="float: left; margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px;" /> BoingBoing has reported a timely modification addition to The Sims' object library. Players can get in on the voting act by downloading the "Diebold Voting Machine", with "almost as many flaws as the real thing".
A little bit of user manipulation opens up a whole new world of easter eggs (or uncoverable specialty items placed under the surface by crafty developers), cheats and bugs. While Diebold is offering commentary on an increasingly apparent real-world controversy, other games have enjoyed the election festivites without pointing fingers in either US candidate's direction.
Many titles with user-created content have similarly included simulations of voting apparati; Terra Nova reported a few months ago that a clever There.com player had replicated a voter registration booth in the middle of the expansive virtual world which allowed participants to register their political flavours.
Meanwhile, Disney's Massively Multiplayer Online Game Toontown recently held elections for their primary audience of kiddies to encourage them get in on the act, and to practice those important voting skills for futures as upstanding citizens of the real – and virtual – worlds.
While stand-alone political games with an agenda, like those of the increasingly successful duo Frasca and Bogost of Water Cooler Games, expand consumer conception of how interactivity can spread the word (whatever it may be), the presence of these places and objects in virtual worlds does highlight that they can also be used as avenues of user- and developer-created propaganda. While some aspects of this issue have been highlighted at events like the State of Play conferences, what role does real-world politics play in the social systems of MMORPGs, and how much might this affect offline attitudes and behaviours before the publishing companies step in and shut down grassroots virtual politicos?
