“A chicken in every pot and a car in every garage!” – Herbert Hoover, 1928
“Are you better off than you were four years ago?” – Ronald Reagan, 1980“My life for Aiur” – Protoss zealot, 1998
A good slogan is essential to waging a successful presidential campaign, and in the case of South Korean presidential candidate Moon Jae-in, the best slogans come from Blizzard’s classic sci-fi real-time strategy game StarCraft. Naturally, it was only a matter of time before the game would be used as a political tool. As reported by DotEsports, Jae-in is leveraging the massive popularity of StarCraft in South Korea as a campaign tactic by releasing two custom StarCraft maps for players to download.
The maps, which are titled “Moonters,” are available in four-player size and eight-player size, and are basically just lightly tweaked versions of the game’s base maps. They feature a large outcropping of mineral resources which spell out “1 Moon Jae-In” in Korean on the larger map, and “1” on the smaller map. The maps’ release comes at an auspicious time as Blizzard has just made the game and its expansion, Brood War, free-to-play on both PC and Mac.
Could the game’s emphasis on constructing additional pylons indicate that Jae-in’s promised 10 trillion won ($8.9 billion) stimulus package for startups and small businesses will be devoted towards shoring up the country’s infrastructure? And what about those among us who in lieu of plummeting birthrates want to spawn more Overlords? Only time will tell what we can glean from these politically charged StarCraft maps. In the meantime, let’s just agree that “no rush 15 minutes” means “no rush 15 minutes,” and keep partisan politics out of it.
What other video game tie-in campaign tactics would you like to see in future elections? What political DLC needs to happen? Let us know in the comments below.
Image: Blizzard
Dan Casey is the senior editor of Nerdist and the author of books about Star Wars and the Avengers. Follow him on Twitter ( @Osteoferocious).