I just saw a TV ad from this campaign last night. I found it to be strange; my initial reaction was similar to the amused confusion Americans (or perhaps non-Japanese) sometimes get when they see slightly off-kilter media / products from Japan, translated into English. But in this case, I assume the ads were made by an American company (one would think).

doesn't it show show how games are not just leisure experiences that stand in stark opposition to the real world, but rather that games occupy a valuable position at the limits of the world of play and the world of cultural activity?

I suppose so; but that deep thought didn't occur to me when I saw the ad. :-) I found the ad to be a strange, unsuccessful conjoining of games and real world issues — not to say it can't be done of course, just that they did it less cleanly than they could have.

I'm sure Nintendo didn't intend the campaign to play in the liminal space of game/world, and I think you're right that the success of the ads themselves is dubious.

However, if you look at what ordinary folks have created with the who are you "framework" Nintendo provided, I think this is more successful.

For example, I thought the conjoined Wario/Saddam (I think it's Saddam, anyway) does make a "cleaner" political statement.

I'd say that rather than this being an indicator of how integral and relevant video games are to the real world, it's the opposite: in rejecting completely some of the most important things in our world, politics, Nintendo only reinforces the concept of video games as a leisure activity unrelated to anything else. The attitude seems to be: "Serious things? No way. I'm gonna go play video games," which just widens the gap between them and reality. Bah.

I agree that that's what the main campaign does. But I still think the user-created who are you ads subvert Nintendo's message that games are apolitical.

Hmm... what political statement does it make to put Wario's head on Saddam's body?

Here's one possible interpretation: it's an attempt to frame our understanding of Saddam. Wario is, after all, the "Mario gone bad," and framing Saddam as the "dark" of a "light" force both reinforces and calls into question the idea that our conflict with Saddam is a stable good/evil diad, as our government would like us to believe.

I agree that it's not the best example of political speech, but I'm stilll encouraged to look at it as some kind of political speech.