The response from civic society is to proliferate an alphabet soup of their own special interest groups, from the AARP to the NRA. These organizations serve two vital functions: (1) developing expertise and (2) aggregating collective interest, primarily through membership dues (money) as a proxy.

We’ve reached the limits of this corporate, civil-society-as-special-interest, system. New, digitally networked communities suggest a more fluid and inclusive model of public participation. And, I argue, video games are worth studying for their ability to help us overcome the twin problems of expertise and collective action.

Games for crowdsourcing: Projects like Google Image Labeler illustrate how a well-designed game can harness collective intelligence to do productive work. The small amount of work you’re doing for Google is matched by an equally small motivational reward (a score and the fun of playing). While an interest in the project’s goals might lead you to the Image Labeler in the first place, continuing participation is driven by the game, not charity.

If public participation in, say, legislation or regulatory rulemaking faces a similar interest-aggression challenge, the solution might entail a good Web interface that draws on game design principles. Imagine, for example, Pork Invaders redone as a real-world game, with players poring over legislation to zap pork while preserving legitimate spending. (More on how games can also help define “legitimate spending” in a bit).

Perhaps a game-based front end can have enough mass appeal to aggregate across a broad population, which would be a change from the way we currently divide the public into narrowly-defined interests. This would require the platform be built and marketed to a general audience. I can easily see this falling into the purview of emerging journalism.

Games for values discernment: Special interest groups not only develop expertise, but also make judgments on behalf of their constituents. There are several reasons why citizens might delegate their power in this way – lack of expertise, lack of time (see above), but perhaps most of all a reluctance to make difficult decisions. Because the American lawmaking process is adversarial, with groups like the NRDC battling the coal lobby, we citizens often express policy preferences by picking our proxies. Lost in this system is our opportunity – perhaps our need – to weigh difficult decisions ourselves.

Polls are one way to gauge the will of “the people.” But, I think, a well-designed game can also surface citizens’ policy preference, perhaps in the same way that psychologists uncover our cognitive biases through various sleights-of-hand. I’m not suggesting that we trick citizens, but rather couch difficult policy questions in a way that our puny brains can comprehend. (Evolution has left us with a finely-tuned sense of face-to-face morality but not large-system morality; we tend to reach for big-picture comprehension through small-picture metaphors).

Imagine, then, a Kittenwar type of game in which players pick between two interests until a ranked-order list of priorities shakes out. Or, better yet, players distribute resources among different interests, and the game illustrates – in the compelling manner unique to video games – the results of funding a project at various levels. (Underfunding food stamps, for example, might show children becoming malnourished). Budget Hero provides a prototype of this kind of game, but it remains too abstract for players to really understand the consequences of choices. We need games that make policy accessible to the masses, not just fun for the wonks.

The amount of subjectivity inherently built into these games will make their design even more controversial than that of polls. (See this fascinating piece in the NYT Magazine on environmental decisionmaking). But I take for granted that there is no way to construct neutral questions, as the authors of Nudge point out. Confronting citizens with a pile of numbers and data merely biases their responses in a very different way – and arguably, not in one that highlights their core values. If we are to have true citizen participation that results in a more representative democracy, then we must be bold in rethinking the way we ask people to participate.

Honda has loaded it with an array of gauges and displays intended to coach drivers to be more economical. For instance, the speedometer’s background color changes from blue to green as one’s driving becomes “more environmentally responsible.” Readouts reward the frugal driver with an “eco score”; if you excel, you win a digital trophy surrounded by a wreath.

The author and his colleagues all found that they beat the EPA measures, probably because of the electronic coaching. How’s that for a “game for change” that might actually really change the world? Just keep your eyes on the road and watch out for cyclists, Insight drivers!

Well, I’m now working on one such game that would support civic activism, particularly on location-based issues. It emerged out of a campaign to turn Boston into a “Fair Trade City” by convincing local stores and institutions to offer Fair Trade products like coffee, chocolate, and bananas. Because the campaign uses teams to build public support and to persuade stores, it seemed natural to frame the campaign as a game in which the rules scaffold valuable actions. For example, teams win points for identifying stores that already carry Fair Trade and for persuading new stores; however, it costs points to “claim” a store for persuasion, which they can also accumulate by signing on supporters. (Essentially, we want to model the idea of gathering up enough supporters to “attack”

Despite the fact that the software is only 40% complete, participants seem really motivated by it. We’re now seeking funding to launch the project, and would really appreciate any suggestions or feedback you might have on the concept. Our Knight Foundation application is publicly available for comment, and it can use your ideas. Or feel free to contact me directly. I’ll try to post more about the game design and how it intertwines with the real-world goals of the campaign.

Game designer and scholar Ian Bogost considered it a washout election cycle for political games. McCain had his “Pork Invaders” arcade gimmick, and Obama bought ads in Xbox Live (largely an indulgence). But I would argue that 2008 represents a watershed moment for video games, a moment when the medium showed that it can, indeed, change the world. My.BarackObama.com (“MyBO”) didn’t just communicate ideas. It encouraged people to go and do something.

MyBO awarded Obama supporters with points for taking real-world actions that would likely help the candidate win the primaries and the general election: making phone calls to voters, hosting gatherings, and donating money. MyBO wasn’t the first website to use game mechanics to stimulate real-world action. In 2004, ILoveBees sent thousands of players on a worldwide treasure hunt to promote the traditional console game Halo 2. In 2007, World Without Oil had participants imagine a world where oil prices become astronomical, then adjust their lifestyles in response. Over 18,000 people joined in, recording changes large and small that prefigured what people really did do in the actual oil shock of 2008. These Augmented (or Alternative) Reality Games all found ways to blend the virtual and real.

MyBO was the first serious ARG deployed by a political campaign. Sure, I’m stretching the term “augmented” a bit (unless you’re one of those who believed that all Obamabots lived in an alternate reality). And aren’t fundraising thermometers also a reality-based game where putting in $50 makes the mercury rise? I suppose – but what made MyBO revolutionary, and what puts it in the same category as World Without Oil, is that it also asked participants to engage in non-digital, non-virtual activity. You can donate money without leaving your bed or interacting with another human being. But calling voters requires an authentic human touch, even if the medium is digital (as it was for a colleague who Skyped voters on November 3 from Cairo, where she was at a conference).

Gameplay on MyBO was far from perfect. Part of the problem is that the boundary between digital and real remains only semi-permeable. For example, in January, my partner and I drove down to South Carolina and spent a week in the trenches, eventually helping to run a staging location in a bellwether precinct. For this – and for our subsequent work in MA, VT, and PA, we scored a big fat zero, because there was no way to let MyBO know what were doing. Meanwhile, others were apparently gaming the system by hosting bogus events or flipping through phone numbers without actually calling anyone, perhaps hoping to win various awards. (The site did limit the number of numbers it would give you within a specific period of time to limit this kind of abuse – or, I suppose, wholesale data-mining).

A typical quest (note the in-game manual):

Perhaps the biggest problem of MyBO as a game was its failure to scale. It was disheartening to log in and see that you were in 266,442nd place. True, the points and ranking were meaningless (except for the ten lucky phonebankers who got to meet Sen. Obama), as they are in any game, and I suppose you could argue that the fact that there were 266,441 other people doing more work than you also said something important about the campaign. But the system would have been far more motivating if your cohort group was more local: all Obama supporters in your state, city, or your MyBO groups. After all, the strength of the grassroots resides in its person-to-person connections.

The scoring system never did go local, but in early August 2008 the developers swapped out points in exchange for an Activity Tracker. Instead of winning absolute points, supporters “leveled up” the ranks from 1 to 10 (10 being highest). Groups as well as individuals also scored points, which helped people find others who were actually doing real work. Previously, it was hard to get a sense of how you compared to other volunteers: 266,442 sounds pretty low on the totem pole, but not if there are over a million registered users!

Some were upset by the change, which demonstrated that the points really did motivate some. Wrote one of the top 500: “GIVE ME MY POINTS BACK!!!! THEY DO NOT BELONG TO YOU!!!!!” – words not unlike an MMO player whose epic weapon has been nerfed. But for those lower on the scale – which would include all n00bs, the lifeblood of any campaign or MMO – the switch removed the sense of futility that pervaded the game before. (Points also decayed over time, which also gave n00bs a fighting chance. Consider it an estate tax for scores).

For most supporters, the points likely functioned as a curiosity. Still, the point system helped signal what kinds of activities really mattered, and it probably had something to do with the over 200,000 events hosted and 27,000 groups created on MyBO – an impressive number even after you discount some set of bogus ones put on to game the system. And then there’s two other scores to consider: 203 and 8,481,030, the margin of victory for Obama in the electoral college and the popular vote.

A resounding victory for President-Elect Obama. And, I suspect, for the future of reality games in political and civic campaigns. (Full disclosure: including one I’m now working on a civic engagement game for Fair Trade).

Scola also mentions the Obama-Biden tax calculator, which presents an interesting contrast. It, too, is a calculator — raw numbers stacked up — but it has the distinct engagement advantage of being about your money. Its designers don’t need to provide context or background; presumably, you know exactly what another $1,000 in your pocket would mean.

Such lame attempts at public education (or, as Scola argues, “pretend participation”) ignores the basic problem that for most taxpayers, issues of government taxes and spending are emotional, not rational, and not because we are innumerate but because such systems are too big and too remote for most of us to comprehend. This is a point that Prof. Henry Jenkins makes in his essay, “Complete Freedom of Movement,” which contrasts the play spaces of boys and girls. Whereas a game like Sim City allows players to mold physical territory, in girls’ games and stories like Harriet the Spy “the mapping of the space was only the first step in preparing the ground for a rich saga of life and death, joy and sorrow – the very elements that are totally lacking in most simulation games.”

Stated differently: cutting $10M from the state’s Department of Mental Health means something real for real human beings. The essence of a true public policy debate is to capture human reality in the discussion, not abstract it into numbers. (To those who argue that this would merely lead to an exploding debt, it’s up to deficit hawks to describe the issue as compelling drama, not formal logic).

A different contrast can be made with the Massachusetts Budget Calculator Game, Question 1 edition. As in the original version of this spreadsheet game, each top-level line item is explained with ample text — which requires players to be both numerate and literate. This “game” is no better than Patterson’s effort — except that the point isn’t really to balance the budget. The point is to show just how absurd repealing the budget is. It turns out that it’s pretty much impossible to eliminate the income tax without destroying practically all of the Massachusetts government, which an overwhelming majority of voters ultimately agreed was reckless. Rhetorically, then, the Globe’s budget game was less a simulation and more an exercise in futility, much like the message embedded in Ian Bogost’s “editorial games” for the New York Times.

But what about a game that actually helps the player understand a budget and make difficult tradeoffs? Possibly the best example out there is Budget Hero from American Public Media. (Read Ben Medler’s review). Among its stronger features is the ability to choose particular values that your budget should maximize (e.g. “national security” or “energy independence”). As your budget fulfills those values, the corresponding “badge” fills up. It’s a relatively elegant way to convey the idea that budgets aren’t just abstract numbers but expressions of our collective social values — moral and meaningful choices writ large. It also doesn’t hurt that the design is colorful, noisy, and generally attractive.

Most intriguingly, Budget Hero also compares your results with peers (assuming, as Medler points out, that the players are truthful). It’s a step in the right direction towards an engaged and informed public dialog.

V@P recreating iterative design process to examine human values.

Studies to test impact of V@P curriculum on designers. “Grow a game” brainstorming cards. (Verbs, Challenges, Games, Values). Stages of Concern Instrument to measure changes in attitudes about values-conscious design.

Findings:

1. The big issue with making activist games is a perceived conflict between fun and the seriousness of the social issue (don’t want to make light of that issue). Going too serious leads to strange unintended consequences, e.g. Jena 6 game ends up seeming racist — therefore need to maintain the values.
2. Students’ three strategies: (1) the unwinnable game; (2) appropriate mainstream games for activist purposes; (3) most difficult to accomplish — invent new mechanics

See V@P public contest — deadline July 1.

Watching soapy water rise up to your ankles may not be the makings of a blockbuster game, but it struck me that feedback loops are essential to games. Slap a meter on something, and you’ve got the first component of a game. Consider the Prius’s MPG gauge and how it induces more efficient driving (some have even explicitly made the comparison to video games).

Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler’s new book, Nudge (or essay version), suggests that appropriate feedback, when keyed to a social norm, can overcome humans’ innate irrationality and push us to better behavior. John Tierney of the New York Times has thrown out a challenge: can we create a “nudge” device that will lead us to be more green?

Tierney cites earlier musings by Clive Thompson that ambient information, shared over Facebook, might also generate a powerful push towards conservation.

My question is: Can we push past the “game-like” elements of these proposals and make them into full-out games? How would a game designer approach this challenge?

- Gene Koo

* -Actually, it led me to take “navy showers” and multi-stage navy showers (when shampooing + conditioning).