AV Election Analysis by MIT’s Technology Review
by Alphaville Herald on 07/05/04 at 10:19 am
Even before the dust has settled on the AVG elections, MIT’s Henry Jenkins (author of Textual Poachers among other mind-blowing bits of academic excellence) has keyed a piece on the Alphaville elections, which just appeard in the MIT Techology Review: “Playing Politics in Alphaville“. The article is interesting in that it attempts to probe the import of the kind of political role-play we have been engaged in here. Is it just play? Is it rehersal for real life political activity? Does it reflect on r/l political processes? Most thought provoking line:
“Even in play, American democracy feels broken.”
Urizenus
May 7th, 2004
Closing paragraph is nice:
“The healthiest thing that has come out of the Alphaville election is that people, online and off, are talking about what happened and through this conversation, they are asking questions about the future of democracy. If we are taking a game too seriously, it is because these questions have not been taken seriously enough in the offline world.”
Cocoanut
May 7th, 2004
Interesting article, with the facts filtered through the lenses of you, Uri, and very flattering to you.
Inherent in this article and its conclusions is the supposed “fact” that the elections were corrupt.
Nowhere has it been proved that the elections were corrupt; that the vote counts were any sort of underhanded plan on the part of Mr. President.
As for Mr. President setting up his own website for the voting, that is hardly surprising, since the AVG was his own creation. Everybody on the game hosts their own sites for their own creations in the game.
You come along afterwards and mine the situation for whatever dirt you can find. Had Mr. President known you were going to bring the AVG to national attention (as is your wont), he doubtless would have given more thought to where he was going to host this election.
I think an interesting sociological study could be done of you, professor; your methodology, your motives, and your influence. The time-line would go like this:
1. University professor gets involved in on-line game.
2. He creates his own baby, the Alphaville Herald.
3. He breaks the rules of game, because he is ignorant of them.
4. He gets banned from the game.
5. He returns to the game anyway, partly using the reasoning that the game actually has no REAL rules, so therefore he’s not breaking any.
6. He tells the entire world that he was banned because the corporation didn’t like his newspaper, and – because he is a professor – he gets an automatic pass for credibility.
7. He becomes interested in Alphaville election and runs articles on same, many of which are totally laughable, and ends by endorsing both candidates.
8. The election happens, and because some of the votes don’t get counted, due to AOL difficulties, he decides that the election was rigged, just as he thinks the Gore/Bush election was rigged.
9. He steps supposedly “out of character” and uses the “professor card” to declare his conclusion that the election was rigged because, well, because he decided it was. His ostesible motivation: To protect the emotional development of a middle-schooler. More laughable articles follow, most of which are designed to smear Mr. President.
10. Once again, the professor enjoys the attention of various other academics and writers in the real media, who assume – mistakenly – that because he is a professor and we, mere gamers (depicted largely as children) aren’t, that he is automatically correct.
Now I don’t know the truth of the elections any more than you do, Uri, but I’m inclined to believe a person is innocent until proven guilty.
Your smear campaign not only trashes any concept of balanced journalism, it also trashes any concept of academic integrity. Evolving entire theories from faulty premises is not good science.
coco
Urizenus
May 7th, 2004
Coco, I didn’t write the article. You seem to assume that I made the initial contact with these reporters and that I then dictated all of these articles and the reporters didn’t do their own research of fact checking. That doesn’t reflect a very high opinion of the reporters or of their methods. Furthermore, I have never made the initial contact with a reporter or columnist for a newspaper (unless you count the Terra Nova blog). A lot of these reporters have spent quality time within the game — Jim Schaeffer of the Detroit Free Press was in the game since Beta (you can even read his online review of the game from beta). CNN, TechTV, The Boston Globe all found their dirty little corners of Alphaville without my help. Not only that, but they were running stories on alpha before I even set foot in the game — see the Mercury News article, or the CNN interviews with JC, Piers, and Jen. So seriously, show some respect to these reporters and news organizations.
I recognize that I am a very powerful personality in your eyes, Coco, but whatever *your* suppressed desires as regards me, I can assure you that the reporters for the New York Times, Salon.com, the BBC, CNN, TechTV, Detroit Free Press, London Times, MIT Technology Review, etc etc are not my beyotches. Yet. But perhaps, in the fullness of time, that day will come. And they shall call me Mr. President Urizen. Now kneel!
Uri's Bitch
May 7th, 2004
*drops to knees*
I’m Uri’s beyotch!
Cocoanut
May 7th, 2004
I’ll say one thing for you, Uri. At least I can come home and find your web site actually up and running, which is a lot more than I can expect from Stratics.
coco
RB
May 8th, 2004
Highly interesting article.
Agreed about the closing paragraph Uri.
- RB
Dyerbrook
May 8th, 2004
I’m with Coco on this one. Her listed items of analysis are spot on. Urizenus constantly preps the story and spins the story in a certain way and reporters bite the bait. Some are lazy and cut and paste, some get in the game and find out for themselves to some extent, but they aren’t really players and forever remain with that original spun set of cues that tend to be confirmed when they see the game especially in limited visits. This process is actually a good example of the problem of foreign news coverage, the kind of issue that Edward Said and others have written about. The original guide or fixer or academic or whoever sets up someone’s tour in a foreign land can really influence their perceptions.
There is also such a notion as “staying the dyer’s hand,” something we have studied a great deal as Dyerbrook lol. When the red dye is poured in upstream, they will see it downstream regardless of the purity of the water and its source. The question is how to stay the dyer’s hand in Uri’s case, in order to get enough free information exchange about AVH without having to suffer the vicissitudes of Uri’s personality foibles and personal agenda and the take of other “reporters” steeped in certain ideologies.
My understanding of AVH is that it is a continuance of RP to a certain extent from the game, and yet, a step backward for people to contemplate what goes on there. But there are times when people are even taking 2-3 steps backward and not trying to continue the game of RP so to come back at them with some RP shtick seems off. So that a response like “you aren’t my beyotch” seems quite harsh and mean here, even if in the game, said with an interactive flourish and a woot, might not have seemed as harsh. So I’m offended on Coco’s behalf and glad that she chose to just snort and point out that Uri is at least better than Stratics.
The other thing going on with the liberal media (ack, YES, there is a liberal media!) is that they can’t accept the judgement of their fellow Americans, especially those with different demographics, so they impugn their judgements by trying to portray them as yahoos, and then if they can’t do that well enough, they try to claim the system is broken and then look for clues and confirmations that it is broken in a game. Not a single one of these pundits have pointed out, as I have pointed out countless time to Mr. President and other would-be leaders, that they aren’t even following the basic steps that this country or any country follows when it starts out, which is to make some kind of constituent assembly that drafts a process, constitution, etc. and then selects a leader from various nominees. Where were the party congresses from which different parties could thrash through who they wanted to run as a candidate, etc. And what was the in-game information system for voting? By placing voting systems out of the game on Internet sites etc. especially a game where the company is likely to remove a URL from your profile on a whim, how can you have an election?