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!
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:
- Progressive U- Nick created a Bonus Opportunity for all of the Progressive U members. This nonpartisan, non-profit social welfare organization hopefully is a lot by using our site about Members of Congress and their draft picks.
- Rising Jurist- The Rising Jurist writes “I’ll be playing. The question is whether you will be playing, too… Otherwise, I’ll join up with some random political geeks.” His blog rocks and you’ll learn a ton (no matter if you plan to go into law or not).
- One of the many students posting on Fantasy Congress, e.g. Kimberly- Our love goes out to all of the fabulous people who write about us (no matter for school assignment or not!).
- Dave Dorm- Dave writes, “Well, this may be fun. Since I generally suck at fantasy sports, and my political views usually get me into trouble. Let’s do both!”
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!
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.
One of the teachers using Fantasy Congress in Georgia asked us a great initial question, “Who are you guys? I know you just graduated, but are you working on this full-time?”
Well, if our About Us page didn’t scare you off, and you’re still interested, then let us explain why we’re working more on Fantasy Congress. Start with our history section in Fantasy Congress, with more after the jump.
(more…)
So Ryan, Ian, Andrew and I just pulled another all-nighter so we could deploy the new version of our site. Its been a while since we added any major features and we are excited to see what you think about them.
I’m excited about the addition of votes (Ryan did an awesome job on the bar graphs) and curious to see how our new Reported Bills Average (RBA) works out. It is essentially the percent of legislation with the force of law (no resolutions, ie H.RES or S.RES) that has come out of committee. It was quite shocking to see how low most of the RBAs are, which really goes to show how difficult it is to get bills out of committee.
There are a lot more features coming up, especially in the area of community, so keep checking back.
Please comment about your thoughts on the updated site using the comments section of this post.
