Nice coverage of the event is available here.

This is likely to be the first time my 14 year old son hears of a candidate for U.S. President outside of the usual droning of adults, teachers and news pundits. Which means – this is likely to be the first he hears from his peers – his constituency.

That’s a mighty powerful thing.

Not too many 14 year olds are politically aware, and those that are likely to have parents that talk about it. I’ve got no research to back that up, but I doubt it would take me long to find some. I’m just going to rattle off some of the things I find really striking about this – bear with me, or go look at something cool instead:

• Gathering 240 characters together takes considerable management and planning. You’re asking 240 accounts (keeping in mind that some folks have more than one account) to gather and hop online for a coordinated activity. Most activities in game require 5 people, and for larger events 40 may get together. Rarely would you need to gather this many. There’s a whole chain of logistics involved in actually making this happen, and it’s every bit as impressive as real life rallies.
• Players are considering moving their characters to play in this particular group even if that means changing servers. That may not sound like a big deal, but some of these players have years of work built up in their primary character, and uprooting him to move to a new server is not trivial (it costs about $25 but the real costs are in leaving your community in the old neighborhood.)
• Over the years, communities of players ebb and flow. Factions within groups crop up and guilds rise and fall. But what if guilds congregated to join in something deeper and rooted in the real world – say an ideology of freedom and limited government? If I were Blizzard (or a community manager in any game) I’d be proactively looking for ways to foster that. As a mom, I’m planning to ask my son about the guild tonite and see if he’s heard of it. From there I expect we’ll wander into a dialogue about the monetary policy, Ron Paul thoughts on the gold standard and the relevance of that for gold in World of Warcraft.
• World of Warcraft has 9 Million + players and as such, 240 characters isn’t that many. But, considering the subscription costs of those characters, just that group is paying ~ $3,600 a month to play. Some of those may be 10 day trial accounts, but I’d be willing to bet most of them are not. Not sure where I was going with that thought, but if I was managing a political campaigns internet efforts, I’d be looking at that kind of thing.
• Gamers as a constituency are an interesting lot. Tech savvy and engaged (on their terms) in participating in online activities, I’d be wanting to reach out to that group to rock the vote.
• The activity in game echoes in forums and blog postings where the players hang out. Not only are they talking about the candidate in game, but they are expounding on it, linking and, most likely, verbally abusing one another on any number of related sites.

I think this is the beginning of a very interesting avenue for public discourse and activity. I absolutely love the idea that a group of gamers is participating in our political process and bringing that discourse into their virtual world.

If there is one thing I’d hope for the political inclinations of my kids, it’s that they are knowledgeable and participate in the political process. Rallies in World of Warcraft bode very well for that.

Jack and Harry were considering mounting an expedition to the local Best Buy. With the streets patched with ice, they would slowly trek the 7 miles to get copies of World of Warcraft’s new expansion: Burning Crusades. Best Buy decided to open this morning just long enough to feed the WoW addiction and they expect to make a few grand simply by selling copies of Burning Crusades to frozen gamers.

My brother’s family bought their copies at 11:00pm last night, and my nephew has been calling to see if our kids have their copies and are ready to play. My oldest woke this morning and began singing,

“Today….is the day….the day of the Expansion.

Burning Crusade, going to get it….

Burning Crusade, today is the day…

Today….is the day….the day of the Expansion.”

Now, I have been arguing that this is more about burning desire and foolish crusades. I wasn’t making much headway until they tried to release the truck from a thick sheet of ice. It’s as if an ice mage threw a frost nova on it, and froze it in place. No Crusades for us today!

Hardware Store

Driving to Ohio:

• Suduko
• Find the Word Puzzles
• A clever twist on Connect Four called “Toot and Otto,”  where you are Toot or Otto and have to spell out your name.
• Nintendo DS games:
• 3 team Mario KartS
• Brother v. Brother matchups of Mario and Luigi in the downloadable game from Super Mario Bros. (punctuated with alot of “That’s MY star!”
• Animal Crossing

At Grandma’s house:

• Euchre, a fantastic card game with a confounding element that takes the Jack of the trump suit and turns it into a ‘Right Bower.’  The jack of the other suit becomes a “Left Bower” (so if the trump is spades, the left bower is the Jack of clubs, etc.) The heirarchy follows as:  Right Bower, Left Bower, Ace, King, Queen, Ten, Nine.  You throw away anything less than Nine.  Enough..google it if you need to know more!
• Uno (with twentyfive cent winnings, paid in impressive piles of nickles.)
• Bingo (again, twentyfive cent winning, but blackouts worth $1 – My youngest won $4.25 between the two games and is quite proud.)
• More of the same Nintendo DS titles.
• Solitaire:  Our oldest learned to play this one using real cards!
• Freecell:  He picked this one up pretty fast, and thinks ahead, so he’s got a good mind for it.

4th of July in Batesville, Indiana

• Corn Hole:  Where you toss bean bags into a box with a hole in it. Yep, that’s it.  This Texas girl didn’t play – give me horseshoes or washers, please. Down in the basement we found a box for  game where they called it Baggo.  Maybe it’s Baggo in Cincy and Corn Hole in Indy?
• World of Warcraft:  yes, the farmhouse has a robust wifi and my son was able to log in, check the auction house and get a quick fix of WoW.

We didn’t have time for any Hand and Foot, which is a variation of Canasta.  We’ll have to catch it next time, our 9yo is quite good at it and loves playing.

My ladies league fantasy football draft started up a week ago, so there was drafting throughout the holiday.  After the draft I’ll post a summary of the draft, but so far it’s going well!

With so much going on, we couldn’t get up to Origins, a large gaming convention in Columbus.  Next year we’ll really have to extend our visit so we can get up there.
Graeter’s Ice Cream, Skyline Chili, and gaming – we just love visiting Grandma!

Over dinner, we were discussing a Half Life 2 Deathmatch – parents against kids (my son and his friend, both going into 7th grade.) My son gazes across the table and looks at me flatly. “Bring it on, Mom.”

‘Nuff said. It’s on, kid!

“I used to worry about not having what I needed to get a job done,” he says. “Now I think of it like a quest; by being willing to improvise, I can usually find the people and resources I need to accomplish the task.” His story – translating experience in the virtual world into success in the real one - is bound to become more common as the gaming audience explodes and gameplay becomes more sophisticated. The day may not be far off when companies receive résumés that include a line reading “level 60 tauren shaman in World of Warcraft.”

This quote from Wired holds a really nice nugget for a gaming parent – why not look at the obstacles in front of you as one of the quests in your game?  Taken one step at a time, the task is likely to look less daunting, more achievable, and may even include a nice loot drop at the end.  String together a run of quests, and that promotion to ‘management’ falls right into play.

And the tedious quality of most educational programs?  Not so different from the ‘level grind’ in many MMOs.  Slog through high school, pick the toughest quests, read up on strategy on the side, do the same through college.   Now if only they would include a decent sword drop with the cap and gown…

It isn’t uncommon there to find that the CEO, CTO, CFO, or other prominently placed executive actively plays games online.  Is it possible that the game you picked up for your child at Christmas has virtually introduced them to a future manager?  Is your child’s behavior in game going to impress them with level-headed thinking, clear communications, and organizational leadership?

Take a moment to look at these two articles:

The business lessons of “World of Warcaft” from News. com

Is World of Warcraft the New Golf? from 1UP.com

Dan Matkowsky quotes an article that makes me wonder if this woman is of the same species:

In the article, Roxanne Richardson, soon-to-be mother of two, contends, “I’d rather my son take a more proactive, less habitual drug like cocaine, than lock himself away and play video games. It’s so lazy. At least with pills and coke you’re out and about doing something.”

Wow…let’s talk about lazy for a second.
It’s Friday – my husband and I spent the week working, fighting off the flu, and doing all the chores that a family of 5 treats as everyday life (laundry, dishes, dinner, repeat).

What are we doing right now, having finished all that? We’re gaming with our kids.

Dad and the boys are playing Warcraft. Actively teaching our youngest, who is 6, the strategy necessary to keep up his production of units to help out the team.

Mom and daughter are exploring Electroplankton, using a keyboard to tune our voices and discovering how the plankton react to our directives. Huge music lesson here in how the scale works, etc.

Now, I’m sorry, but are my kids engaging in a lazy habitual activity? Exactly who is the lazy parent here?

Any parent who advocates cocaine, even in jest, is simply competing for a Darwin Award.

Our family is tracking Darwinia, and anxiously awaiting the game on the Steam Network. It comes out December 14th – Steam allows us to purchase it now, download it and be all set to go on the 14th when it is released.

Now, this is a good thing if you have a family of excited little fellas who will want to stay up late on a school night to see the game in action. Steam’s distribution model saves us time – no trips to Fry’s, no downloading of updates after install, etc. As I recall, Venvendi (who sees to it that Fry’s get’s their copies) still got their cut of the first Steam distributed game – Half Life 2.

Early movies of Darwinia are reminiscent of Pikmin – a game we loved. We’ll post a review after we’ve played.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, Senator for New York: Senators Clinton, Lieberman Announce Federal Legislation to Protect Children from Inappropriate Video Games

“I have developed legislation that will empower parents by making sure their kids can’t walk into a store and buy a video game that has graphic, violent and pornographic content,” said Senator Clinton.

How exactly are parents going to be empowered by that? That’s going to enable me to…think less about what my kids are doing? Empower me to be less watchful of my kids purchases? Sorry? Did I miss something here?

Oh, and later on:

“This is about protecting children,” said Senator Clinton.

Whew, cuz my elementary school kids have been engaging in unprotected video game purchases.

But wait, there’s more:

This bill requires the FTC to conduct an investigation to determine whether what happened with GTA: San Andreas is a pervasive problem. It also includes a Sense of Congress that the Commission shall take appropriate action if it determines that there is a pervasive problem.

Excellent! Because I just sat in my office reviewing the travesty of health care options I have in 2006 to adequate take care of all those kidlets and darn it, we need time and energy spent on finding out whether game developers are pervasively loading sexy easter eggs in games. Furthermore, you can’t just go digging without expectation of taking action on what you discover – cuz what kind of leadership would that be? – so create a commission if you find evidence of degenerates.

Congress reconvenes in 2 weeks they say – which is the week before Christmas and likely to be a truly productive time. Might be a good time to set 2006 resolutions – ya know – be a better parent and all that. Or maybe not – maybe Congress will just take care of that for us.