Up until now, I never would've thought game developer's would be so darn political. And well, before I got into this racket, I wouldn't have much thought games could be so political either.

In any case, GamePolitics has done some hard work and dug through a list of "A-list" donors to the presidential campaigns, finding quite a lot of designers and developers on there. Pretty well everyone has ponied up a few grand to Barack Obama's campaign, which won't come as a surprise to many, I suspect, but nevertheless, there are some interesting bits here. Check it out:

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
• George Lucas (LucasFilm) $33,100 to Obama
• Doug Lowenstein (former ESA head) $2,300 to Hillary Clinton
• Kenneth Doroshow (new ESA general counsel) $2,500 to Obama
• Gabe Newell (pres., Valve) $2,300 to Dodd

To draw some conclusions: most don't like Republicans (the greater of two evils, some might say, but who really knows anymore), and most everyone loves Obama! Two really surprising things for me here are Rockstar's Sam Houser's donation to Obama,  and Will Wright's donation to first, the Republicans, but more than that, Giuliani, and freaking McCain. Wright? McCain? What? I can't figure that one. The other one of course is George Lucas' massive $33,100 to Obama's campaign. Wow.

Now here's where my cynical side comes in. It's easy to sit back and say 'oh awesome, designers love Obama and are helping him, that is cool', but what should money have to do with it? Doesn't that effectively mean whoever has the most money has the highest chance of winning, effectively turning the election into a lottery, run by the wealthy? Oh America, you don't sound too democratic to me.