Wednesday evening, the Kamala Harris campaign deployed its messages to a new platform, Twitch, while a popular streamer played World of Warcraft in the background.
Yesterday, the Kamala Harris campaign took its trail to a new frontier, Azeroth, as the VP nominee Tim Walz rallied with live World of Warcraft gameplay on Twitch. Kamala Harris started her own Twitch account back in August (she currently stands at just over 23,000 followers on the platform) and has since posted many of her live campaign rallies on the platform. This new move is the first of its kind where a live rally has been sewn together with genuine World of Warcraft: The War Within gameplay. To further increase the stream’s viability, the popular streamer PreHeat (who has over double the Harris account followers) provided live commentary on the game while the rally unfolded.
Streamer PreHeat could be heard telling his followers how important Election Day is while commentating over his own World of Warcraft gameplay and imploring followers to “make sure they’re registered to vote” on the stream just before the rally played, saying, “Even if you don’t care about politics” encouraging his audience it’s still important while donning a hat emblazoned with HARRIS. The live rally was not broadcasted on PreHeat’s Twitch channel, just his commentary in line with the rally, but his gameplay was broadcasted on the presidential candidate’s official Twitch, blurring the lines between the fantasy realm Azeroth and the United States election to inform more gamers on voting this Election Day.
A Kamala Harris spokesperson told WIRED back in August, “Our job as the campaign is to break through a historically personalized media landscape, taking the VP and her vision for the future directly to the hardest-to-reach voters and those who will decide this election,” regarding the decision to move the campaign onto Twitch.
While this move makes it the first time World of Warcraft has been featured in a country’s election cycle (especially in an official capacity), the message is to inform gamers about voting while also teaching sleek tricks on how to handle a more recent raid boss in The War Within expansion.
