The folks over at TheorySpark have given their take on Kingmaker. Some brief snippets:
Essentially, this is an election market, but you bet nothing and get a big prize if you win. It’s your chance to apply all that political game theory you learned to the 2008 primaries elections…
All in all, another neat political ‘game’.
Not only was one of my favorite words made the official 2007 word of the year, but it’s use will now describe the birth of our election game!
W00t!
Check out Kingmaker! Our really cool presidential primaries game that will hopefully change the way we think of political punditry and how we do office pools for the election.
A huge thanks to the folks at Politico- Dan Kunitz, Ryan Mannion, and Kim Kingsley- and especially John Harris and Jim Vandehei for taking a bet on our creativity. It’s not a guarantee that Kingmaker will be a hit, but we think that it’s an interesting and new way to “play politics.”
So, we here at Fantasy Congress generally receive two publications that we read from cover to cover (or at least is our obligatory bathroom reading)- Wired magazine and the Economist. Although we haven’t reached the annals of Wired, we were mentioned in the Economist! Here’s what they said (yes, the rest of the article has nothing to do with us…):
AS MANY as 18m American adults play fantasy sports leagues. Movie buffs play Fantasy Mogul and anyone who thinks politics is not already surreal enough can play Fantasy Congress.
Congrats to our friends over at Fantasy Moguls too for their mention in the Economist!
As always, we don’t update this blog enough. Perhaps we should switch to a twitter account? We’re back from Thanksgiving (not that we actually left at all).
Anyway, we’re busily putting finishing touches on the last parts of what we’ll call the Presidential Primaries Game we’re developing in partnership with a media partner. We’re still bootstrapping (a fancy entrepreneurial way of saying that we’re still living like we did in college) and trying to make government more transparent, engaging, and as exciting as sports.
We’re excited about the CNN-YouTube Debates (running tonight for the Republicans) because some of our friends in the weird world of online politics will be participating. We’re all looking forward to this cool primary game and hopefully it will be sufficiently fun for the people who do play.
So, we don’t do enough shout-outs, but we love the members of our community who blog/write/challenge each other online. So, here are some recent links to friends who talk about Fantasy Congress:
Hope everyone is having a good time. Again, we want to know what you think about Fantasy Congress and how we can improve it. Feel free to contact us at any point and let us know your thoughts (positive or negative, we welcome all!).
This news is old already, but our alma mater where Fantasy Congress was born, Claremont McKenna College (CMC) was in Newsweek. Check out the article here. Here’s the gist though:
Hottest for Election Year
Claremont McKenna College, Claremont, Calif.
Two of every five CMC students major in government/international relations. Most of the rest are also talking politics, the campus obsession. Few selective colleges in America have such ideologically balanced faculties and student bodies. Speakers like Bill Clinton and Justice Antonin Scalia dropped by last spring, and neither was tarred and feathered. CMC, one of the five Claremont Colleges, is vibrating with anticipation of the 2008 presidential race. Andrew Lee, a recent graduate and political junkie who created the Fantasy Congress Web site, says that on long campus weekends he and his friends would skip the beach and drive to a state with a hot election and knock on doors for their favorites.
W00T!
Since many of our users are educators and students, I just wanted to post a cool opportunity I received from a friend. You can win $2500 in a cash prize for writing an essay! Below is the press release.
NCAI Joins Reconnecting The Circle™ in a National Prize Essay Contest
10 students will each win a $2,500 cash prize.
A big shout out to Joe Blancato of Escapist Magazine, an online publication dedicated to the world of gaming. Not only is this a fun publication, but they recently ran a story on us about Fantasy Congress and why we are so committed to our vision.
Here’s the link to the article: Fantasy Congress: Gaming the System
Thanks for the interview Joe!
So, we’re working on a number of cool things. In terms of FC, we’re responding to user comments and focusing on providing a better gameplay experience and making sure that Fantasy Congress is understandable for both our educational users and our fabulous political users. On the list is changing the trading system, improving our messaging system, and making our coverage more comprehensive (yes, RSS feeds for the Top 10, hopefully). We always believed that you can learn about what’s going on in Congress and also have fun. Hopefully, we’re accomplishing that.
Wait though, true believers (a comic-book reference for all of you fans of Marvel Comics, including Senator Patrick Leahy), but we’re working on a sweet election game. Hopefully it will as cool as I dream it to be (it also doubles as an espresso machine… that feature may not occur until version 2). We’re working with a great media partner who we will announce our election game with, but stay tuned for more updates!
On a separate note, we want to give every league the power to extend their season. Arjun and I earlier this year guessed based on the House and Senate target adjournment dates that the Congress would be adjourned by this Friday, but it seems that… yeah, they’re gonna keep on going. More playing of the politics! Send us an e-mail at support@fantasycongress.com and let us know what you think.
Many of our users are students, educators, poiticos, and other fabulous folks. We can now proudly include in those ranks, Joyce Neys, a Ph.D. student who just finished her Masters from Universiteit van Amsterdam.
Some months ago she collected results on websites that had online games as a tool of political motivation. She found that online games seemed to provide greater awareness and retention for users. She is now working on her Ph.D. on “Pleasure and pain in gaming”- the general motivations for players to (keep) play(ing) videogames. Good luck on the Ph.D. Joyce and thanks for researching us and including us in your Master’s Thesis.