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McCain Encourages You To Shoot Flying Pigs
By Pete Haas: 2008-06-23 14:33:41
Senator McCain's campaign has decided to court younger voters, but not by doing some boring, grown-up stuff like "addressing our issues." Instead, they made a web game where you shoot flying pigs with lasers. Finally, they're speaking my language!
The game is called Pork Invaders and it's essentially a parody of Space Invaders. Instead of shooting aliens, you shoot flying pigs, and instead of shooting lasers, you shoot vetoes - seriously. You press space bar and the word "VETO" shoots out at the pigs swooping down at you. After you've destroyed all of the flying pigs, the game helpfully tells you McCain is opposed to excessive federal government spending (commonly referred to as "pork"). Your score is measured not in points but in millions of tax dollars saved. Obviously one shouldn't spend too much time examining a game that involves the annihilation of airborne pigs but Pork Invaders did provoke my inner nerd. First of all, you don't veto pork-barrel spending - you veto bills that the (often unrelated) spending is tacked onto. So basically, you could be shooting your little veto laser at an education bill or a bill to give healthcare to senior citizens - which gave the game an unintentionally dark undertone for me. On a side note, I noticed the lasers that pigs shoot back at you are upside-down crosses (typically symbols of Satanism or at least anti-Christian sentiment). The paranoid, tinfoil hat-wearing conspiracy theorist in me wondered if that was some subtle political statement behind the imagery but I checked the original Space Invaders and the aliens' return fire looks exactly the same. In other words, no, the game isn't trying to subliminally instruct you that excessive government spending is Satanic. Space Invaders is thirty years old now so parodying it probably isn't the best way to make your campaign seem hip or current (even if you can put the game on your Facebook profile). Some old games are still fun but well, Space Invaders isn't one of them. It's slow and completely unchallenging - I mean, the invaders just walk back and forth in a neat line and the game gives you enormous couches to hide behind. If you're going to attempt "viral" campaigning, I'd think you'd want to make a game at least slightly entertaining so people will forward it to their friends or at least so they'll play it long enough to see the facts on McCain pop up. After you've seen the interface and the visual gags therein (the veto laser, the "tax dollars" scoreboard), there's no incentive to keep playing. I'm predisposed to hate Pork Invaders because I like to think of gaming as an apolitical activity, but I just don't understand how this is supposed to increase youth support for McCain. Youths love video games, therefore if McCain makes a video game, youths will love him? If that's all it takes, the Obama campaign should start making clay pigeons with "Change We Can Believe In" stamped on the side to court the gun vote. Perhaps, some day, a game might come along that would help a candidate disseminate his message. However, I imagine said game would come from someone outside of the campaign; I just don't see political staffers having enough time or patience to create a game good enough to be forwarded around the Internet. Frankly, I'd prefer it if politicians just kept their hands off games and stuck to the "serious stuff."
RELATED: pc, pork invaders, facebook, election 2008, obama, mccain
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