Records reveal political spending power of dev heavyweights

News

Michael French Oct 3 2008, 1:23pm

Wright, Houser, Vrabeck, Rigopolus, Garriott, Newell and others donate to presidential campaigns

Here on Develop we report a lot about the political lobbying done by our local trade associations ELSPA and Tiga when it comes to defending the interests of game developers. But what about when it comes to what our development brethren over the pond do during their dialogues with their parliamentarians?

GamePolitics has an interesting post up dissecting the various filings available on each of the presendtial candidates, and has sifted through the Republican and Democrat donations lists to find key luminaries. Did you know Will Wright was a republican? Does it surprise you that Sam Houser and John Riccitiello were some the biggest spenders, donating close to $5000 each to Barak Obama? (Although the biggest was Harmonix's Alex Rigopulos at $32,000.)

Key highlights are:

Republican contributors:

Will Wright: (Spore, The Sims) $3,000 to McCain; previously donated $2,350 to Giuliani
Bobby Kotick (Activision CEO) $2,300 to McCain; previously donated $2,100 to Romney
Curt Schilling (38 Studios) $2,300 to McCain.

Democratic contributors:

Strauss Zelnick (Chairman, Take-Two) $2,000 to Obama; had previously donated to $2,500 to Edwards, $1,000 each to Biden & Richardson
Ben Feder (CEO, Take-Two) contributed $1,000 to Biden in 2007
Sam Houser (Rockstar) $4,600 to Obama
Patricia Vance (president, ESRB) $2,000 to Obama
John Riccitiello (CEO, EA) $4,600 to Obama
John Smedley (Sony Online Entertainment) $2,300 to Obama
Richard Garriott aka "Lord British" (Ultima series, NC Soft) $2,300 to Hillary Clinton
Alex Rigopulos (CEO, Harmonix) $32,900 to Obama
Kathy Vrabeck (president, EA Casual) $2,300 to Obama
Gabe Newell (pres., Valve) $2,300 to Dodd