Fantasy Congress Takes Political Gaming To The Next Level
POLITICAL GAMES
The Keene Sentinel
Lauren Katims
Boston University Washington News Service
11-9-06
WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 —In the real-life Congress, Republican Sens. Judd Gregg and John Sununu are New Hampshire political leaders. In Fantasy Congress, they are just average guys who are not at the top of their game.
Inspired by fantasy sports games, Fantasy Congress, a new non-profit, non-partisan political Web site, allows players, or “citizens,” to compete against other players by picking teams of legislators and scoring points by their team’s activities in Congress.
Created by four seniors at Claremont McKenna College in Southern California and launched a month ago, the league’s Web site, www.fantasycongress.org, has already attracted more than 24,000 participants eager to “play politics.”
And with Democrats becoming the majority in the House and perhaps the Senate in January, people will be more interested in seeing how the new freshman class will legislate, said Andrew Lee, one of the creators.
“We’re hoping to not take on Congress, but change the way people think of it,” he said. “If they can think of it like a sport, like stats, then we can evaluate legislators in an objective way.”
Although the site may appeal to competitive people, it’s not meant to be only a game; it’s also a way to learn about politics, Lee said.
“A lot of this information is already out there, but the problem is it’s not easy to use or easy to find,” he said. The key to the Website is that it’s engaging, and that’s what keeps people coming back, he added.
But even though Fantasy Congress is the most interactive on-line political game, it’s not the first.
In the 2004 presidential election, the political gaming industry exploded, with many games matching Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) against President Bush, but those games never reached the mainstream population.
But Fantasy Congress is different, bringing political games to broader audience, said Rachel Summe, a political science teacher at Keene High School.
Summe teaches the 9th to 12th grade students. She said her students are interested in politics and want to talk about issues, but she admitted it has been hard finding a tool that keeps them excited and engaged. Fantasy Congress, she said, could do the trick.
The rules of the game are similar to those of sports fantasy games.
The game comes with a diagram that explains the rules, showing the user how a bill becomes a law and how each step in the legislative process earns points for members of the congressional team: Team members get five points for introducing a bill or an amendment, and receive more as the measures move successfully through the legislative process.
Then the user chooses a league, which bear names such as “Free Pizza and Beer” and “New Hampshire Clearly Deserves the First Primary.”
After that, the player drafts a team of 16 legislators, which must include Representatives and Senators with different levels of seniority.
Sununu leads New Hampshire legislators with 647 points, ranking him 65th among all members of Congress. Gregg, with 437 points, is ranked 106th. Much lower on the list are Republican Reps. Charles Bass and Jeb Bradley, who lost their seats on Election Day. Bass, with 107 points ranks 357th; Bradley has 172 points and ranks 276th.
Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) leads with 1,991 points.
Lee said the strategy for winning is simple: pick legislators who will be steadily active. It’s not always the best choice to pick a “showboat,” he said, because one week the lawmaker could be very active and the next week do nothing.
Sununu, Lee said, isn’t a bad choice.
Each week players can reshape their teams by picking up lawmakers who can be expected to be more active the following week.
In terms of public understanding, Lee said, “Congress is probably one of the murkiest places in the country.” But if the information is packaged differently, he said, people may start getting more excited about important issues.
“It’s one way to learn,” said Dennis McCauley, editor of GamePolitics.com, a Web site that covers gaming and politics. “And it’s a good way because it draws people into the mechanics of the legislative process in a way that they might not care to
experience otherwise.”
But right now, most of the people playing are “political junkies, the same people who watch ‘Meet the Press’ and read political blogs,” McCauley said, and he’s not sure political games will transcend that niche market.
Jerome Climer, president of the Congressional Institute, a non-partisan, non-profit group in Washington that educates the public about congressional issues, agreed, saying that political games are missing the “human element,” which has kept them out of the mainstream.
It’s easy to take a member of Congress’ position on any given issue and look to see how the member votes on legislation, he said. But in real life, he argued, constituents are not going to vote based on in-depth congressional issues; instead, they will side with the member of Congress with whom they sympathize and with whose party they can identify, he said. And it’s difficult to put that into a game.
Other critics note that a legislator’s job cannot be simply quantified by tallying the number of bills introduced. Although it is an important part of their job to create new legislation, said Dr. Stuart Shulman, editor of the Journal of Information Technology and Politics, it’s easier for senior members – which may be a downside for the new Democratic freshman class trying to win points.
Lee said that he is planning on including media mentions in the point system, but he warns that there is no guarantee that the low-ranked members will go to the top. “But you know, that’s politics,” he said.
It’s doubtful that members of Congress are familiar with political games like Fantasy Congress, experts agree. Lee admitted he has not gotten any feedback from the lawmakers but said he knows of some staff members who have joined teams.
But the Web site has received mainstream attention. National publications, such as The New York Times and Time Magazine, have written about it, and Lee said he’s received e-mail messages from fantasy sports fans looking for a game to play during the off-season.
Summe, the Keene High teacher, said she will use the Web site in her classroom next year to teach students about politics. She has experimented with other political Websites, but when she showed Fantasy Congress to her class, her students were “intrigued,” she said. Many of them showed interest in forming teams.
Summe said that interactive teaching methods, especially about politics, are a key factor in getting kids interested in learning about Congress. She said Fantasy Congress impressed her because unlike in a newspaper or a textbook, her students can look up how their local members of Congress voted and compare their stances to those of other lawmakers.
Now students can understand issues in Congress and how much time the democratic process consumes, she said.
The real excitement, Lee said, will come when Congress returns for a lame-duck session to vote on pending issues.
Then for the first time the site will be dealing with real-time congressional action, he said, and people have no idea what will happen.
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