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Obama Campaign Theme: Video Games as Metaphor for Underachievement - Unlike rival Hillary Clinton,  Democratic presidential frontrunner Barack Obama does not have a significant track record with regard to video game content issues.
His speeches, however, often contain a reference to parents making their children “put away the video games.” For Obama, video games seem to serve as a sort of metaphor for underachievement.
The Illinois senator repeated the theme last night in a victory speech following his big win over Clinton in the Wisconsin primary. As reported by the Washington Post, which carried a transcript and video of the speech, Obama said:
I know how hard it will be to alleviate poverty that has built up over centuries, how hard it will be to fix schools, because changing our schools will require not just money, but a change in attitudes.
We’re going to have to parent better, and turn off the television set, and put the video games away, and instill a sense of excellence in our children, and that’s going to take some time.
A day earlier, speaking to a college crowd in Youngstown, Ohio,  Obama made similar remarks. The Youngstown Vindicator reports:
[Obama called for] investments in early childhood education to close the achievement gap, but with an added emphasis on poetry, music and art, not just academics. Obama admonished parents to do their part by turning off the television, putting away the video games, and instilling in their children a desire to get a good education.
Nor is this a new theme for Obama. GamePolitics reported on similar comments as far back as April, 2006.
[Game Politics]

You know... I've been a hardcore gamer for so long, that I only vaguely remember the times when I wasn't one as a sort of "age of myth and legend." I mean, I remember that there was a time when we had no video games, and I know I was alive back then, but what was it like? I'm not so sure I could actually tell you. Why do I mention that, you ask?

Well, in the event that you weren't just asking sarcastically, I'll tell you...

As a child, I was a classic underachiever in the system's eyes. I had a relatively high-IQ, I was obviously bright, but my grades sucked... and I mean sucked. Hard. Like a Dyson. You see, I didn't do homework. Pretty much, at all. It cost me dearly. To get the things I wanted in life, I had to fight tooth and nail. There were no scholarships or financial aid available for this underachieving gen-x white boy when it came time to go to college, and there was no talent-scout cum recruiter waiting in the sidelines when I was quietly asked to leave my high-school because, really, I didn't belong there. Mind you I wasn't expelled. They couldn't - I hadn't done anything wrong, but I was asked to leave.

The system considered me a failure, a slacker, an underachiever... And you know what? It was all lies, all of it. The system pointed to everything Obama does. Clearly, they intimated, I spend too much time playing games and reading comic books. Obviously, they'd say, I was doomed to a life of flipping burgers because I didn't take school seriously...

...and here I am, years later, a video game designer. One does a'ight, in fact. I've been doing this for some 14/15 years and I've shipped as many skus. I've worked with hundreds of people from companies across the world and I've done it all by seeing what I wanted and taking it. By achieving the goals I visualized, I've managed to put myself in a tax bracket that guarantees I never get a refund... but you know, I didn't put those video games down, so clearly I could be doing better...

...or could I? I went to school to be a writer. A respected profession, yes? Had I gone that route, I'd be making what... 50k a year as a teacher, somewhere? I could have been a screenwriter or journalist I guess, but they're both like being a game designer to me -- jobs that require exactly the type of passion that apparently branded me as an underachiever, pretty much all my pre-adult life.

I like Obama. He's the top of my list of [ultimately sort of unsatisfying] choices, this year... But he clearly thinks that I and my ilk are a bunch of slackers that he could live without. The billions of dollars this industry earns... the skilled technical jobs it creates... and the outpouring of creativity and thought it can enable in our children totally don't matter, to him. (To be fair, they don't matter to ANY US candidate)

Doesn't that make you sad? It makes me sad. This is the first election of my life where literally every choice I have to make is a bad one for me, in some way or the other. It's hard to be gung-ho about our representational democracy (fine, Republic, you pedants), when you don't feel at all represented.

Ah, disenfranchisement, my old friend... it's been years. I haven't seen you since High School. Welcome back.

- Snipehunter