14 DAY TRIAL // Now the entire gaming world has a person to keep an eye on, since he could be the one able to change the poor opinion people used to have on gamers or games. That person is 19 year-old John Tyler Hammons, the newly elected mayor of small Oklahoma town, Muskogee. If you're still wondering why we should care about that and, even more, how could that change people's opinion about gaming, you should know that Mr. Mayor loves rock music and fast cars as well as... playing video games!
We don't really know what sort of games John Tyler Hammons prefers, but we do know that, at least in theory, he should be able to kick one's arse really bad in a SimCity game. If it had multiplayer, that is... Anyway, the newly elected mayor has won the battle of the extremes, as we could call it, against 70 year-old Hershel McBride and plans to clean up town politics through a recently created independent ethics commission and to address campaign finance reporting. Hopefully, he'll still have enough time for some Halo 3 frags, Mario Kart races and 7 Sins missions... hmm... probably he is NOT playing 7 Sins, right?
Another really interesting fact about Hammons is that, except for his normal game love, he also has a bipartisan approach to the world of politics: he is the president of both the Young Republicans and the Young Democrats. Something like a Counter-Strike game: you play a few matches as the terros, a few as the counters and everything goes great.
"I'm sure the (city) council will work with me on these issues," he said, referring to his plans, quoted by Yahoo Games. "I campaigned on this, and this is something I intend to push." And, what's even better for the lad - the folks in town are backing him up: "He doesn't have the baggage. He doesn't owe anybody anything," said cafe owner Gary Armstrong. "It's sort of a fresh start for Muskogee."
So, any gamer up for moving to Oklahoma? They now hold the record of the first state to have a gamer mayor, you know!