Comedy Central Gives Politicians Tips For Wooing the Gaming Vote

Gamers are a growing demographic of the American electorate. So it's about time that candidates start showering the very same kind of pandering love on gamers that they show to every other constituency under the sun. To that end, Comedy Central's Indecision 2008 offers a few suggestions (lifted straight from the InDecider's pen):

1. Making jokes about how "the cake is a lie" and perhaps even making actual cakes shaped like videogame characters would be a good start. Arguing about which console is best will get gamers interested, but the issue is violently divisive, so if ever asked, the best response is just to say, sagely: "It's a shame the Dreamcast never got the chance it deserved."

2. Games like Halo and Call of Duty on the Xbox Live service provide gamers with a platform for their concerns and complaints; a modern town hall, if you will. 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).

3. Garnering the votes of gamers isn't a tough task at all -- they'll do almost anything you want as long as you give them points for it and let them brag about it to each other afterwards.

4. 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.

[via Comedy Central's Indecision 2008]