It's nothing new.

But if it’s anything like Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign for the White House, he is all about change. In the video game world, it’s no different. Currently in ten swing states, spanning 19 video games for the Xbox 360, Obama is placing in-game advertisements for is campaign.
Obama’s push to gain more support from youth voters shows the degree at which the Obama campaign is willing to win the race.

Yearly entries into pop culture gaming like the Madden NFL franchise has been chocked full of product-placement and in-game advertising for years. Previously, products like Powerade, which are not time-sensitive, are statically placed inside the game. Generally, once a game is launched, the ads will never change.

Messages will have to be brief and to the point. Negative ads and long-winded statements will be impossible to see in games like Burnout, which include people racing at over 100 miles per hour. So, a quick message like “early voting has begun…Paid for by Obama for President” accompanied by a photo go right to the point.

Obama’s ads though are not static. Games that have been released as early as January now have billboards placed in various locations. When a user connects to Xbox Live to race a friend, or play some one-on-one basketball, the game’s software is updated. Part of the software updates includes advertising, and in this case, they are images super-imposed on certain parts of the games as advertisements.

Youth voters have always been a problem for candidates. History has shown they usually have better things to do on Election Day, like play video games. While Obama has previously derided video games, this ad campaign is probably the best way to attract the attention to youth.
TV advertisements, and Web ads have been littered all over the media spectrum for the last nine months, the switch to games is actually a bit of fresh air.

On top of that, the hardcore gamer demographic isn’t known for their intense reading or TV watching, so the Obama campaign has actually found the best way to move into a group of people that was otherwise hard to reach.

- John, editor
Lunch today: burrito