When last we heard from the Girl Scouts in relation to video game issues, they were standing behind California's Leland Yee following passage of the state's 2005 video game law.

But, as reported by the Woodbury Bulletin, a Minnesota Girl Scout has a much different view on video game regulation. Colleen Stone, who created a 10-minute video on game content issues, told the newspaper:

I guess it all started when Hillary Clinton started getting public about video games and video game violence. It was just a blatant disregard for first amendment rights…That was a slippery slope that would easily have transferred to books and movies and newspapers, and that really disturbed me.

In response, Colleen developed a seminar to educate parents on game content and ratings. She invited the manager of a local GameStop as well as a rep from the Minnesota-based National Institute on Media & Family. The seminar was filmed and makes up a good chunk of her video. 250 copies have been distributed to various organizations.

Colleen, who will attend Johns Hopkins University in the fall and is considering a career in video game design, added:

I was worried this was just a pet peeve of mine, but deep down, it’s a constitutional issue. Some games can be so beautiful — some of the games I put on, my mom will just stop and stare… That’s why I think I did this. Video games are not evil.

 

Since the April 29th launch of Grand Theft Auto IV, fans have been scouring the game for Easter Eggs, those secret items tucked away by game designers and prized by fans.

One persistent claim is that GTA IV's Statue of Happiness, the game's take on the real-life Statue of Liberty, bears the face of Hillary Clinton. Senator Clinton, of course, was the leading political critic of the Hot Coffee scandal which surrounded the last major release in the series, GTA San Andreas. You can compare the images and decide for yourself.

We've also heard that the tablet held by the statue makes reference to Hillary, but we've not seen proof of this yet. Perhaps we should grab a chopper in-game and check this out...

An 11-year-old Kentucky boy sold his bicycle and his video game collection in order to raise money for Senator Hillary Clinton's flagging presidential campaign, according to the Associated Press.

Dalton Hatfield presented a check for $440 to former president Bill Clinton on Friday following a campaign rally in West Virginia:

“You sold your bike to get this?” [President] Clinton asked the McAndrews, Ky. native...

Hatfield feels so strongly that Hillary Clinton should be the next president he not only sold his bicycle, but video games and anything else he could find that “I could make money with” to donate to the former first lady’s bid for the Democratic nomination.

Politics, as the saying goes, makes strange bedfellows.

And there could be none stranger than seeing Hillary Clinton, who has long decried violence in video games, cozying up to the pro wrestling crowd with a tongue-in-cheek campaign promise that, if elected, she will deliver "the people's elbow" when things get rough.

Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain all appeared in taped WWE promos last night. Obama seemed uncomfortable, cracking only a "Do you smell what Barack is cookin'?" joke toward the end of his remarks.

Clinton's video was more enjoyable, if for no other reason than because it was such a departure from her normally aloof public persona. But, "Call me Hillrod?" A bit much...

John McCain's performance was funny ...and a little scary:

You want to pull out of Iraq? Well I say, no surrender... I'm gonna introduce Osama bin Laden to The Undertaker... [Americans] watch WWE because wrestling is about celebrating our freedom...

Watching these videos brings a few video game-related points to mind:

First, will we ever see major candidates making official appearances within a video game, or even at a video game event?

Second, why is WWE, with its real-life violence, steroid abuse issues, and hyper-sexualized "diva" wrestlers an acceptable venue for presidential candidates while video games are, apparently, not?

Finally, if one of these candidates goes after video game violence in the future, whether as president or as a member of the Senate, they need to be reminded of their political pandering to the wrestling audience.

Today's crucial Pennsylvania primary will surely be nothing like this over-the-top WWE video of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton facing one another in the wrestling ring...



UPDATE: Wired reports that game publisher THQ created the Clinton-Obama wrestling animations...

The Democratic presidential nomination could turn on tomorrow's primary in Pennsylvania. And while both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have had their issues with video games, this campaign has far deeper ramifications.

As a Keystone State resident, I can assure you that the candidates are working overtime with appearances, rallies and the like. And phone calls...

Here at GPHQ we've received about a dozen calls since last week, evenly divided between the Clinton and Obama camps. Phone calls from volunteers, recorded messages from candidates, and even one from Bill Clinton.

So we're running a poll today and tomorrow to ask GamePolitics readers who they think will win in Pennsylvania.

Be sure to vote!

As the crucial Pennsylvania primary draws near, competition between Democratic presidential contenders Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is heating up in real life as well as Second Life's virtual world.

As reported by the Wall Street Journal, SL's Obama and Clinton supporters have been griefing one another of late:

The trouble began in March 2007, when Obama supporters held a rally... [other avatars] raided the virtual Obama headquarters. They littered it with T-shirts, posters and signs sporting anti-Obama messages or expressing support for Sen. Clinton and Republican contender Rep. Ron Paul...

During a November rally at the unofficial virtual Clinton beachfront headquarters, supposed Obama supporters hid under a dock and then emerged with signs, shouting via connected headsets and shooting at people... it's unclear if the disruptors were actually from the Obama camp...

Last month, virtual gunmen disrupted a planned Obama march, shooting and pushing people around. That knocked some marchers offline... The Obama group responded by teleporting... to the CNN hub... to hold their rally. But soon images of a Clinton campaign poster and a clip of Sen. Obama next to a photo of Osama bin Laden were flying all over the screen...

Bonnie Ruberg's recent Heroine Sheik post, which detailed her quandary over just how important the video game censorship issue would be when she casts her presidential vote, got us thinking, too.

What, for instance, will GP do? (and I've got to decide quickly, because the Pennsylvania primary is just eight days away)...

More importantly, what will you do?

Given the situation with Iraq, with the economy, with environmental issues, with Homeland Security, with energy, the credit crisis, the housing market, etc., will your choice come down to a candidate's stance on video game issues?

How do we place video game issues in their proper context?

We'd like to know what you think.

Make your opinion known by voting in today's GamePolitics poll, located in the upper right sidebar, and feel free to offer additional thoughts by commenting to this post.

When you cast your ballot for the next president, will the candidate's stance on video game issues decide your vote?

It's a worthy question, and one that Bonnie Ruberg of Heroine Sheik asks herself:

The [presidential] primaries are front-page news even here [in France], and there’s a big election coming up in my home state of Pennsylvania, so French people always want to know, “Do you support Hilary or Obama?” Truth is though, I honestly don’t know...

When I try to explain my dilemma to a French person though, I always find myself falling back on the “Hilary wants to censor video games” angle though. And what do I get in response? Awkward stares that say, “You wouldn’t really vote for someone on the basis of video games, would you?”

The question is, would I? ...I really do think Hillary’s approach could be detrimental to our art form–especially if she’s the leader of the whole frickin’ country... Then again, Obama is no shiny light of tech positivism either. Al Gore, I miss you.

Although the only notice we've taken of World of Warcraft in relation to the U.S. presidential election was an unoffical rally for Republican Ron Paul (left) in January, USA Today reports that WoW is a hotbed of presidential politics - especially on the Democratic side:

The primary race between Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is so competitive, it has even barged into the online universe of the World of Warcraft game. Millions of players are supposed to be fighting dragons, raiding enemies and performing magical quests — not discussing superdelegates.

USA Today quotes 36-year-old WoW devotee Sean Goldman:

Here we are, logging into a virtual world to escape the grip of the real world for a few hours, but this election has brought the real world closer to the virtual world...

Hillary and Obama have created quite the buzz with the race, and it's created a buzz everywhere. I'd say 99% of the people talking about this (in the game) are the types who would usually stay away from talking politics because it wasn't cool. But now it's definitely roused a lot of people in World of Warcraft.

Whack-a-mole, boxing and martial arts knock-offs?

Sigh... 

Can't web designers come up with more innovative game metaphors for the presidential race?

In any case, we take note of Political Boxing at anti-Hillary Clinton site StopHerNow. The domain appears to be privately registered, so we're not sure whether the site was created by Obama supporters, Republicans, or some other group.

Sen. Hillary Clinton's struggling campaign has taken a credibility hit over recent revelations that she misspoke about arriving in Bosnia under sniper fire in 1996.

Did you doubt for a moment that a video game version would be far behind?



Via: RatTube

So GP got this e-mail last evening from the Hillary Clinton campaign. It ran under the headline:

Liberty City Democratic Club Endorses Hillary Clinton

Wait, we thought.. That can't be right. Hillary is most game-legislating of all the presidential candidates and Liberty City, well, that's Grand Theft Auto territory.

As it turns out, this Liberty City group is a political club for the LGBT community in Pennsylvania, where the April 22nd primary is looking more and more like a make-or-break situation for Clinton and opponent Barack Obama.

UPDATE: I've been thinking... GTA IV launches in a month. Hillary has had a lot to say about GTA in the past, especially in regard to Hot Coffee. April Fool's Day is next Tuesday. Still, the group's website looks legit and so does its domain registration. What do you think, GP readers?

The idea of a universal rating system that would span a variety of media, including video games, movies, music and TV is a popular one among some game industry critics.

High-profile political supporters of universal ratings include presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Dr. David Walsh of the National Institute on Media & the Family, Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN, i.e., she's Minnesota-based Walsh's Congresswoman) and New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer.

Actually, I guess we can count Spitzer out of the mix as he has apparently been working on his own universal system for rating call girls.

The video game industry, on the other hand, hates the idea of universal ratings. Hates it. Writing in the April issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly, ECA president Hal Halpin examines the issue:

Many of the industry's greatest critics can (usually) agree on one thing: The [ESRB] is the best rating system for entertainment products...

Hal writes that the ESRB system blows away that of the RIAA, which simply slaps "Parental Advisory" stickers on music, with no explanation. And while he finds the MPAA's system for movies to be better, its content descriptors can't compare to those of the ESRB.

Hal also notes the vagaries of the current multi-rating system media environment:

Some argue that it's unfair to have a [PG-13] movie that a 13-year-old can see, but a companion [E-rated] game that's available to "everyone." The inverse also occurs: One can watch the movie but not play the game owing to different ratings.

His conclusion? Universal ratings aren't likely to happen any time soon.

Full Disclosure Dept: The Entertainment Consumers Association is the parent company of GamePolitics.