Helpful Hints

Suzanne Seggerman of Games for Change asks some interesting questions about the President Elect in her online column "Does Obama Play Video Games?" Although Obama is known for his anti-media pitches as a candidate and his pronouncements against television and games in households with young children, he's also savvy about online technologies and ubiquitous computing devices, which were a key part of his campaign, and he's enough of a pragmatist to have allowed advertising in videogame environments to further his campaign's outreach to younger voters.

In her posting, Seggerman is arguing that videogames are a way to further specific policy agendas by allowing constituents to interact with playable simulations to foster "civic engagement" rather than stupifying distraction.

On the other hand, I understand Obama's resistance to attention-sapping electronic media in the home. Even though I am a media scholar, I've been media skeptical as a parent, as this video and its sequel shows, which document our experiences while getting television for the first time last year.