The Harris/Walz marketing campaign has its personal Fortnite map

We’re within the last stretch of the 2024 presidential election and each side are pulling out all of the stops to get these all-important undecided voters. The Harris/Walz marketing campaign is exploring an unconventional choice: a map in Epic Video games’ mega on-line multiplayer hit Fortnite.

The “Freedom Town, USA” map obtainable at 7331-5536-6547 is just a little completely different from the same old Fortnite matches. Forbes senior contributor Paul Tassi performed the brand new map and reported that there aren’t any weapons in Freedom City (in all probability for apparent causes). As a substitute, the sport focuses on racing with vehicles and parkour fashion. The map additionally has some marketing campaign indicators and decorations for Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz’s presidential run.

Video video games have change into a cornerstone of the Harris/Walz marketing campaign. Harris’ camp has its own Twitch page that’s been broadcasting video games like World of Warcraft and the newest Madden title as a strategy to spark discussions with the voting public. The Fortnite map, nonetheless, doesn’t appear to be it’s doing an awesome job of getting the message out to gamers. As of this story’s publishing, the map solely has lower than 300 lively gamers.

Political advertisements and recruitment in video video games isn’t simply restricted to this marketing campaign cycle. Then-candidate Barack Obama’s 2008 marketing campaign launched the idea to politics once they bought advertisements in 18 video games together with Want for Velocity: Carbon and Madden NFL 13 on Microsoft’s Xbox Stay service and the cell model of Tetris, in keeping with NPR.