Fantasy Congress: Its Time To Play Politics

Last week I covered TVLeagues, fantasy games for reality TV, and this week I've stumbled upon another fantasy application applied to a different concept: politics. Fantasy Congress entertains and educates users about the political process and the daily events of politics using simulations and games. The site, founded in 2006 by Andrew Lee and two of his classmates from Claremont McKenna College, is also a hub for all news and information pertaining to politicians and legislation.

The flagship service of Fantasy Congress is of course the leagues. Players draft legislators based on relative seniority (and thus power) within Congress. Depending on the preferences of the league, a draft can be simulated automatically, conducted off-line, run as an Open Draft (i.e. pick 'em), or structured as a Silent Auction in which players bid for members of Congress with fantasy capital. The selected members earn points based on their performance which is calculated using legislative success (i.e. moving bills through Congress to the President's desk), voting attendance, Maverick Score (a metric devised to award Congressman for crossing party lines in key situations), speeches and presence in the news. The founders plan to continue adding new metrics, but league commissioners can fully customize the games to include only some of them. The players of the game are also responsible for managing their teams, benching, trading and picking up new politicians based on changing performances.

Other activities on the site include monitoring congress, rating legislation and forums to discuss critical issues. Fantasy Congress games are overall incredibly engaging and educational. Any struggles the founders might be facing could be due to the fact that the games require a great deal of heavy reading, thinking and deciding. I would like to see Fantasy Congress include a spectrum of games, some of which are incredibly simple and low maintenance and others more high brow. This change might increase traffic and ad revenue. For the classroom, the more complex simulations will be fine, but on a daily basis, trends have shown that casual gaming takes the cake.