« Princeton & Games | Main | The Crash »

Mar 13, 2004

Comments

1.

Ren -- love the graphics! :-)

2.

Straight from the Sims Gov site dood.

As I say, beats me why they want to model them selves so closely to the US system – maybe they will tell us :)

3.

Not that a president does much good in an anarchy anyway.

4.

There's a piece about the Alphaville elections in today's Independent. Unfortunately, the article itself is not available online.

That said, it's by journalist Andrew Gumbel, who has written about TSO before and whose pieces appear in several newspapers, so you may soon see something similar in your own preferred quality daily read, too.

The article describes Ashley Richardson as being an anti-scam candidate, and Seth Galloway as running with the support of the scam artists.

Richard

5.

Richard> There's a piece about the Alphaville elections in today's Independent.

It's titled ‘And now, the real election’ the piece says “In the hope of introduction a more constructive civic sense, the controllers have decided to let the players fun for office against the current president”

Am I missing something or is this wholly factually inaccurate i.e. as far as I am aware the elections have got nothing to do with EA; if they have then suddenly they become a lot more interesting.

6.

that's 'run for office' sorry.

7.

Hello all, I was wonderin if I could get a transcript of the article? Also, please let me know if you see it anywhere else.

Thank you.

(Mr-President from TSO)

8.

So, Mr-President are you 'official'?
Does the office have the power of EA behind it?

9.

A.Baynes>I was wonderin if I could get a transcript of the article?

Mutter... grumble...

"And now, the real election

It's election time in the virtual world too. Alphaville, the imaginary town in the interactive game, The Sims Online (pictured), has been turned into a hellhole of crime, scam-artistry and prostitution by teenage players. In the hope of introducing a more constructive civic sense, the controllers have decided to let the players run for office against the current president, known simply as Mr President. Over the weekend, the last round of the primary voting pitted an anti-scam candidate, Ashley Richardson, against a classic small-government Republican called Seth Galloway. Galloway says there are too many police operations roaming the cyber-city. The scam artists agree, and have campaigned hard against Ashley, a sort of virtual Bobby Kennedy, but as election day - 10 April - approaches, she appears to have the momentum."

10.

Some comments and a slightly off topic question.

With a total of 361 votes, it not only mirrors the US two-party system, but it mirrors participation levels also.

However, I am curious if the new "anti-scam" platform will cover banner ads on the AVG site offering 14-day trial codes for purchase with only Simoleans (implying that they are only for current players).

Honestly, I think the question I have is the legitimacy of these self-styled governments. I'm with Ren in wanting to know EA's take on the AVG and the elections. Particularly since media is picking up the story without that particular caveat.

11.

Hello again.

The Alphaville Government's powers aren't 'official' as in EA granting us certain powers. In the wired article we were described as the 'de facto' government.

About the ad on the website, we offer that space for companies to add any TSO related website. Although we do not support the abuse of trial accounts, some people do like to have fun and try out a second sim for two weeks- meeting people they wouldn't normally meet, acting out another side of their personality, and trying out the sim world as another gender are some of the reasons people get trial accounts.

Also, thanks R. Bartle for the transcript of the article. :)

12.

First of all, kudos to Mr. Baynes (aka Mr-President) for initiating this election (as well as the AVG). I think it is adding a lot of interesting roleplay to a game that is otherwise pretty severely lacking in things to do. One of the candidate I interviewed had the percentages about right. His interest was 50% roleplay, 40% to use the office to improve the game play (deal with scammers etc) and 10% to have 100 agents, cops, etc at his control.

Clearly this is most analogous to the election of a leader within a guild, but for all that it is something we haven't seen in Alphaville. Most of the guilds have been self-appointed godfathers or overlords or something.

I don't know what EA thinks about this (I doubt they will even notice) but I understand that Will Wright has long been hoping that something like this might emerge within the game.

Oh, and The Independent didn't really have Seth's position right. The "police" he was objecting to were fly-by-night police departments that basically just shake down residents. Sort of a Gangs of New York type of police operation. He was certainly as anti-scammer as Ashley. He was just a bit greener and not as good as articulating his position.

13.

rant
OK, so call me un-reconstructed and old fashioned but it just saddens me when a grown up news paper puts something like this:

“In the hope of introducing a more constructive civic sense, the controllers have decided to let the players run for office against the current president, known simply as Mr President”

When I think that we’ve established that ‘the controllers’ have nothing to do with this, it has nothing to do with creating a civic sense and the players have been given permission – as they don’t need it. Sigh, guess they either don’t employ fact checkers these days or think that VWs are interesting enough to gorp at but not important enough to do a proper piece on.
/rant

Though as Peter said above: well done all round for injecting a neat element of role play into TSO.

14.

The sloppy coverage *is* troubling.

I agree completely, Ren.

15.

Article taken from tulareadvanceregister.com


[begin]
(Another) presidential election heating up

The main issues are the role of government, the responsibility of law enforcement, and putting a stop to financial fraud affecting the citizens. The incumbent is popular, but a challenger is gaining ground with a hard line platform promising to be even tougher on crime.

Sounds like it could be anywhere, but in this case, it's a race to be president of nowhere. Nowhere on earth, at least. The campaign is for the presidency of Alphaville, the largest community in a massive multiplayer computer game, The Sims Online.

Now, if you think this is no big deal, you're just not a Sims player. The Sims Online is the most widely played game in the online world. Characters are created to lead virtual lives online, with most of the complications of real life programmed in.

One of those, the problem of crime, led to a new development in the game more than a year ago. Experienced players were scamming "newbies" (people playing for the first time) out of their starting funds so often that many new players never returned.

In a bid to educate new players, a government was formed, led by the appropriately-named Mr. President. The "government" set up helpful services, answering questions and spreading the word about the tricksters.

In a primary last Saturday, a 16-year-old girl named Laura won the right to challenge Mr. President in the general election next month.

That caught my attention, with the recent proposal to lower the voting age in California. I'm just a bit nervous about our legislators finding out there is a 16-year-old running for president, even if it is online.

I hope that the thousands of regular TSO players who are old enough to vote come out of this simulated fun-fest long enough to help decide issues in the real world. Then again, looking at some election results, I guess virtual reality already has too much influence.
[end]


Some articles get a few things confused, but any publicity is good for TSO.

16.

Alphaville Elections make the New York Times today (April 1st).

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/01/technology/circuits/01sims.html?ex=1081400400&en=e5984c6cc0bf6db8&ei=5062

17.

Oh, significantly, the article now puts the subscribers of TSO at 57K -- down from 80K at last report.

18.

"The Sims Online is the most widely played game in the online world."

Alwasy fun to see reporters just make things up... gives one real faith in the media.

19.

Well, it's all over but the calls for a recount and voting reform. Mr-President has defeated Ashley Richardson. However, there are widespread reports of voting irregularities (Ashley supporters unable to vote). Meanwhile, on the other side, a Florida Newspaper encouraged Floridians to crash the election web site and vote for Ashley:

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/accent/content/auto/epaper/editions/today/accent_0467bd749040801d0062.html

20.

Hello! This is Laura McKnight (Ashley Richardson) from Alphaville! Here is a little article I wrote about the voting irregularities for President of Alphaville Government.
==================================================

Mr-President wins election - it is suspicious that some people could not vote for Ashley:
By Laura McKnight


During the April 10th election, Mr-President took the lead - But the question is, did he really win? During the election about a hundred of Richardson supporters were unable to get a vote. It simply said, "You have already voted. Vote not counted," while this was the first time for all of them voting. For those who were able to vote - when they voted and Ashley's numbers went up Mr-President would quickly start to get more votes, coming in front of her at a rapid rate. There were 880 votes submitted throughout the day, and Mr-President took 53.3%, while Ashley took 46.7% when polls closed at 10pm EST. This is very strange, when just a little before 10am the hits at avgov.com were about 14,000.. and now are at an alarming 15,412.

As a candidate in the election and the fact that Mr-President was paying for the voting website, I kept close track on what the total number of hits to the website were as well as the percentage and number of votes totaled at the votes page. In order to vote you had to go to avgov.com and click a link called "Cast Your Vote" and every voter should have entered the website to do this, and a hit for the website should have been added as well. The Alphaville Herald has recently posted an article about the irregularities in casting votes during the election today. Mr-President as well as other members of Alphaville Government stated that it is a problem with cookies on your browser, and that you cannot vote from AOL because your vote will not be counted. It was not said before today that you would not be able to vote on America Online, and I feel that it is truly unfair that this foul play has occurred. We shall see what comes of this corruption, and if Mr-President is honestly deserving of another term as President of Alphaville Government.

==================================================
Contact me back at [email protected]

-Check out the Alphaville News at http://alphaville-news.tripod.com/blog/

21.

Hi i have the same name as you!!! Have a nice time being president or whateva this site is about!!!Just thought id let you know that ur not the only 1 called Laura McKnight!!! from laura x x (uk)

22.

Interesting to find another (third?) Laura McKnight on the web.

The comments to this entry are closed.