by Brian Boyko
Editor, Network Performance Daily

Today primary election and caucus day in Texas, where we're based. Usually our elections don't really matter, so this is somewhat of an exciting time for the state. Politics is on my mind… and when politics is on my mind, I find it hard to think about anything else.

(This is annoying when you're trying to write a blog post about the future of network engineering, and dangerous when you're so absorbed explaining to your significant other the nuances of the Texas dual primary/caucus system that you temporarily forget that "red means stop" at a busy intersection.)

But here's the thing; there are some areas where changes in political communication herald changes in business communication, and those events are worth talking about, because it may have a lot to do with the importance of keeping latency low when the next generation of C-level executives - the generation raised on, and still playing video games, will want to use video games as a business tool.

There's an old joke that when there's a new technology, the first people to exploit it are the pornographers. This may be true, but there is a certain pattern to technological communication adoption. Usually, when a new media hits on the Internet, it's first hit by the techies, then by the politicians, and lastly by the business. This pattern is true for blogs, true for online audio, online video, and social networks - the technological early adopters build up a mass audience with no risk, the politicians move in when a population has been built up, risking little, and businesses - classically risk averse - move in last.

But what's interesting about this pattern is that if you look at where political discussions are cropping up, you can almost predict the future of where business communication will be. And lately, political discussion is taking the form of video games.

Back in 2004, there was the political flash-based 2D shooter "BushGame.com," in which you took control of Fat He-Man and John "Voltron" Kerry and mowed through a field of Republican opposition. This year, you've got AtomFilms' "Kung-fu Election."

If presidential elections are decided by who we feel is the best candidate to lead us into a no holds barred mixed martial arts tournament -- and most political theorists believe we do…

This is all very silly, of course, but more seriously, I recently completed an ">interview with Wafaa Bilal (Remember him? The guy who locked himself in a room with a paintball gun?) for the GeeksAreSexy.com site regarding his new project, a very controversial, and very political video game that he re-coded and will present at an art exhibition this Wednesday.

Political games really aren't that rare. The U.S. Defense Department uses "America's Army" as a "cost-effective recruitment tool." "BioShock" makes criticisms of the political philosophy of objectivism. "Defcon," with its abstracted, "WarGames" style visuals and haunting soundtrack makes a subtle point about the dehumanization necessary to wage a global thermonuclear war. Those are just the well-known hits - "I Can End Deportation" is a videogame about immigrant issues, for example, and Kuma Games is a game publisher whose entire business model is designed around quickly developing episodic video games based on real-life battles that happened just months or weeks earlier.

As I mentioned earlier, risk-averse business always tends to be the straggler when it comes to taking on new forms of media - aborted efforts at commercializing and politicizing "Second Life" aside - but if politics is starting to make its way into the interactive medium of video games, how long will it be before, like online video and blogs before it, commercial game development will be considered a crucial part of business marketing?

Another old joke is that most business deals don't take place on the board room but on the golf course - but in this upcoming generation, the CEOs are more likely to be comfortable playing World of Warcraft than golf; and if the adage holds true, they'll be conducting business deals, man-to-man (or dwarf-to-elf) over some sort of game-enabled VoIP. Both gaming applications and VoIP applications require low-latency connections.

I'm not saying that this could affect business over the next quarter - or that it could affect business over the next 10 years. But maybe it's just something to start thinking about now.