The President should play videogames

Kotaku links to a Leno sketch which reveals a supposed portrait of George W Bush holding an XBox 360 controller (which is obviously fake).  While it’s sort of funny to think that perhaps all of our country’s problems are due to a President who just played videogames all the time, I wouldn’t mind if our President, and for that matter, any of our political leaders, actually played SOME video games.  There are a few reasons for this:

1. Videogames are becoming an increasingly bigger industry, estimated to exceed $57 Billion in revenue worldwide this year, a 35% increase from 2007 despite the worst financial crisis since the great depression hitting.  It seems like our political leaders should have some understanding of this increasingly important industry.
2. Relating to this, playing videogames is a relatively cheap form of entertainment which is easily done at home, something extremely relevant as people stay in their homes more often during the financial crisis.
3. The more our leaders understand video games, the less they’ll demonize them, and the less they’ll be used as a scapegoat rather than focusing on our real problems.

Barack Obama has mentioned before that his daughters have a Wii.  I realize that he is going to be the leader of the free world in a little under a month with far more important things to think about and work on, but I hope even then he has a little bit of time to play it with them sometimes.  Even Presidents need a break once in awhile and if he is able to use even just a tiny fraction of his extremely minimal free time to do something millions of people worldwide also do with their own free time every day, I’ll take it.