Super Tuesday in American Primaries was, well, Tuesday, and the results were pretty clear: The results were not clear (for the Democrats). McCain is almost certainly going to be the Republican nominee at this point, even though several key conservatives are expressing their dissatisfaction with America's choice. For the Democrats, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are consistently reported as ending in a tie, with roughly thirteen states going to Obama and nine to Clinton. This equals out to a tie (or perhaps more likely a Hillary advantage) due to Clinton's victories in New York and California, clearly key states. But, you likely already knew all that if you had cared in the first place.
My point here is to talk about what they have to do with the gaming world, as I originally did in my first popular-ish post at my old blog, The Wii PlayBox. The candidates list has shrunk quite a bit from them (with even Mitt Romney out of the race today) so I can get into more detail than before where more details exist. Most of the original story, (which Yahoo! stole from my earlier post and managed way more publicity even though they were really late *grumble*) came from the Common Sense Media questionnaire, asking if the candidates supported video game legislation from the federal level. Anyway, let's get started with the details:
Hillary Clinton: By a millimeter, a knife's edge, a photo finish, Hildawg is still front-runner for the Democratic nomination, and she's not exactly hip with gaming. She, along with another enemy of gaming, Lieberman, attempted to pass the Family Entertainment Protection Act in 2005 after the Hot Coffee scandal, which would have criminalized the sale of mature and above games to children under seventeen. The law was ruled unconstitutional basically because it would give the ESRB too much authority while they're still a private group, which Hildawg could theoretically still get around by abolishing them and setting up a government-run ratings system. In other words, she can and will propose video game legislation in the future, which likely still won't stand up in court. I hope.
John McCain: Not quite so clear. Like all Republicans beside "games are a cesspool of filth" Romney, McCain didn't respond to the questionnaire, so he doesn't have any specific stated stance on gaming legislation. Yahoo's post decided to try to determine his stance by the company he keeps, pointing out his friends Lieberman *ALERT ALERT* and baseball player Curt Schilling (?). I already talked about Lieberman in the Hillary post but Schilling is a bit of a stretch, in my opinion. He has supported McCain, and he owns a stake in an MMO company, apparently. I don't know that he's exactly a huge influence, but that's all we know about McCain, so that's the best we can come up with. At least he hasn't preached game legislation like Romney used to.
Barack Obama: The Wunderkind of the Democratic party (yes, I know he's 46... and not German) Obama seems sort of more hopeful on gaming than the other candidates. In his response to the questionnaire, he hinted at a possibility of legislation if the ESRB doesn't get their act together (what are they doing wrong?) but mainly just supports more studies on how games affect kids growing up. I don't know that I'd trust the studies at this point after I've looked at so many of them and how scattered their findings are, but this is better than straight-out legislation. Like on all of his stances, you can basically project whatever position you want onto him and support it with something he's said. Actually, that's true with a lot of the candidates on a lot of things, but that's for another post.
Mike Huckabee: Who knows? Really, he didn't answer the questionnaire, and he has no one with any position on video games to link to, either. He has played Guitar Hero before, but that doesn't actually mean anything. He's still a conservative, though perhaps actually less than the others on social issues, and he's likely not going to worship the ESRB. There you have it, that's all I know.
Ron Paul: Yeah right, he's not a frontrunner, I'm not going to talk about him. Oh, wait, I'm already getting hate mail from his supporters. Uh, okay, um, Ron Paul is, like, best buds with the constitution so he'll totally send gamers checks in the mail for supporting the arts. But seriously, Paul supporters, just chill out a little bit.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Off-Topic Opinion: Too Much Orchestral Game Music
Just a quick thought: I believe that too many games now have big-name orchestras playing their music. It seems like games with a large enough budget just decide "Why not?" and hire one. Don't get me wrong, several first-person shooters like Halo should just stick with the orchestras so they don't end up with Dynasty Warriors-esque lame rock. I actually think Half-Life handles their music pretty well, with none for the majority of the game with special (non-orchestral) music suddenly coming up at tense points in the game. However, Ratchet & Clank should not have orchestral music. It's soft, unobtrusive, and completely forgettable, and I don't like that. I actually liked the one-man-with-a-computer compositions featured in similar 3D platformers like Spyro the Dragon that were sort of cool and at least could be heard. I know somebody will disagree with me, so go ahead and tell me so.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)