a local bank.

Bowser Protest [Flickr, thanks Nick N.]

"Can you play video games in space?"

With a bunch of schoolkids from the DC area in Obama's office, that's exactly what the first kid said. No questions about the majesty of space, or about the gruelling selection process involved in becoming an astronaut, or about the wonders of being able to just pick up a telephone and speak to somebody in space.

It was "Can you play video games in space?" Which, really, is pretty great. To his credit, the astronaut on the other end of the line answered honestly:

We can, in fact. And in fact a few years ago when I was up here for six months I had a video game that I used to play in my spare time. Unfortunately, we don't have much spare time.

So we can, we have a lot of laptop computers. But for the most part we stay real busy doing real work.

Games in space: confirmed. Bet the downtime up there leaves a lot of time for WoW grinding. Or, more fittingly, a spot of Xwing vs Tie Fighter against the Russians.

Obama & Kids Call Astronauts, Want to Know: Can You Play Video Games in Space? [Game Politics]

The Star - as in the reliable publication you often see at the checkout between this month's BIG SEX NEWS reported by Cosmo and Glamour - reports that the Gamer-in-Chief likes to play the breakout clone on his mobile "to unwind." That's attributed to "a confidante," who added, "Every night before bed, he gives it a few minutes."

Hey, some are morning guys, some are right-before-bed guys. Oh wait, no ... no I don't mean that.

The Star exclaims his high score is "around 15,000!" I don't have a Crackberry. Is that supposed to be good?

President Obama, BrickBreaker [The Star via Joystiq]

Thanks to French developers Eversim, PC gamers will be able to play along with the new Prez in Commander in Chief - a geo-political sim that launches on Inauguration Day (January 20th)

The game promises to model the economy, energy, national security, terrorism, and "all things politics". You can even assemble a Cabinet by 'building' politicians from a collection of personality types and attitudes - not unlike the way focus groups mould our real political masters, one supposes.

"Inaugural" Video Game Puts Players in Obama's Shoes [Appscout]

The job involves getting him something to eat, maybe playing a little basketball with him, and basically chatting and getting whatever he needs between important things. During the conversation, apparently Zero Wing came up.

You know, the Sega Genesis video game. I don't know how.

And apparently, my friend made the off-hand comment of "All your base are belong to us".

And Obama leaned forward in his chair, quirked his eyebrow a bit, and responded "What you say?"

Granted, this nugget comes from a random Tor commenter's friend, so it's tough to verify — we're going to call this a rumor, a delicious rumor. Quick! Somebody find John McCain and tell him about the "full extent of the jam." He must know!

Great Caesar’s ghost! [Tor.com Thanks, Eric-Jon!]

Today, of course, is the day you can vote in the United States. I know that politics are a passionate and important part of a lot of people’s lives, so if you want to talk about it, civilly, here’s the place to do it. Any political talk in this post will be considered on topic, but remember we still ban for trolling and disrespectful, or insulting comments.

It's more than some machinima. John's colleague, R.J. wrote me to say that it's an interactive piece, in which the user can press mouse buttons to get the two candidates to speak their lines. (You see it demonstrated in the video) "That part will probably be available later," R.J. said, "for now it's just the video."

Brennan himself told GamePolitics about the political-cartoon purpose of the mod, and says he has a process for getting real people into Half-Life 2, provided he has enough photography as a source material. Newsmakers like those two definitely qualify. That combined with "access to MoCap data, and some good people helping out," resulted in the Half-Life 2 debate so far.

I'm also a little weirded out that I recognize the music at the beginning. That's "The Everlasting Blink" by Bent, album of the same name. Why'd he pick that?

Campaign 2008: Obama vs. McCain [John Brennan via Gamepolitics, with thanks to R.J. too.]

In fairness, this could be said of most 72-year-olds, not just that one. But yeah, it rather captures the image both candidates have in the media. Also, it's bad when you're getting busted on by a Canadian political cartoonist. Check out the one preceding it. I don't get it? Canadians actually have something named the Liberal Party? That would go over like a turd in a punchbowl down here, considering the level of our debates.

Who's Winning? [Filibuster Cartoons via GamePolitics]

On the other side, Take Two Chairman Strauss Zelnick, has gone hard for the Democrats — no surprise there, considering how his games are such pariahs in the culture war demagoguery of the right. Zelnick's given $2,000 to Barack Obama, and hedged his bets in the primary with $2,500 for John Edwards in the primary, and a grand each for Joe Biden and Bill Richardson. No Hillary? Dis! Yeah, wonder why. Anyway, there are more names and numbers on the jump.

Giving to Republicans, according to Develop:
• Will Wright: (Spore, The Sims) $3,000 to McCain; previously donated $2,350 to Giuliani
• Bobby Kotick (Activision CEO) $2,300 to McCain; previously donated $2,100 to Mitt Romney
• Curt Schilling (38 Studios) $2,300 to McCain.

Does Schilling really qualify here? Yeah, guess so.

Democratic contributors, according to Develop:

• Strauss Zelnick (Chairman, Take-Two) $2,000 to Obama; had previously donated to $2,500 to Edwards, $1,000 each to Biden & Richardson
• Ben Feder (CEO, Take-Two) contributed $1,000 to Biden in 2007
• Sam Houser (Rockstar) $4,600 to Obama
• Patricia Vance (president, ESRB) $2,000 to Obama
• John Riccitiello (CEO, EA) $4,600 to Obama
• John Smedley (Sony Online Entertainment) $2,300 to Obama
• Richard Garriott aka "Lord British" (Ultima series, NC Soft) $2,300 to Hillary Clinton
• Alex Rigopulos (CEO, Harmonix) $4,600 to Obama, the maximum allowable in two cycles, plus a $28,500 contribution to his victory PAC.
• Kathy Vrabeck (president, EA Casual) $2,300 to Obama
• Gabe Newell (pres., Valve) $2,300 to Christopher Dodd

By the way, if you want to look up neighbors, bosses, professors, celebrities, whomever and see who they've supported with the long green, Congressional Quarterly's Moneyline is much more user-friendly than the FEC.

Records Reveal Political Power of Dev Heavyweights [Develop Magazine via Play.tm]

If the computing media — not to mention Linden Labs themselves — were to be believed, we should be deeply immersed in our Second Lives by now. Companies are using it for press conferences, people are having sex inside it — Sweden even has an embassy in it, for goodness' sake. Although early in the primaries there was a flurry of SL activity, things seem to have quietened down.

The author believes that this is largely due to the difficulty in raising funds from within SL — it is difficult to check where donors are based, and many are from outside the US.

Perhaps Linden Labs' estimates of the number of SL users is a little on the padded side, too. If you are unsure just how many of the 14 million or so residents actually log in on a regular basis, how much time are you going to devote to talking to them?

Both McCain and Obama have criticized video games — most notably McCain, although Obama has made repeated pleas for parents to 'turn off' their kids' consoles and get them outside — and might be wary of seeming to endorse such a controversial medium by actually appearing inside it.

And then of course there are the griefers. Honestly, if I were running for president I would want to do so in a public forum that carried the lowest possible risk of being buzzed by a flock of winged penises.

Presidential candidates overlook Second Life universe [Houston Chronicle Game Hacks)

No doubt, video games are easy fodder when speaking about "family values" for all the stereotypical reasons. But to lump all games together is a dated philosophy, ignoring—aside from what I'd argue could be familial benefits—their huge potential to revolutionize education through their ability to capture attention spans and motivate success...let alone the current ways they tacitly instruct the scientific method, resource management and spacial reasoning.

Barack Obama: 'Parents should clamp down on games' [MCVUK]

Thursday night, presidential hopeful Barack Obama spoke to the teeming crowds at an Austin, TX political rally about the upcoming election. In particular, Obama targeted the youth market in an attempt to get them to recruit their friends to his side with this rousing call to action.

"I want you to tell them, 'It's time for you to turn off the TV and stop playing GameBoy,'" Obama said. "We've got work to do."

I think it's very touching that Mr. Obama wants the kids of America to put down their antiquated gaming systems and work on the sorry state of the nation. Now if he could just convince the rest of them, you know, the ones who are actually using game devices from this century. Flynn De Marco