Hot Flashes: Presidential Paintball Has You Shooting the Candidates

It's about time someone's come up with a video game that lets the presidential hopefuls face off in a forum befitting their partisan manner: Paintball. Presidential Paintball pits your candidate of choice against the other presidential hopefuls in a rolling paintball match that takes place in and around the White House. While the game is fairly easy to beat, I never get tired of watching a huge-headed Clinton or Romney roll across the floor. Oddly enough, when I got to McCain, he kept standing up and shooting at the floor by his feet. Statement or coding mistake?

Not content to stand idly by and watch the events in the world of human politics unfold from afar, two of the star characters for the upcoming Wideload Pants political minigame title Hail to the Chimp are heading out to the Iowa Caucus to get a handle on things first hand.

Woodchuck Chumley and Crackers the Chimp (who looks suspiciously like a current, high-level politician, will be on location at the Iowa Caucus Thursday covering the latest news for "GRRNews.com". The live coverage also coincides with the launch of the game's official site.

Publisher Gamecock promises that the team of crack cosplay reporters will be delivering election polls, gossip, stock tips and interviews with candidates. Man, I hope they have a camera recording when they go for their first interview with a real politician. I can't wait to see the look on Hilary Clinton's or Mike Huckabee's expression when faced with a grown man dressed up as a Woodchuck wearing a fake hair piece and carrying a live microphone. If bullets aren't involved it should be priceless.

Recently Common Sense Media, a non-partisan organization "dedicated to improving the media lives of children and families", sent out a questionnaire about kids and the media to the current roster of presidential candidates.

In it they only ask one specific question about video games, the candidates take on legislating violent video games sales. Only Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, Senator Barack Obama, Former Governor Mitt Romney and Governor Bill Richardson answered the questions in time for the deadline. The answers, I believe, give readers a sense on the candidate's take on video games and the first amendment.

In his answer Edwards points to the ESRB as a good example of industry responsibility. Barack seems to be calling for the feds to get involved, if only to once more study the impact of video games on "children's cognitive development." Richardson calls for the parents to be educated about the inappropriate content of "many video games." Citing the need to protect children from a "societal cesspool of filth, pornography, violence, sex and perversion", Romney says that the government needs to "get serious" against retailers that sell adult games to children.

Both Edwards and Barack also sort of talk a bit about gaming when answering a question about managing their childrens' media use. Hit the jump to read their answers to that question and all four candidates full take on video game censorship.

I have now, sitting on my laptop, a leaked copy of the National Institute on Media and the Family's annual Media Wise Video Game Report Card, set to be officially released tomorrow.

The annual report card is becoming increasingly out-dated and unnecessary, something that probably explains the desperate tone of this year's report. In his executive summary for the report, David Walsh tries to drum up a little fear, a little attention by first admitting that things have actually gotten quite good when it comes to ratings awareness and enforcement, but then hints at an "ominous backslide on multiple fronts."

What's interesting is that the summary cites very specific examples for the positive, such as Target removing Manhunt 2 from shelves after finding AO content was viewable with a hack, or that GameStop has started firing people for selling M-rated games to minors, but doesn't really do the same for the negative. Instead Walsh writes that "Complacency, especially on the part of retailers and parents, appears to have caused a backslide in ratings awareness and enforcement."

Walsh continues:

And, at the same time, while the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) has continued to educate the public about its video game rating system, several shocking incidents have inadvertently revealed dangerous loopholes in the ratings process. Simply put, some of the hard-won progress seen in previous years has been lost, and now, too many children are spending too much time playing inappropriate video games that can harm their health and development.

His only example, the fact that a few churches were using Halo as a way to attract young gamers back to the church.

It is in from this morass of self-doubt and shaky evidence that NIMF launches their detailed "report card" on gaming this year.

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