The Kamala Harris campaign is going to stream World of Warcraft tonight to court the gamer vote

1 month ago 57

Tim Walz giving a speech in Philadelphia.

(Image credit: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

Since it was launched in August, the Kamala Harris Twitch channel has broadcast rallies and speeches from Flint, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, and other locations across the USA. It's about to go slightly further afield, with a Tim Walz rally being broadcast from Azeroth, as Wired reports.

A live audio feed of Walz speaking in Arizona will be accompanied by Twitch streamer Preheat playing World of Warcraft and adding commentary. A guides writer for Wowhead, Preheat has more than 50,000 subscribers on Twitch. No, Walz won't be playing WoW with Preheat, so we won't find out if he's a druid main.

So, uh, why is this happening? It's part of the Harris campaign's plan to increase its visibility to young men, which has also included advertisements played during sporting events and on IGN. As the Washington Post put it, they're making a push for "the gamer vote" which included a "Geeks & Nerds for Harris" fundraiser.

Donald Trump has his own Twitch channel too of course, one that was once banned for violating Twitch's guidelines on hateful content. Don't expect to see that channel broadcasting gameplay from Guild Wars 2 in response, however, given that Trump has previously blamed videogames for fueling violent culture.

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Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.