While much of the reaction - at least in the game community - to presidential hopeful Mark Warner's Second Life visit has been positive, there's undeniably room to poke fun.

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank doesn't miss the chance in a witty piece titled Do You Have a Question, Pixeleen Minstral?. Milbank notes the confusion among reporters and Warner staffers in attendance - Second Life noobs for the most part:

"...the trouble began immediately for the Luddite staffers and reporters... They could not figure out how to make their characters, with names such as Shorewarz Zon and Pixeleen Minstral, take seats."
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With E3 just concluded, it seems only fitting that the video game industry's point man is highlighted. Washington Post reporter Jose Antonio Vargas does just that in an excellent profile of Doug Lowenstein.

Calling the ESA president "the Jack Valenti for the PlayStation-Xbox-Nintendo set", Vargas notes that Lowenstein shuns publicity.

"It's not my persona to get in the limelight," the 55-year-old Lowenstein said. "I don't want to be seen as, 'Here's the guy who defends hideous violent games. Here's his story.'"

Speaking of Valenti, the former MPAA boss was complimentary.

"He's got a really tough job to do. But Doug listens, and listens very well. Too many people in Washington think they're the repository of all wisdom. Not Doug."

Representing the video game industry makes Lowenstein somewhat of a controversial figure. Vargas notes that a $500 campaign contribution Lowenstein made to Illinois Sen. Barack Obama was returned to him by Obama's staff.

"Stuff happens," was Lowenstein's comment.
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What's the scientific way to examine the issue of political party polarization among voters?

Play whack-a-mole with pictures of politicians, apparently.

Thanks to the excellent Water Cooler Games blog, we learned of a Washington Post story detailing the work of Shanto Iyengar, director of Stanford University's Political Communication Lab.

Iyengar has researched the question of whether a given subject's political leanings could be affected by playing "Whack-a-Pol" with images of various prominent political and cultural figures, including John Kerry, Condoleeza Rice, Martha Stewart and Fidel Castro.

Three versions of the popular arcade game were created: one with well-known political figures (four Republicans and four Democrats), one with random celebrities, and one with various foreign dictators from the past and present.

Political hostility was calculated by totaling the number of whacks each character in the game received compared to others. Not surprisingly, participants' political affiliation guided their whacking in the politician game while a more even spread of whacks were observed in the celebrity and dictator games (although Michael Jackson and Adolf Hitler were the most popular targets in their respective versions of the game).
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Yesterday GamePolitics reported that an 8-year-old boy who accidentally discharged a handgun at a Maryland day care center, wounding another student, had been exposed to violent video games. At the time, we didn't know which games.

But we do now.

A report in today's Washington Post identifies 50 Cent: Bulletproof and 187 Ride or Die as extremely violent games to which the boy had access. The paper's information regarding the games comes from what it describes as "a police source."

The WaPo article also seems to cast some doubt on how "accidental" the shooting may have been.

Sebastian Mallaby has a terrific op-ed piece in yesterday's Washington Post.

"My Son and I, Game to Learn" offers Mallaby's view on gaming as the father of an 11-year-old. The journalist has tumbled to some important concepts that many parents don't realize and many game critics don't want to hear. Consider this paragraph:

"...computer games have some advantages. They train players to master complex rules, to weigh odds and solve problems and make quick decisions. Indeed, players learn how to learn: The mysteries of a new and unknown game must be unlocked by trial and error. Marc Prensky, the author of the (upcoming) book Don't Bother Me, Mom -- I'm Learning tells the story of Stephen Gillette, an entrepreneur who picked up his leadership and organizational skills by playing online games. 'I remember my mom and dad yelling at me,' he quotes Gillette as saying. 'They didn't know I had a 200-person [online] guild to manage.'"

Mallaby mentioned buying Age of Empires III for his son with a clear conscience, given the game's emphasis on history, civilization and economics. And while Mallaby's son is semi-addicted to Runescape, even fantasy games offer significant learning opportunities:

"...(Runescape's) main attraction lies in its business challenge. My son has been buying logs, making longbows and selling them at a profit; he says the margins in the bow business fluctuate around 10 percent. Lately he's moved into buying magic herbs in bulk and retailing them individually. This is a dicier business, but the risk is balanced by reward. Herb-trading margins can be 100 percent or fatter."

It's great to see a non-gaming parent who gets it...