If your videogaming habit is keeping you from engaging in the political process, here’s your chance to get two birds stoned at once: slay a dragon for Ron Paul!
The original plan for the web-based dungeon spelunking game Dungeoneers called for it to be kept out of the public eye a little while longer, but something funny happened on the way to the open beta test: the U.S. election, and more specifically the Ron Paul campaign for the Republican nomination. Alex Beltramo, the “Chief Dungeoneer,” is a Ron Paul supporter and he saw in the game a chance to maybe make a difference for his man.
“Presidential candidate Ron Paul has a good chance to win the Republican nomination for President. And because he does not have big corporate backers, his supporters must find creative ways to promote him,” Beltramo wrote. “With the ‘Slay a Dragon for Ron Paul’ campaign, I can support both my game and Dr. Paul. When a player kills a dragon for the first time, if they agree, I will personally contribute $5 to the grassroots Super Brochure campaign for Ron Paul. My goal is that we find 5,000 Ron Paul dragon slayers so that I can contribute $25,000.”
The program is actually working out pretty well; at last check, 1640 dragons had been killed, adding up to an $8200 donation that’s still growing. Not necessarily because a lot of gamers are die-hard libertarians [I’m more of a social democrat with center-right fiscal tendencies myself] but because Dungeoneers isn’t a bad game. It’s not Neverwinter Nights 3 by any stretch but it does have a whiff of Heroes of Neverwinter about it and for a free game [for now] that’s still in testing, it’s easy on the eyes and very playable.
“We’re attracting players who would not normally try out a game like this,” Beltramo said. “They come to raise the $5 for Ron Paul, but stay because they enjoy playing Dungeoneers. Likewise, my hope is that gamers who are not normally interested in politics will be encouraged to learn for themselves about Ron Paul.”
Do it for Ron Paul, do it for the democratic process or just do it for kicks; whatever your motivation, if you’ve got an urge to off a dragon, you can show him who’s boss at dungeoneers.com.
via: GamePolitics
