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.

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.