home << Policy << auto animal crossing continues to be an innovative playground as biden campaign begins advertising on it
Thu, 03 Sep 2020
Animal Crossing Continues To Be An Innovative Playground As Biden Campaign Begins Advertising On It
Furnished content.
For nearly half a year now, especially when this damned pandemic really took off, we've been bringing you the occasional story of how Nintendo's Animal Crossing keeps popping up with folks finding innovative ways to use the game as a platform. Protesters advocating for freedom in Hong Kong gathered in the game. Sidelined reality show stars took to the game to ply their trade. Very real people enduring very real layoffs used the game's currency as a method for making very real money. As someone who has never played the game, the picture I'm left with is of a game that is both inherently malleable to what you want to do within it and immensely social in nature.So perhaps it was only a matter of time before one of the major Presidential candidates got involved.Joe Biden's presidential campaign is rolling out a series of official virtual yard signs designed for display on islands in Animal Crossing: New Horizons for the Nintendo Switch.As first reported by The Verge, the four virtual sign designs squeeze supportive messages for the Democratic candidate into a 32 x 32 pixel, 16-color custom pattern square, suitable for displaying on a sign in front of your virtual house. In addition to the standard "Biden Harris" and "Team Joe" designs, the campaign has also released a version with a rainbow pride logo integrated into the "JOE" branding and a design featuring Biden's signature aviator sunglasses in red, white, and blue. Putting any thoughts about individual candidates aside, it's a pretty fun and low-risk use of a social video game by the Biden team. How much effort did it take to put these images and in-game items together? Not very long, to be sure. And, with turning out the youth vote being such a premier goal of literally any political campaign, this is at least an innovative way to try to build some momentum with younger voters.And, thankfully, it won't be terribly intrusive, unlike the politics of this stupid real life hellscape we all live in. Nobody is going to see these signs unless they visit the island of the person using them. This isn't any more in-your-face than real life yard signs for a candidate.All that being said, the Biden campaign should probably be on the lookout for some unintended fuckery, given historical attempts to do this sort of thing.Political campaigns using video games to get their message out has a short and spotty history. Former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner was among the first politicians to be interviewed in Second Life's virtual world back in 2006, an interview locale which later became known for attacks by flying penis griefers. Not going to lie, I'm sort of sorry I missed that one. Either way, it remains interesting to see how folks are finding new ways to use open and social worlds like Animal Crossing.
Read more here
posted at: 12:00am on 03-Sep-2020
path: /Policy | permalink
comment...
home << Policy << auto animal crossing continues to be an innovative playground as biden campaign begins advertising on it
|
|