Posts with tag campaign

Is playing World of Warcraft so bizarre and disturbing that players should be considered unfit for public office? According to the Maine Republic Party, the answer appears to be yes. Late last week, the party launched a jaw-droppingly clueless campaign attempting to shame Democratic State Senate candidate Colleen Lachowicz for -- oh yes, here it comes again -- playing a video game.

"We're not attacking Colleen for being a gamer," Maine Republican party communications director David Sorensen denied in an interview with Polygon. "Our website and mailers are focused on Colleen's extremely offensive remarks made in connection with her gaming, including saying that Maine's governor must have been a child prostitute or drug dealer, and how she might drown conservative activist Grover Norquist in a bathtub."

Despite the GOP backpedaling, one look at the mailer and ColleensWorld, the supporting website, makes the gaming slur (and the noncontextual nature of Lachowicz's comments) painfully obvious. Clearly, whoever conceptualized the campaign suffers from a lack of cultural context. Perhaps they didn't know that World of Warcraft is even used as a teaching tool in public schools, making gaming a natural fit for 48-year-old Lachowicz, a licensed social worker, stepmother, and licensed foster parent. We're guessing they probably didn't visit Lachowicz's campaign Facebook page, where a clip from gaming innovator Jane McGonigal outlines how gaming in moderation actually makes people better at the other things they do.

Why does nonsense like this persist? In an exclusive phone interview with WoW Insider, Lachowicz told us why the Maine GOP's embarrassing misstep hasn't negatively impacted her campaign but still fills her with foreboding for the future of young people growing up in the digital age.

From Hollywood celebrities to the guy next door, millions of people have made World of Warcraft a part of their lives. How do you play WoW? We're giving each approach its own 15 Minutes of Fame.

Your days are numbered.

It takes you a moment to realize that's all that's in the letter you just opened in your in-game mailbox -- that, and the Hangman's Noose ("It's shiny with blood!") attached at the bottom. You flick open the guild roster, but nobody's online yet. You run the sender's name through the Armory, only to come up with ... nothing. You're not involved in any active roleplaying storylines, and you can't think of anyone you've roleplayed with recently who seems threatening in the least ...

Fine, then. You take it to the forums. You're met with the usual banter for a page or so -- but then another player reports that a friend received a similar note. Then another shows up. And another. Before you know it, the entire realm, Alliance and Horde alike, is roiling with intrigue. Hundreds of players are sucked in. Who are the letters from? What is the threat striking again and again at seemingly unlinked players? What is behind the unfolding string of horror unfolding before you?

Who is The Broken Doll?

Here's the last (or at least we think it's the last, it's all that's mentioned on Blizzard's official page) round of television ads for World of Warcraft in 2008. The ads come from France this time, and they both feature Alexandre Astier, star and creator of an Arthurian comedy show called Kaamelott, as a Human Paladin. While the German ads seemed to focus on PvP, these are very PvE based -- in one, he and his group run from a rampaging Frost Wyrm, and in the second (after the break, and apparently it's a "web exclusive," maybe because you can't show a virtual pile of corpses on television), he shows off his rezzing powers, and, err -- their limits.

WorldofWar has translations for both of the ads. Is it me, or aren't these as funny as the others? I think Ozzy comes out the best in all of them -- not only is his ad hilarious (better than the Mr. T ad, my previous favorite), but he gets to co-star with the Lich King, and you can't really compete with that. But kudos to Blizzard's teams for putting all of these together. Maybe next year we'll actually get a female WoW player, or, you know, a whole new campaign.

If you're in Connecticut's 101st District, and you're a strictly single-issue voter (as in, you want a candidate that plays World of Warcraft) then the choice is clear: Jeanne Stevens. Yes, the Republican nominee for State Representative, as reported by the Shore Line Times, is not only a mother of four, a former Assistant District Attorney, and a mean cupcake maker -- she's also apparently a WoW player.

To be completely objective here, we should say that we don't really know who your candidate of choice is -- unfortunately, we have no idea if Stevens' incumbent opponent, Deborah Heinrich, is a WoW player or not. For all we know maybe she, too, has wandered Azeroth with the rest of us. If that's indeed the case, you Connecticutians will have to make your choice based on something else. Politics, we guess. Not really our thing.

But we do know this: the local press up there should be asking the tough questions. Does Heinrich, in fact, play WoW? And if so, what class and level are the candidates? And the most important question for both: Horde or Alliance? If the Shore Line Times can't find out, maybe we'll have to put our own 15 Minutes of Fame feature on the trail. If these potential State Representatives can't bring down Hogger, then why would we want them running a whole state?

[Via WorldofWar]