Neat story by Tracey John about elections in EVE Online. It’s a sci-fi massively multiplayer RPG.
So what is all this for? The space-themed MMORPG is holding its second election for the Council of Stellar Management, or CSM. CSM is made up democratically elected players who represent the “Eve Online” community and act as liaisons to Iceland-based developer CCP Games. The council’s purpose is to be aware of in-game concerns — as well as external ones that have direct relevance to the universe — and to voice these issues to CCP to improve the game experience.
This is silly to a degree but also cool. Read the story to see some platforms. Anyhow, I like to see Idol competition with voting and other forms of democracy in pop culture because it’s one more way to potentially subvert authoritarian countries that allow this sort of thing. Building the habit and practice of voting provides a firmer foundation for future political reforms.
On a less goody-goody note, my fiancee plays FF11 and is a citizen of Bastok, nominally a republic, but they haven’t had a single election in the four plus years she’s been playing nor at any point in the six year history of the game. Also one of the expansions lets people play on behalf of an empire and attack a republic but not the other way around. Sure the republic is full of lizard people, but what’s up with that? Someone needs to start up Radio Free Aht Urghan (Linkshell Free Aht Urghan? Whatever).
Eve Online picture from the Eve Online website.
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