Comedy Central's "Indecision 2008" blog currently features a guest editorial from WoW Insider's Mike Schramm on nailing the "gamer vote," a bipartisan advisory on how to court our fickle voting bloc.
Though Schramm says, tongue planted firmly in cheek, that our candidates ought to start with "the cake is a lie" jokes and avoid console war dramas by bemoaning the Dreamcast's lost shot, he points out that leveraging the forum of today's online platforms is a sure bet:
If John McCain appeared in a Big Team Battle ranked match, tagged a flag carrier with a melee kill and told his opponent to "get out my house, fool," he could pretty much count on both the Covenant and Spartan votes (the parasitic alien Flood haven't been able to vote yet, though they are reportedly gnawing on the brainstems of certain Congressional heavyweights until they get the majority they need for an Amendment).
This sort of humor suggests that we gamers are not politically active, when that's an absolute fallacy. Why, everyone knows that I myself spearheaded a successful campaign for Big Boss' presidential candidacy. But for those of you lingering behind the curve, Schramm knows that a major sequel release is the best way to get gamers' attention:
All that's required is to mock up a few extremely high resolution screenshots (again, big guns and scantily-clad women will serve you well here), send them around to the major game sites, and mark them something like "Goldeneye 64 Sequel — Top Secret!" Then, you simply create a countdown on a website counting down to "Election Day" (use some weird phrasing like "110408" — gamers enjoy solving easy puzzles), and then, as a masterstroke, install polling places at all videogame stores.
Optionally, you can also offer preorders for "Election Day" — that way, Gamestop employees won't shut up about it until then.
Guest Editorial: "Nailing the Gamer Voters" by Mike Schramm [Indecision 2008]