[Ed: This article was originally written the day after the election.  That would have kept our streak of consecutive Wednesday posts alive (note the gap on Nov. 5).  However, the completionist.com server decided to delete it.  If you’ve ever been up late trying to finish an assignment for school only to have the power bar of your computer kicked out of the wall by your sister/dog/random hobo, you’ll know how it feels to start from scratch on something like this.  So here is the article, a little less topical, a little less funny…]

If you are like me, then you spent a large chunk of your day yesterday trying to get anywhere near a television to catch a glimpse of the election results on CNN.  After all, CNN had holograms.  Awesome.  If you are indeed like me, and more than a few million Americans, you’re pretty excited to see just what this Barack Obama guy is capable of doing.

“Chris!”, you cry out, “This isn’t a political blog!  Give us back our beloved completionist.com!”  I hear your desperate yells but hold on for a damn second.  You are correct.  This isn’t a political blog and perhaps more importantly, I don’t even live in the U.S.  Why then should I be talking about Mr. Obama in this forum?  The Barackstar (I thought I just made that up but apparently someone beat me to it) has the potential to have a large influence on the games we so love.

How in tune is Obama with gaming?  Not very.  In fact, if you go by what he told Entertainment Weekly, the last game he played was pong.  Uh-oh.  That’s the answer that someone gives when they are out of touch with gaming or trying to sound cool, as in, “Yeah, I was playing pong before you were born.”  In any case, it’s probably not the answer we were all looking for.

The good news is that he can’t be completely out of touch with the technology.  At the very least, he has someone on his staff that is aware of gaming culture.  The proof is that Obama was the first candidate to use in-game advertising during their campaign.  I don’t cruise the streets of Paradise City myself, but I can only imagine that the Obama billboards add a realistic feeling to the game.  After all, I’m sure most Americans saw very similar ads on the real streets of battleground states, albeit that they probably weren’t trying to ram into a bus to watch their car crumple into a tomato can.  Probably.

To answer the question posed in the title of this article, policy change on the subject of video games from a party who’s entire platform was based around change is actually unlikely.  Like most politicans, Obama will most likely stay at arms-length from the issue of gaming, with the occaisional misinformed remark about video games ruining our children.  Most gamers should probably be happy that Obama won.  They probably would have been alright with John McCain as well.  The real trouble would have started if former first lady and current Senator Hillary Clinton was elected to the presidential office.  Her dislike for violent video games is well documented, to say the least.

So be happy about the fact that he is now “President-Elect” Barack Obama…things could have ended up a lot worse than a guy who’s missed out on every video game since before Pacman.  Personally, I can’t wait to have someone in the white house who has at least played Super Mario Bros.  Then, perhaps finally, we can deal with this Bowser situation once and for all.

Chris is basically right on this one.  Video games are just a buzz topic that politicians use to get people’s ire up, but there’s no way they’re ever really going to do anything about it.  Every video game law that actually gets passed ends up getting smacked down by the supreme court… oh, yeah, and the constitution.  I know Barack is all for change, but somehow I don’t think that fiddling with the bill of rights is on his to-do list.