Electing to Play

The Power of Being New

Fantasy Election was purposefully designed to make politics attractive and understandable to a young audience already attuned to games and video games. The tactic fell in line with many of MTV’s previous politically themed media efforts. When the company inaugurated Choose or Lose, it aimed, as MTV chairman Tom Freston puts it, to “find a way to talk to these [young] people…[and] stay in touch with what they want and the issues they care about” (Miller, 1992). The effectiveness of MTV’s campaign was attributed to its novel approach of appealing to “disconnected,” “alienated,” and apathetic youth (Miller, 1992).

Twenty years later, MTV’s perception of the attitudes of young people remained unchanged. As Brian Stelter wrote after interviewing MTV’s president Stephen K. Friedman, “Young people, [Friedman] said, are generally disillusioned about the present and about politics, yet still hopeful about the future. ‘It is almost a topic they’d rather not think about.’” (Stelter, 2011). MTV vice president Jason Rzepka echoed these sentiments, stating, “the network wants to help young voters break down the key issues and come to conclusions themselves—the goal isn’t to tell people how to vote, but to help them figure out how to decide for themselves” (LaFrance, 2012).

The Choose or Lose campaign had constantly innovated, working in partnership with popular artists and experimenting with new forms of citizen journalism. MTV’s decision to initiate a game was justified as a means by which to translate complex issues to a game-savvy young audience. As Rzepka puts it, “Game vernacular has become a part of youth vernacular…[A] lot of people are inherently competitive, so if the path to winning is being informed, there could be a really great civic benefit” (LaFrance, 2012). Games had been used as a tool of voter engagement before. In 2004, Howard Dean’s campaign provided a game to simulate canvassing in Iowa. “Serious games,” or games that dealt with serious social, economic, health, and educational issues, are increasingly being seen as an important means of engaging new audiences and providing new tools to persuade participants of specific sociopolitical agendas.

Gamification, a term coined years after the Dean campaign, was seen as utilizing “classic game rewards” (McGonigal, 2011, loc. 3616) to potentially change behavior over time through repetitive tasks designed within the game (Tack, 2013; Zichermann & Cunningham, 2011, p. xv). Its adherents ultimately supported a notion, held by many game designers and fans, that the specific design elements of games could lead users to “work more efficiently, use less energy, and get healthier” (Thompson, 2009). This assertion did not cohere with our own findings, that is, players appear to use games to support whatever goals they wish to achieve through play, whether or not those goals coincide with the designed purpose of the game.

Additionally, many view gamification as little more than a disingenuous corporate ploy. Prominent game designer and scholar Ian Bogost (2011) called it “bullshit.” However, even Bogost, who had codesigned “The Howard Dean for Iowa Game,” thought politics ideal for more serious games: “Videogames afford a new perspective on political issues, since they are especially effective at representing complex systems” (Bogost, 2006). As a consequence, Bogost’s critique highlights a dissatisfaction with the term gamification, whereas he supports the possibility of deep and meaningful engagement with systems and processes. His viewpoint is shared by many of the critics of gamification who specifically are concerned with the efficacy of using extrinsic rewards to inculcate long-term commitment by users (Anderson, 2011; Can Gamification Advance to the Next Level? 2011).

Also, inherent within Bogost’s comments is a connection between games and politics. Jesper Juul’s (2005, p. 6) definition of games corresponds with popular notions of politics. In Half-Real, he defines games as not only being made up of rules and having quantifiable (and optional) outcomes but also driven by players who can both have an effect on and are emotionally invested in play. It is the role of the player that fascinated Johan Huizinga (1975, p. 207) in his study of the playful aspects of electioneering, especially what he saw as the spontaneity and energy of American elections. It is personal investment in playing the game that ultimately affects its outcome. In the high stakes of political and civic action, what we bring to the game carries as much weight as the effect of the game on us.

Fantasy to Reality

Fantasy Election provides a contemporary case study for observing the effects of gamification in regard to voter engagement or, more broadly, the influence of play on political action. Soon after the completion of the game, MTV released a white paper examining the efficacy of Fantasy Election, including an analysis of statistics collected during gameplay as well as from a voluntary exit survey of users distributed by MTV. The survey transpired between November 9, 2012, and November 13, 2012, was sent to registered players via e-mail and also accessible via the Fantasy Election webpage. MTV provided us depersonalized data from this survey for analysis.

Our report uses these data, supplemented by MTV’s own white paper, to detail the effect the game had on voter engagement and political action. Additionally, we open each section with a narrative by Maxwell Foxman who played Fantasy Election throughout the entirety of the national election. Maxwell Foxman’s experience adds a visceral idea and “thick description” of playing the game, rather than explicating on data alone.

Who Was Playing?

I started my league with a few other technophiles, most of whom I was friendly with in one way or another. A majority of the players were women in their mid- to late 20s, around my age, and most skewed toward progressivism in their personal politics. We were all from American city or areas adjacent to it.

According to MTV’s white paper, Fantasy Election had 137,819 unique visitors, 16,967 registered to play and 10,106 actually participated by joining a league. This group of players was relatively active, with site duration averaging over 4 min and participating in hundreds of thousands of bonus activities, which ranged from reading articles to answering quiz questions and watching television shows.

The data from the exit survey gave us a clearer picture of who the average player was. Counter to MTV’s target demographic of first-time young voters, the average Fantasy Election player was an older, White, educated Democratic woman with a solid voting history; women, in fact, made up 75% of Fantasy Election players. In all, 51.5% identified as 40 or older. A staggering majority—88.2%—identified as White only. Self-identified Democrats outnumbered Republicans playing the game at a ratio of nearly 2:1 (45–23%), while 27.4% of players identified as independents. Thirty-seven percent of players reported having a 4-year college degree or higher, and 1 in 10 players was currently enrolled full time in a college or university.

Demographically, Fantasy Election players differed from the general U.S. population. Racial identification was a particular point of contrast: 6.2% of players identified as Black compared with 12.6% of the U.S. population, and only 4.7% identified as Hispanic compared with 16.3% of Americans (U.S. Census Bureau, 2011). ¹ Players also identified as more liberal and more partisan; as recently as 2011, 40% of Americans identified as Independent, while Democrats only slightly outnumbered Republicans (31% to 27%; Jones, 2012). They were more educated—only 30.4% of the population had a bachelor’s degree or higher in 2012 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012). Fantasy league players also identified as more politically active than the average American. While 20% fewer Americans voted in the 2010 midterms than did the 2008 general election, the number only dropped 3.4% for Fantasy Election players (2008 General Election Turnout Rates, 2012; 2010 General Election Turnout Rates, 2012). These demographics suggest a certain degree of self-selection, both among players of the game broadly and among respondents of the survey specifically, and challenge the generalizability of our conclusions. However, these data do provide for interesting possible judgments about the appeal of such games and the influence of certain gameplay mechanics.

Although these demographics suggest a degree of self-selection among the players of the game and the respondent of the survey specifically, they provide not only an unexpected portrait of who is influenced and interested in games like Fantasy Election but also one avenue for ascertaining the effects of gamified mechanics on the voting public.

How to Play?

I was initially confused by the game’s interface. Modeled after Fantasy Sports games, there was an abundance of information, including overall points of teams and candidates. The selection process of candidates involved specific moral judgments. I decided to choose a team of Democrats for personal political reasons.

At the onset, I tracked deviations in my candidates’ scores, particularly if I was interested in their campaign’s real-world outcome. I focused on the overall score of my players rather than investigating why candidates lost or gained points. I felt the game quantified political performance in an arbitrary way, lacking context.

Conversation was scarce in my league forum, although the game became an occasional topic of conversation outside the game. However, my experience with bonus points was rich. I set up a daily regimen. Each morning I would watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report for points as well as click the “read” box on 20 articles from either Politico or Buzzfeed for maximum bonus points after only skimming them.

Initially I committed myself to playing equitably. That decision eroded in the heat of competition. I looked up answers to daily challenges, netting maximum points and tweeted the same comment multiple times in order to accrue extra points—until Twitter prohibited me from doing so. When I saw that my primary competitor’s points total surpassed mine, I began checking into news shows without watching them in order to gain points. My deceits were motivated by the desire to beat the competition and win prizes.

At the same time, I felt righteous about the candidates on my team. For instance, a large decline in President Obama’s score due to the inaccuracy of a statement induced both moral outrage and anxiety about losing. I wanted to support an honest candidate but knew this would cost me points. Although upset by these types of events, I did little investigation beyond a Google search or venting to my wife. Even with its wealth of information, I was not sure that I learned much from the game itself. I absorbed news by what felt like osmosis, gleaning bits of information from headlines as I browsed through them for the sake of the game.

Fantasy Election asked users to draft teams consisting of a presidential candidate, a vice presidential candidate, and congressional candidates. Candidates were rated on honesty, transparency, constituent engagement, public opinion, and civility, conditions evaluated by authorized fact checkers, including Politifact, Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and NewsHour. As Alex Cope (2012) wrote in a critique of the Fantasy Election, “The goal in taking these measures was to arrive at categories that were indisputably positive or negative, and that could be quantified in as neutral a manner as possible…” The ratings resulted in points for players based on which candidates they drafted onto their teams. Each week candidates could be added or dropped. The players’ teams competed in leagues of up to 12 teams.

Players could also earn bonus points through a variety of online activities, such as answering daily questions, checking into political venues on Foursquare, registering the viewing of news television shows on GetGlue, tweeting about Fantasy Election, and reading relevant news articles on MTV’s Power of 12 blog as well as online blogs Buzzfeed and Politico. Other popular news sources were conspicuously absent, ranging from The New York Times to radio broadcast news. Fantasy Election awarded weekly and monthly prizes, culminating with a grand prize of US$25,000 and a trip to the 2013 Video Music Awards.

Fantasy Election encouraged its users to engage with social media by allotting additional points for reading and dispersing information from other news sources. Users were also rewarded for including the hashtag “#FantasyElection” in tweets. GetGlue provided the largest cache of possible points for engaging with mass media. Almost all of the news shows from all major cable and network news outlets, and even The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, had points attached to their news-related content.

In its white paper, MTV concluded that rewards were a major motivation for actions within the game: “a whopping 75% of respondents said the primary reason they played Fantasy Election was to win prizes” (MTV Fantasy Election[MTVFE], 2012, p. 8). MTV also saw their bonus point section as one of the greater successes of the game, with the page receiving more visits than any other on the game’s site (p. 8). In contrast to their previous serious games such as Darfur is Dying, which had seen only 50,000 player actions over 7 years, Fantasy Election players took nearly 500,000 actions in the 2-month span of the game (p. 8).

Our analysis of the survey data offered a more complicated view of the role of bonus points on players. The survey asked users whether they agreed or disagreed with statements describing the motivations behind their actions, some about points—“I like reading articles about my players because I like earning points for reading them”—and others about gaining knowledge—“I like reading articles about my players because I like learning about their platforms.” Our evaluation of the responses revealed player’s ambivalence. When assessing whether they were points motivated, players were more likely to report that they neither agreed nor disagreed. Conversely, when assessing whether they were knowledge-motivated, a larger proportion of players reported either strongly agreeing or disagreeing that they took certain actions just to learn. Players were simply more opinionated about whether they were taking actions to gain knowledge and more indifferent about whether they were doing it for the points.

What did it Change?

Whether the game changed my activities during the election is questionable. As usual, I voted on Election Day. I shared news through Twitter more frequently in this election cycle and watched all of the debates. The game’s effects felt more persistent than transformative. After the game ended, I found myself wishing it was still transpiring. I had grown accustomed to playing. I was still checking into The Daily Show and The Colbert Report daily. I also acquired a newfound knowledge about the wealth of available news sources. Since the game, when I encounter an article on Politico or Buzzfeed, I have a deeper appreciation of these sites’ quality. Rather than empowering me or expanding my personal politics, Fantasy Election may have instead opened the media vista to me. In terms of political engagement, I am even more inconclusive about the effects of Fantasy Election. I have continued to be somewhat disengaged with the political process.

In its white paper, MTV stated its main objective in Fantasy Election was “to serve as an ‘on-ramp’ into the 2012 Elections for young people exhibiting ‘election avoidance’” with the secondary objective “to better understand the potential of game mechanics to drive civic engagement and positive behaviors” (MTVFE, 2012, p. 8), concluding that there was potential in gamification for “more and deeper civic engagement” (MTVFE, 2012, p. 9). Specifically, its evidence centered on the following four major points: (1) players were not political junkies, (2) they came to the game generally for the sake of points and prizes, (3) as a consequence of playing the game, players became more informed about the election, and (4) a large portion (although not a majority) became “more active or involved in a political issue or campaign as a result of Fantasy Election” (MTVFE, 2012, p. 9). Generally, this was true in our own analysis. However, the nuances of the data reveal a more convoluted picture of the politically inactive players and their perception of their actions and motivations within the game.

In order to gauge the influence the game had on players with different levels of political engagement, we broke down political activity during Fantasy Election by voting history, that is, whether they attended political events in person (“Went”), donated to a political campaign (“Gave”), signed petitions or contacted their representatives (“Contact”), or viewed politically related material (“Watched”; see Figure 1). Although there is a discrepancy between nonvoters (players who said they had not voted in the two most recent elections) and voters, especially when it comes to donating money and contacting representatives, it is interesting that nonvoters consumed political media at nearly the same rate as previous voters. Additionally, regardless of the gap between voting histories, nonvoters’ rate of participation was still notable.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Political activity since playing Fantasy Election with voter history breakdown.

When looking at why players pursued these actions, more differences emerge. Players who had voted in previous elections were more likely to say that they would have taken these actions anyhow. Nonvoters were more likely to say they were doing it solely for the points. Such findings have implications in terms of whether the Fantasy Election changed long-term political habits; we are concerned that players competing for points were less likely to continue certain behaviors once the points were no longer distributed.

This issue is also apparent when looking at reported changes in media consumption habits. The greatest increases, across all player groups, were in television news, online news, and blogs—the media where players could earn points either by clicking through the Fantasy League website or by checking in on Foursquare or GetGlue. Again, these consumption habits have the potential benefit of creating well-informed citizens—a positive result of gameplay. Yet, the activity might be discontinued after the Fantasy Election’s cessation.

Additionally, it is questionable that media consumption equates to knowledge absorption. Players may have said they read articles or watched news stories, but how much information did they actually glean from it? Certainly, MTV benefited from traffic being driven to the site, a boon to their brand and confirmation of their ability to innovate get-out-the-vote campaigns. However, with 40% of the game’s total web traffic being driven by bonus points’ activity (MTVFE, 2012, p. 8), it was less than the fantasy league and tracking candidate activities that motivated media consumption, but the desire to win prizes and gain extra points. Although a majority of players reported playing the game to win prizes (vs. to learn more about candidates and the electoral process), the ambivalence players showed in attributing their actions to a motivation for knowledge over a motivation for points complicates a definitive conclusion. However, incremental involvement in political activity by nonvoters implies some sort of positive change in key features for which MTV was hoping and subsequently the potential positive impact of games and gamification on users’ habits.

And the Winner Is: Conclusions

So who were the winners in Fantasy Election? Certainly, MTV’s novel approach garnered much publicity. Although there were thousands of prizes awarded, in what ways was the game successful?

First, it cannot be ignored that Fantasy Election came from MTV, a powerful cultural player with significant market influence. However, given their long history in civic and political engagement, as well as the general lack of product tie-ins, we read MTV’s involvement here as a continuation of its self-positioning as not just “music television” but a tastemaker in youth culture. Such positioning is also reflected in the manner by which Fantasy Election was constructed. By collaborating with key members within the news (Buzzfeed, PBS Newshour), politics (Politifact), and technology (Facebook), MTV was able to remain topical within the discourse of youth and politics.

The game appears to have also succeeded in reaching MTV’s stated goal of getting people to the polls. Over 90% of respondents said they voted this year, including 7% of people who had not voted in the past elections—a great success, given that most get-out-the-vote campaigns consider even a 4% uptick to be an accomplishment. Such successes, while achieving important short-term goals, highlight a mode of engagement with both the game and the subject of the game that was temporary, meant for short-term success rather than necessarily long-term engagement with either the game or the political system.

However, MTV acknowledged some fundamental obstacles to engaging with players more deeply. One major difficulty was determining an effective way of gamifying candidate accountability, a major source of information and points in the game (MTVFE, 2012, p. 9). Although its partnerships allowed for tracking the actions of the presidential candidates and some congressional candidates, less information was available about lesser known congressional candidates. Following the precept that “all politics is local,” would the game have seen even higher rates of engagement if more information about local candidates had been more relevant to points?

Another challenge was making the game both fun and effective. Although only around 10,000 players actively participated in the game—due to the obstacle MTV called the “three hoops” of authenticating an account in Facebook, joining a league and drafting players—those involved with the league appeared to be active (MTVFE, 2012, p. 9). However, fun was derived, as confirmed by the MTV white paper, Maxwell Foxman’s narrative, and the exit survey, not as much from the game itself but from prizes and bonus points. As MTV wrote, “we knew the game would really need to encourage—and reward—players for getting involved in the election. We had no idea how popular this feature would be. The concept of bonus points, which is not part of traditional Fantasy Sports games, was a huge success” (MTVFE, 2012, p. 8). Tying civic engagement to monetary reward, rather than a sense of duty to the community or nation, or a feeling of self-efficacy in the political arena, remains troubling, if only because it stands at odds with the fundamental ideals of democratic citizenship.

That bonus points seemed the strongest motivator for actions taken in the game also leads us to question whether or not this experience can be broadened to encourage more ongoing civic participation. If the goal of Fantasy Election was to develop habits and attitudes that make people remain perennially politically aware and engaged, the efficacy of gamification is uncertain. The results of this study alone do not allow us to declare one way or another. Prior research gives us reason to be skeptical; in a survey of incentive studies in health environments, Gneezy, Meier, & Rey-Biel (2011) found that long-term changes in behaviors like weight loss and smoking cessation were minor, nonexistent, or unclear. Nicholson (2012, p. 2) points out similar findings in the education and child development fields. Incentivizing behavior using points and prizes simply has not been a very effective way of creating enduring change as it substitutes control for motivation (Nicholson, 2012). Maxwell Foxman’s own experience only reaffirms this uncertainty. After the cessation of the game and without a direct incentive, the only activity he has continued with consistently is watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Furthermore, as all members of his group were moderately politically active initially, it remains unclear whether the game’s incentives would have had any long-term effect on their habits.

For Foxman, social factors carried the most weight during the months he played. It was when one friend surged ahead of him in bonus activity that he became significantly more involved in bonus activity, purely for the sake of competition, especially as his competitor bragged about winning prizes for her efforts. One-on-one competition like this adds another layer of concern about the effect of gamification on political engagement. Although competition has always been inherent to traditional politics, cooperation has also been critical. Fantasy Election’s most clearly gamified elements were also its most competitive.

The few opportunities for explicit cooperation built into Fantasy Election focused on incentives to participate socially in cooperative environments, by attending rallies, meetings, or volunteering their time—activities that might create ties that ensure continuing commitment. A possibly rich avenue for further research would be to consider the effects of gamifying political engagement within the context of cooperative activities and community involvement.

Plainly, it is difficult to measure the effects of gamification. If games are to be understood—vis-à-vis Juul’s definition—as much by the emotional investment of the player as by the rules imposed by a specific system, then Fantasy Election highlights how players provide an important spontaneous contribution to the game. All signs indicate that in Fantasy Election users played the way they wanted to, accruing bonus points rather than doing what was expected, which was to focus on their roster and spend time educating themselves about their candidates’ campaigns in order to best manage their team.

For gamification, this may be the most valuable lesson gleaned from Fantasy Election. Political engagement through play may not move in the predictable patterns of a game. Instead, a gamified element may suggest a direction or path by which the user can become engaged. Fantasy Election offered multiple potential forms of engagement, including taking direct political action, such as attending rallies, acquiring knowledge about candidates, and broadcasting political information on Facebook and Twitter. However, when the motivations of the player are brought to bear, even more paths emerge from the game. Maxwell Foxman used the game to be more media savvy, while enjoying the competition with friends. Other players used Fantasy Election for prizes, partaking avidly in the game for seemingly selfish ends. The directions players take down a particular gamified path may not be clear or anticipated, as players will shape the game to their own ends. Designers may find that the specific results they desire are impossible when people play.

The power of users to create their own ways of playing only reinforces the importance of the citizen in democratic engagement. Gamification, in the case of Fantasy Election, did not condition a particular type of civic-minded citizen but rather provided yet another means to support a multitude of potentially civic-oriented actions, which users appear to have performed as they saw fit. Although gamification, in the case of Fantasy Election, did provide another means to support potential civic action, it appears not to have conditioned a particular type of civic-minded citizen. Indeed, this study compels us to question whether gamification can, and should, be used to address such topics.