Join The Club
Last June, as a 2002 New York magazine feature had reemerged in which an 11-year-old Zohran Mamdani said he was hoping to receive FIFA 2003 and SimCity 3000 as holiday gifts, I posed a tantalizing question: If then-mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani had been a preteen SimCity sicko, did that mean he could become New York City's first gamer mayor?
We are now almost six months into Mamdani's term as the 112th mayor of New York City following his November 2025 election victory over political dynast Andrew Cuomo, and it turns out: No. No, he isn't. During his inaugural Twitch stream this week (via Kotaku), Mamdani proved as much by demonstrating that he has essentially no idea what Minecraft is.
The stream was fairly mundane—assuming you avoid looking at the chat replay, which is about as much of a dumpster fire as you'd expect given Mamdani's cultural presence—and mostly involved discussions of his mayoral platform, including a recently-announced executive budget proposal aimed at balancing the city's $12 billion budget deficit. Almost 17 minutes in, however, a viewer asked Mamdani a question of critical governmental importance: Would he play Minecraft on stream?
"I've gotta be honest, I have not played Minecraft. How do you play Minecraft?" Mamdani said. "Is it a computer game?"
Moments later, New York City's mayor acknowledged that "I sound so old, because to me, Minecraft is a movie that I knew was based on a videogame." I'm only two years younger than he is, so I can definitively confirm: Yes, Mr. Mayor, you do sound old.
(As a side note, if you need to consult anyone about the current computer game landscape, I know a pretty good website.)
That said, we all have our knowledge gaps, and the reveal isn't entirely surprising: Mamdani once confirmed during a walk-and-talk on a Hasan Piker stream that he doesn't play videogames, but he does play FIFA—which he objected to being described as "a jock game." He proceeded to clarify that, while his parents didn't allow him to own a game console as a child, he nonetheless developed enough of an affection for Pokémon that he fondly recalled receiving the promotional Mew card distributed at theatrical showings of Pokémon: The First Movie. And, you know. Same.
Thus, the evidence is fairly concrete that—while it was fun to imagine his public-minded political positions on equity and affordability measures, like free public transit and universal childcare, were informed by countless hours of SimCity calculus—Zohran Mamdani is not, in fact, New York City's first gamer mayor. That's on me. My bad. Maybe next time.
