A graduate student at the University of Southern California is working on a project that employs Half-Life 2 as a setting/context for political cartoons. Sounds a little out there, but MFA student John Brennan has turned out that video so far, which features Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama on a debate stage, and a headcrab just to show this is Half-Life 2 we’re dealing with. And I guess those are combine soldiers in the back beating up on something as these two talk, too.
The Houston Chronicle wants to know why none of the US Presidential candidates (by which I mean the two that could possibly win – sorry, independents, maybe next time) aren’t using Second Life in their campaigns.
If the computing media — not to mention Linden Labs themselves — were to be believed, we should be deeply immersed in our Second Lives by now. Companies are using it for press conferences, people are having sex inside it — Sweden even has an embassy in it, for goodness’ sake. Although early in the primaries there was a flurry of SL activity, things seem to have quietened down.
The author believes that this is largely due to the difficulty in raising funds from within SL — it is difficult to check where donors are based, and many are from outside the US.
