At Gameindustry.com we pride ourselves on being more than a general gaming site. We try to focus not just on the games but on the industry, the players, and the perspective that makes game companies work. It’s what sets us apart from our competition. Others may focus on cheats and style. We try to focus on substance and the industry as a whole”what’s working, what’s not”who’s succeeding and who’s not”and most of all”WHY things are happening.

With that perspective in mind we at Gameindustry.com have chosen to endorse Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts for President of the United States. It’s our hope that you’ll join us in this support.

We have had many discussions surrounding which candidate to support or even if it was proper for an online newsletter about the gaming development industry to endorse a particular candidate. But after the shouting and remonstrations ended, the choice was clear for all of us: Senator Kerry is the better man for the job.

At a certain level one of the arguments went: we may not know what we’re getting with Kerry”but we certainly know what we’re getting with Bush and we don’t want any more of that!

To some this would be sufficient.

At a deeper level we find ourselves concerned with the current President’s policies on several levels as they relate to games and the game industry. We see little of the ‘compassionate conservatism’ label on which he secured his victory in 2000 coming through in the President’s actions. We also see little concern for the effects of his policies on the citizen’s of the United States. This concerns us at Gameindustry.com greatly as many of our readers are those specifically effected by those policies through being called up for service, for losing (and re-losing) jobs during a ‘recovery’ which seems to be increasingly weaker and weaker, for those in the industry not seeing a turnaround in sales which leads to a weak buying season after a weak buying season.

It is our belief that the President is increasingly disconnected from the day to day lives of the people over which he has enormous influence, and it is further our belief that nothing positive can come from such a situation.

There will be some readers in the industry who will be opposed to voting for a democratic candidate on the basis of his sharing a party with the industry’s biggest nemesis, Senator Joe Lieberman. Yes, we acknowledge that Mr. Lieberman’s crusade against certain games every year has been a thorn in the side of the industry. But we also acknowledge that Mr. Lieberman has never actually attempted to ban a game from being produced.

We are far more distrustful of the current administration and their close ties to certain socially conservative groups on the fringe right that would be more than happy to not only point out that certain games could have a negative influence on youth (something we at gameindustry.com are split on) but would move to prevent their distribution and sale in the interest of their specific brand of morality. This we find far more chilling than anything Senator Lieberman has ever done.

So, again, we believe the best candidate for the job is Senator Kerry. We plan to support him through the election and hope to continue doing so through his administration.