Ian Bogost - Water Cooler Games - Frontrunner: Election Game

my affiliations

Ian Bogost - videogame theory, criticism, design

about me

contact

Water Cooler Games

Water Cooler Games served as the web's primary forum for "videogames with an agenda" — coverage of the uses of video games in advertising, politics, education, and other everyday activities, outside the sphere of entertainment.

The site was maintained at watercoolergames.org from 2003-2009, where it was edited by myself and Gonzalo Frasca. It is now archived here in full.

You are reading an archived version of this article. The original URL was (loading...)

Frontrunner: Election Game

by Gonzalo Frasca January 26, 2004

categories: Political Games

Lanter Games plan to launch Frontrunner, a US Presidential Election game, this March/April. It looks to be simulating the infamous previous election because Gore and W. are on the pictures. You can take a look at it here. (via jill/txt)

Comments (1)

I just wanted to share that our goal really isn't to simulate the last election between Gore and Bush -- although the way the artificial intelligence for the game is set up, when you choose the same issues that Gore and Bush supported in the last election, the outcome is the same -- Florida switches back and forth between the campaigns.

The goal of Frontrunner is to build support for your campaign across all 50 states (and D.C.). You can choose to be a historical politician or yourself and you run against one to three competitors.

We were painstaking in figuring out state demographics and interest groups so the game should be both accurate and fun.

Let me know if you have other questions. I'm happy to answer them.

Dawn Maye, Publishing Director on January 28, 2004 8:18 PM