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Sims Online Presidential Campaign Shapes Up
Ant writes "Wired News has an article on a campaign for the presidency of Alphaville, the biggest city in The Sims Online. Two challengers will square off in a final primary for the opportunity to unseat Alphaville's incumbent president, the appropriately named Mr-President, in next month's general election."
The fact is, in The Sims Online, power doesn't lie so much with the presidents as with the houses of the most popular people. And, as in real life, the most popular households in TSO are those which are general bacchanalia houses bordering on brothels. So the presidency is more of a figurehead as opposed to an actual powerhouse.
A democracy doesn't imply free speech.
...One candidate has mob ties, the other will be caught having cybersex with an underaged prostitute, and a third will vanish from the campaign because EA doesn't like his ideas for cleaning up the game...
Art imitates life, I guess.
Everybody's a libertarian 'till their neighbour's becomes a crack house.
The sad thing is that there will probably be better voter turnout than for the US Presidential election in a few months.
Sigh.
--saint
I'd argue that a democracy without freedom of speech is not a true democracy.
If you can't speak freely, you can't expect to exchange information regarding the government - which means you're not able to freely cast an informed VOTE... in which case you have a sham democracy. QED.
Excellent it is time for reform in the sim community... give it a break. I can't wait to hear the platforms of the running parties, especially the 16 year old..
A friend of mine has laid claim to the title, President of the Internet. The rules are simple - whoever is the #1 result in a Google search for "President of the Internet" is the winner.
Does that mean whoever gets elected gets to play SimCity?
Most states are expected to have voter turnouts higher than 100%.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Perhaps, we'll see for the first time the President screwing the first lady in Hot Date, on the love bed with the nude patch. :P
The US government was never intended to be a democracy. The founding fathers abhorred democracy equating it with "mob rule". Of course they didn't like Tyranny ether, obviously, or there would have been no revolution against England.
The US government is a REPUBLIC, meaning that, instead of having authority given directly to the public, authority is given to a select few, who in turn run the government.
In that way the American government is more modeled after Rome than it is Greece. But still, the constitution divides power between three branches of government, and with the separation of powers implied in the constitution, this allows for a sufficient security against one major voice rising up to silence the others.
A little OT I think it is funny how Republicans are crying that the courts are acting out of line, in regards to homosexual marriage when, in reality, the courts are just doing its job.
I also find it hilarious, and also striking that people dismay the courts because they are "un elected". IMO, that is the great strength of the courts and ESSIENTIAL to the balance of powers in the federal government. We need some branch of the government that is separated somewhat from the consent political, partisan bickering that the other two branches engage in daily.
Who's going to trust the results of this election? Everyone knows computer voting systems aren't secure.
At least the Alphaville ones probably weren't designed by Diebold.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
That is the fallacy of MMOGs. The companies that run the MMOGs treat their customers like it is a privilege to get to play their game. And sadly, the players/customers routinely take it in the ass with a confused smile on their face.
For example, go to any popular MMOG forum and take note of the excessive complaining about all manner of game dynamics and routines. Most of the time, the people complaining would just like the game to be changed in some way, and these feelings are usually shared by the majority. Nevertheless, the most popular retort to any such complaint is something akin to "well it is Square's game, and if you don't like it than you don't have to play!". The extremely sad thing is, is that as customers you should expect a company to improve its product to the majority's wishes, and to fix bugs in a timely fashion, etc. But since such a huge user-base of customers without any self-worth exists, the MMOG companies continue to run their shops the way they do: with a complete disregard for customer satisfaction and product quality.
all it sounded like was blah-blah blah-blah to me...
I don't know, somehow this fascinates me. I don't claim to be a psychologist, or sociologist, but there are some interesting ideas at work here.
First, why has a significant portion of TSO (or any other online game) gravitated toward general elections? I know when I play games (and I rarely do), that one of the first things I try to do is find the bounds of the game. I try to shoot my team memebers, or drive through the buildings, or contruct buildings that spell out my name. I haven't played The Sims, but if I did, I would probably try to randomly attack someone, or see if they'll have sex with one another. And I think that's human nature -- to experiment.
So why is it that the players discussed in this article are trying to graft the rules of our "the real world" onto a game? Is it experimentation? Have these players become bored with toying with the absurd limits of the game and are instead interested in finding the practical limits?
Or are people trying this out of a feeling of detachment from the real world? Are people so frustrated with the current state of affairs that they are trying to establish a utopia of sorts in their online world?
Is this a case of politically-minded people asserting themselves on an online world? And if so, are they politcal rejects (or the politically inexperienced) that would not otherwise flourish in the real world? And if either of those is the case, what of the participants of these elections? Can you then say that some people are comfortable plugging in to "the system?"
I could go on and on. It's these questions that make me want to take a few psych classes. And it's these questions that prevent me from enjoying gaming. I can't help but analyze my every move. And by that time, my city has crumbled, or someone has shot me, or my unit has been outflanked. Kind of annoying!
Maybe I'm just simical, but I expect that most campaigns will resort to MUDslinging...
So if Simland is formaing faux governments, does this mark the beginning of the online nation state?
Will the arise of virtual nation states become the same quagmiritic mess of so-called diplomatic relations that exists in the real world today?
If so, then will these diplomatic relations between online communities breakdown and become virtual online hostilities?
Should all of this happen, I'd put my money on Everquest kicking the shit out of Sims Online, using the simoleans to bloat an ever increasing warchest, turning the peoples of Alphaville into nothing but a nation of slaves used for bizzare Orcish sexual practices, and rolling on to conquer even more virtual online lands.
Even after conquering the majority of the internets online lands, The majority of our new internet masters will still remain savagely unlaid.
(I'm very aware that I used the word "faux," and I'm not sorry for it.
Nor am I sorry for the cheap shot I took at Everquest players.)
s'wut i sed.