MMO Election Tactics In A Tale In The Desert

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to a GameGirlAdvance article describing the political machinations inside the game world of A Tale In The Desert, the intriguing non-combat-based MMO title that article author and ATITD development intern Jia Ji describes as "..historical simulation, a mixture of the Sims and Civilization with real people thrown in to make it interesting." Of particular interest are the tactics being used in the game to garner votes in the election for Demi-Pharaoh - "Some players are bribing other players for their votes with ingame resources or favors. Others are forming political parties to used their combined voting power to sway the election process.. we even have the equivalent of a 'Green Party' which believes that mining, heavy industrial production, and other activities that have a detrimental effect on the gameworld's environment should be limited and regulated."

Comments

Hey all.

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard that the first post in a thread is automatically docked a point.

Also, I wonder why people can wrap their heads around politicking in a game, but are so stone-dumb when it comes to electing the good candidates. Especially given how boring this game sounds.

Re:Hey all.

[Rudeboy777]

I imagine the people who play this games are voters for the most part. A non-violent, non-twitch game should keep the typical mouth-breathing FPS troglodytes away and bring in people willing to exercise their brains and social skills. The same type of person likely realizes the importance of voting in real life elections.

This is all IMHO of course (total speculation and educated guessing), but there you have it. I vote and I think the premise of this game sounds intriguing.

Re:Hey all.

[Danse]

Because in a game the issues are simpler and the consequences are negligable. Hell, you don't even have to vote the way you really would, you can vote the way your imaginary character would vote. Look at this "green party" in the game. Does it really matter if the gameworld becomes "polluted"? Of course not, it's just role-play. Maybe that's why some people like the game. They wish that understanding all the complexity behind real-life issues was as easy as understanding those in the game. The game serves as kind of a substitute since they can't ever be sure of what's true or real in real-world politics. Kind of like those people who would prefer to return to a simpler time.

Re:Hey all.

[jkerman]

you are exactly correct. people who start the trial in this game and go "DOODZ@#$!!! WTF? wheres my rocket launcher???@#$@#?" are soon gone forever.

Makes for a really cool, and smart, community. probably why the game is so addictive.....

Re:Hey all.

[Teppy]

In fact, polution does matter in ATITD - it screws up farming, fishing, and a number of other activites for your neighbors. (I'm the designer of ATITD.)

Re:Hey all.

[jkerman]

Actually one of the reasons i play is that noe everything is all neat and laid out for you. For example: We can plant veggies in the ground, and grow them. Thats all we had. It was up to the playerbase to collaborate research, and do experimentation to determine where/how to get the best yields.

The motivation is that you can actually make a difference! Lets face it. your probably not going to do something in your lifetime that will effect every single person. But in ATITD, your simple research can benefit the whole community.

If only they had virtual history books i could show my grandkids... :)

Re:Hey all.

[Danse]

Well, I meant matter as in having non-game consequences, but that's interesting anyway :)

Re:Hey all.

[Danse]

The motivation is that you can actually make a difference! Lets face it. your probably not going to do something in your lifetime that will effect every single person. But in ATITD, your simple research can benefit the whole community.

Exactly. That's what I was getting at with my post. The game is a sort of simplified real-world that people can actually get their heads around. That's why they like it. It's not as difficult or complex as the real world.

Re:Hey all.

[Saxerman]

Since the game has a free trial that requires nothing more than a download we still get our influx of 1337 newbs, but they don't stick around for long. You're right that the game appeals to a very different category of gamer and the bulk of our active player base seems to be made up of older, more mature, and more interesting people than I normally find while gaming online.

Strangely, while we have an active player base of around 2k people now, we typically only get 500 or 600 votes around election time. Considering new laws can have a dramatic effect on the game world (such as banishing characters, changing property ownership, and creating a police force) I also would have expected to see more voter turn out.

When asked I find the typical response from the non-voters to be one of two issues. The first is that they don't feel their vote is important. Which is a strange stance to take considering the size of our player base.

The second is that they don't like visiting the polls all the time. This is probably partly due to the ease of submitting new proposals for vote. We get a host of different law submissions, from the seriously to the silly, as everyone tries to push their issue of the week onto the voting populous. Since we haven't divided into large political parties yet, it's still easier to submit new laws than to campaign for them. And it can get tiring to see the same rehashed law resubmitted for vote after yet another edit.

We have the power to change our legal system, be it a change to what it takes to submit new laws to establishing a formal government, but getting a majority of Egypt to agree with your proposed changes is easier said than done.

Re:Hey all.

[Anonymous Coward]

Pardon me, but what makes you think I don't vote in real life?

I have yet to miss an election since my 18th birthday except for one where I was in labor with my child. Trust me, my 18th birthday was a LONG time ago. ;)

Don't assume please.

Re:Hey all.

[Silvanis]

Actually, one of the developers has repeatedly called this a social experiment and a sort of primer for learning about real life issues.

One of the discussions after the election was how all the canidates essentially had the same platform with just a few small variations between them (sound familiar?). Most people agreed that this is what happens with a committee process...the extremists get filtered out and you're left with essentially bland canidates that, for the most part, campaigned on NOT using thier banning powers unless the fate of the game was in the balance.

This issue also comes up in the law system. Most of the passed laws are easily agreed with, while the ones that attempt something more radical (like land ownership or a justice system) never get teh 2/3rds majority to pass. In fact, there's a group of people that will vote no to any law that even allows the chance of a potentially bad law to be petitioned, much less passed!

So yes, it's a simplified version of real life. However, it's also an effective way of learning more about how things work socially in real life.

strange

[skinnedmink]

So, people are willing to pay to vote online, while offline presidential elections they don't bother voting one way or another. ......Am I missing something?

Re:strange

[vrai]

Probably because in the online election their votes actually count for something.

Re:strange

[digtl88]

That is messed up considering the amount of people who do not vote for the presidential election. But you do have a point, the gov seem to pull strings if they want to mess with the results.

Re:strange

[watchful.babbler]

Actually, it's not surprising at all. John Hibbing of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has done extensive research on Americans' attitude towards representative government, and the results are rather dismal; Americans simply don't like, or can't be bothered with, the messy details of democratic governance.

This doesn't come as a shock, especially to those familiar with the work of Delli Carpini and other researchers on the matter. But conflict, compromise, and coordination are learned habits and in modern America -- unlike, say, Renaissance Florence or colonial America -- there are few opportunities to exercise political habits in the public sphere. (When was the last time you attended a city council meeting? Checked your state and federal representatives' voting records? Read the Federal Register? And why would you, unless you're in a politically-related profession?) Basically, as politics has retreated from the public square to private corridors, we've fallen out of the habit of democracy.

On the other hand, ATITD offers its players a direct connection between politics and policy; it's a little hard to adopt the "Don't blame me, I didn't vote for him" line when your character is zapped out of existence by a single person, just as apathy was discouraged in early American democracy by the devolution of power to small towns and accessible state legislatures. So, there's a hopeful nugget buried in this: if you give folks a reason to vote, they'll remain politically engaged.

Re:strange

[chaoticset]

Yeah -- there's no reward for voting in the real world. I still say that if cookies were given out, or even whole potluck dinners, at voting booths, the percentage of voting population would increase to 80% or better. If you give out free stuff at voting booths, people will show up! Hell, tie a lottery to the damn registration process if you want people to register. Tax dollars get wasted on useless things every day -- might as well waste them on something useFUL.

Re:strange

[Caedar]

Simply put, A Tale in the Desert's political system is how the Founding Fathers promised the democracy. Our government is 100% by the people, for the people (as every vote goes counted, and everyone gets to vote).

Re:strange

[PainKilleR-CE]

...how the Founding Fathers promised the democracy. Our government is 100% by the people, for the people (as every vote goes counted, and everyone gets to vote).

I think you might want to take a look at how the Founding Fathers setup the voting system in the US again. Not to mention the things they implemented in the first decade or so to prevent 'uninformed' people from voting.

All of that being said, when I lived in California the only time my vote counted was in local elections (up to the level of the House of Representatives). Once you got to a state-wide election, there was really no point, regardless of what system was used, because about 45-50% of California's voters are liberal Democrats (or think that liberal Democrats are the people they want to vote for). This means that every Presidential election you have close to 50% of California's votes being ignored, which comes to 10s of millions of people, whether they're Republicans or third party voters (and regardless of what people might think about 3rd party voting, you can't make 3rd party votes count unless you vote 3rd party).

Re:strange

[chaoticset]

Unfortunately, it doesn't work. Pay close attention to politics today. There is a small amount of hand-wringing going on about how so few Americans want to bother with politics, but nobody's fixing the problem. Nobody's reducing term lengths (if terms were a year long, all of them, period, there wouldn't be lobbying because trying to buy someone who won't be there next year is pointless), nobody's providing incentives to voters (you think I'm joking about giving out free stuff at voting booths, but I'm not...look at the Red Cross, they hand out cookies with blood donations and it helps), and no real attempts are being made at making it easy for cheap candidates to get in.

Remove television ads altogether. The system will react in a good way. Encourage voting. The system will react in a good way. None of these things are happening because the people who decide these things have their jobs because the system sucks.

Re:strange

[stefanlasiewski]

Bah, you wanna see American democracy?

Just look at how Coke reverted to their original formula when they tried to pull that "New Coke" bullshit on us. And the Star Tours ride at Disneyland would be dead if it wasn't for political activists. And all those Buffy campaigns to influence the plot of the show.

Who says democracy is dead?!

Re:strange

[Anonymous Coward]

It's probably worth noting that out of 2000 'active' players, only about 700 voted, and that was in the final election that spanned several days instead of simply one. I'm not exactly impressed by that.

Re:strange

[Anonymous Coward]

just as a note, you're mixing up incentives with covering your tuchus. the red cross hands out cookies because blood loss means low sugar, which can make some people pass out. so, in order to make sure you have at least some quick sugar and other vitamins, they give you juice and a cookie.

--an EMT who can't give blood anymore.

Re:strange

[chaoticset]

You're mixing up cause with effect. The Red Cross may have started to do it for the blood sugar, but believe me, there are people for which it is an incentive.

Where I went to high school there was practically a small buffet next to the blood donor site, because people gave more if there was free food. The school wanted the blood drive to go well, so they threw pizzas and beverages in on top of the cookies the RC was handing out.

bah

[Ashka]

You don't know what you re talking about. That game is great, the concept is really nice.

Why the Demi-Pharaoh election matters

[Teppy]

You have to understand ATITD's story. A mysterious stranger has challenged Pharaoh and his people to a series of 49 Tests, seven in each of seven disciplines. One of the Tests of Leadership is that of the Demi-Pharaoh.

People are assigned into randomly selected juries of about 7 people each, and each jury must promote one of their own. The person promoted moves to the next round, with the final round's vote taking place Egypt-wide.

The person elected Demi-Pharaoh has just one power. He or she can permanently exile (as in, game over, many months of work on your character gone, don't come back) up to 7 people. Whether to actually use this power is up to the person elected.

So it's a Test about figuring out who to trust with power. Tempers often flair during Demi-Pharaoh elections.

Anyway, if this kind of thing appeals to you, check out the game. I think we're the only MMO to launch with both Windows and Linux clients, and the first 24 hours are free. (I'm the designer of ATITD.)

Re:Why the Demi-Pharaoh election matters

[watchful.babbler]

I think we're the only MMO to launch with both Windows and Linux clients....

Any decision yet whether you'll proceed with a MOSX port?

Ahem...

[D3r1v3D]

Don't be so quick to flame a game that you haven't even tried yet. I shared similar conceptions about ATITD before I started playing. I looked at the screenshots and the remarks on the game's lack of combat and couldn't believe that this game could be so popular. However, my friend got me playing about 2 weeks ago and I'm never looking back. This is one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had. And while it is mostly due to the gameplay, I think that what makes this game is the people who inhabit eGenesis's Egypt. This game has a high learning curve, but I have yet to come across someone who couldn't or just wouldn't answer a question I had. Whenever I was down on resources, there were always people to lend a hand. And I think it's for that reason that this game is what it is. The people. If you decide you'd like to try out this game for yourself, go to http://www.atitd.com and download the trial version. Feel free to type "/chat Gilratet" once in-game if you have any questions or just need a helping hand.

Don't be too quick to judge

[dria]

I've played (and quit) many MMOGs, and this is the first one that has held my attention for more than a month (since I quit AC, at least).

The game concepts are unique, the problems and Tests are challenging but not impossible, and almost everyone I've met through the game is a good, friendly, kind, intelligent, helpful person.

I'd go so far as to say that ATITD is the best MMOG I've played, and it has the added benefit of having an extremely high-quality player base. It can be frustrating at times, but only because the puzzles are actually -hard-. I've devoted a lot of time to deciphering one particular aspect of the game (winemaking) and it still largely baffles me. Where most games err on the side of being too easy, this one definitely isn't "dumbed down" for the masses.

Client is a free download (both windows and linux -- and you never pay for it, unlike those sneaky AO people), and there's a 1-month-or-24-hrs-game-time free trial period.

It's really quite fun, and if you're interested in MMOGs at all, you really should take a look.

Re:Don't be too quick to judge

[Noren]

The game concepts are unique, the problems and Tests are challenging but not impossible, and almost everyone I've met through the game is a good, friendly, kind, intelligent, helpful person.

Current consensus is that the Test of the Acrobat is impossible with the current population of active players.

Finally, a follow-up article

[Jia]

Hi, I'm Jia, I wrote that article. Anyway, I'm glad that Slashdot finally posted up a follow-up article to the one from four months ago considering we're the only MMOG that actively supports linux and we've been live for over three months.

Our free downloadable linux client is at http://atitd.com/eClient-linux.run. Our engine is also partially open-sourced. "A Tale in the Desert" owes a lot to the open source community too. We're a small company with only two lead developers that basically coded the entire game on their own. Thus, we make use of alot of free software such as, eCal3D (download source here, a derivative of Bruno Heidelberger's Cal3D.

I'm not sure why some Slashdot readers are so hostile to the idea of a "cooperative thinking game." Isn't that what the open-source movement is all about? Does everyone really love mindless hack-and-slash leveling treadmills that much? I guess we'll find out if SWG becomes a success (and I wish Raph Koster the best of luck too!).

Anyway, this is just the first in a series of articles about ATITD I plan on writing for GGA. The next one will probably be about the player-run legal system. So far players in our game have drafted, voted on, and passed laws about theft, land ownership, property permissions, social taboos, obsenity laws, and even virtual rape. Feel free to continue to link to future news about us since we can't afford to advertise on Slashdot (contacted OSDN's advertising department, figure they quoted was 10 times what we paid for our Penny Arcade ad deal).