Reuters reported a few days ago about a game created by college students which blends fantasy sports with democracy. “Fantasy Congress” has players drafting a line-up of real life lawmakers, and gaining or losing points based on their performance. As stated by the article, one intention of the game is to make people care more about politics, to get obsessed with it in much the same way as sports superfans. As one of the creators of the game said, “If people cared about politics as much as they care about sports, we'd have a better democracy.”

But as the great proliferation and popularity of political blogs has shown, many people do become obsessed with politics. Often it's not a matter of interest, or “caring,” but people not knowing how to get engaged, or cynicism about whether their individual actions are important, or just the overall opacity of the political process. And though many feel a general disapproval of politicians, they hold positive opinions of the the lawmakers in their own district. This blind spot makes profound political change a rarity.

So I see this game as intervening in another important way. It's not about getting people to care more, although maybe by monitoring politicians day-by-day it will reconfigure that interest in a more valuable way. But I'm intrigued by the basic proposition of the game: that we can learn about the efficacy of politicians through a statistical analysis. But what statistics are important in rating a congressperson?

According to the article, this game bases its rankings on “the progress of their proposed legislation.” So political will translates to points. Surely one can reach some valuable conclusions by tracking this data. But if we care about politics because we want the issues that we care about to get attention, just identifying the politicians that pass the most legislation seems besides the point. Those rules really do abstract politics into a numbers game.

But what if each player, or groups of players, could configure the rules of the game? That would be an extremely valuable lesson in democracy, and would fulfill some of the promises of the “serious games” movement. To abstract what is important to you as a citizen into a set of quantifiable statistics, and then use the game to monitor and hold politicians accountable for how they vote, beyond just those highly visible periods around elections—that would seem an indispensable tool for any group committed to not just ethical but effective political action.