The Campaign Game

In Gamer Theory, McKenzie Wark writes that "The era of the great openly declared villains is over. In topological times, the bad guys pass as normal or they corrupt the law." For one reason or another (I'll let you decide how it happened), this reminded me of the current presidential race. Each candidate is saying two things - one, the other candidate is a "good man," and two, the other candidate is friends with terrorists, misguided in all of his policies and essentially evil.

The forum, at least when they are face to face, is more like a game show than anything else. As Wark says, "The key genres for working out the subsumption of the topographic into the topological are the situation comedy and the game show. On a game show, anyone can be taken out of everyday life and brought into the magic circle of television . . ."

On an unrelated note, Wark also writes: "The romance of the outsider is dead." Obama has left his image of being an outsider behind - mainly because it was never true, but partially, it would seem, because that image was not benefitting him. McCain and Palin still trumpet the word maverick all over the press and the debates, but it clearly has not helped if the polls are to be believed.

"You can change the form of Government but there's not much you can do to change the underlying form of production," Wark says. McCain and Obama can talk about change all they want, but neither of them is talking about fundamental change. Neither is even talking about changing the form of government. They want to "eliminate corruption" and all that jazz - but as long as gamespace is structured by algorithms and allegorithms, corruption is just another algorithm politicians will figure out and utilize in order to win the game.