Fantasy Politics Could Cultivate Interest in Real Thing
It can be very tough to get interested in politics.
There’s no doubt that elections and the elected officials that emerge from them carry great importance. After all, these are the people who create and modify policies that direct much of our daily lives.
Those policies, though, can be involved and confusing, and the partisan bluster blowing from both sides doesn’t make their real impact any easier to understand. Representatives who spend most of their time telling us what they think we want to hear afford us little opportunity to really learn much about them. Young people, in particular, who might be shy of voting age and more detached from the actual effects of government might look for a minute and think, “Why bother?”
Maybe the best way to get people to pay attention is to turn the whole thing into a game. As we head to the polls to select our 44th president — as well as a variety of other reps — there seems to be growing support for doing so.
We linked last week to a column by an Associated Press sports writer who conducted an auction draft with friends and colleagues for the electoral map, but there are websites out there that allow anyone to play along with the real elections.
Fantasy Politics USA is a blog that has offered a presidential game throughout this campaign season. There really doesn’t seem to be a lot to the game, other than a relatively arbitrary number of points assigned for various — sometimes entertaining — reasons. Barack Obama, for example, gained 4 points back in May “for saying ‘Lay Off My Wife’ on Good Morning America,” according to the site. (John McCain, meanwhile, picked up 4 of his own in July “for going to see the Yankees play.” I, quite frankly, would have taken away points … unless he rooted against them.)
The site also presents an American Idol-style polling contest that is down to its final three contestants. McCain, in case you’re wondering, is no longer in the field, which has been narrowed to Obama, Ron Paul and Chuck Hagel.
Real Clear Politics offers a stock market-style game, whereby users purchase virtual contracts on things such as Fred Thompson winning the Republican nomination (probably not a good idea to invest there at this point).
The site has been around since 2000 and also provides roundups of political coverage, commentary and poll data.
The most robust politics game site out there, though, has to be FantasyCongress.com. According to the site’s History page, it’s a concept that was driven by the attention-wrangling force of fantasy football.
“Impressed by the power of fantasy sports to engage and captivate their players, Andrew decided that someone needed to invent a fantasy sports game to challenge political junkies and to attract average people to the world of politics,” the site says, referring to Andrew Lee, who created Fantasy Congress while still in college.
The site launched in spring 2006 and has already been featured in The New York Times and on National Public Radio and CNN. It centers on a game that has you draft senators and house members and awards points based on their legislative success.
“If people cared about government as much as they cared about football, then we might have a better government,” Lee said during a 2006 interview on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation.”
In addition to offering a sheer opportunity for competition, the site touts its usefulness as a teaching tool. Indeed, social studies teachers would seem to have a much easier time engaging their students in learning about the process of turning a bill into law if the congresswoman sponsoring that bill is earning points for a student’s fantasy team.
Although it’s pretty much too late to get in on any presidential contests, a whole slate of new or renewed congress members could make the next few months a prime time to get in on Fantasy Congress. Even if you fall short of a championship, you might learn something along the way.
Tags: andrew lee, associated press, auction draft, barack obama, cnn, election, fantasy congress, fantasy politics, fantasy politics usa, fantasy sports, fantasy sports business, fantasy sports industry, john mccain, new york times, npr, politics, real clear politics
