Lawmakers Game The System

Thanks to Wired News for its article discussing government officials and massively multiplayer game designers sharing ideas on the best ways to deal with community feedback. Neil Eisner of the Department Of Transportation explains: "We're both dealing with large populations, and (like with the public-comment process for legislation) the public helps them design the rules for the game, or petitions them to change the rules to have things happen." Raph Koster of Sony Online adds that it "was startling to me... that (the federal comment process) is identical to how we build our patches and patch notes", although since the government has "a legal obligation to protect the privacy of people submitting comments on legislation", this means some disadvantages compared to MMO feedback, as Koster explains: "We get to know the people who are good testers, who are good at catching bugs. The federal government is legally not allowed to do that."

Comments

Major companies

[Anonymous Coward]

already run america. They shouldn't have a problem with a MMORPG

Efficiency?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Iraqi model was quite efficient:

community_feedback > dev/null

One big difference

[xophos]

Game designers/publischers have a genuine interest to make the "laws" as good as they can to serve the needs of all of their users.
Politicians only listen to the people who pay them the most, and they make the rules in a way, that they allways win. The analogy in game design would be to sell the choices in rule design to the highest bidder, and include cheatcodes for those and themselves.