Taking democracy to the stars
| By Flora Graham BBC News |
Iceland is one of the world's original democracies - its parliament, the Althing, is the oldest one still in use.
So it is perhaps no surprise that the game world of EVE Online, developed in Iceland, has become the world's first virtual democracy.
The Council of Stellar Management, created by the game's developer, CCP, just had its second election.
A group of nine players, elected by their peers, will be brought to Iceland for two weeks of meetings and debate. Their decisions will influence the direction of the game.
Campaign season
Like in the real world the democratic movement grew from corruption and scandal.
In 2007 a CCP programmer, who was also a player, used his insider status to enrich his online allies.
The outrage that followed could have destroyed the game, but the company quickly put anti-cheating measures in place. It also created the Council so that players could vet the new rules.
Rebuilding trust between players and the company was vital. Online multiplayer games are social--an empty virtual world is no fun for anyone. If game companies don't keep the players happy, their virtual world becomes a ghost town.
 Like many other democracies Eve suffered voter apathy |
The Council election was advertised within the game, and candidates used websites and blogs to publicise their manifestos.
"I got hints from watching old seasons of the West Wing," said Andrew Cruse, who won the popular vote and the leadership of the council in the first election.
It was a close race: Mr Cruse won by only 45 votes, running on a platform supporting small groups who don't want the game dominated by large alliances.
Petur Oskarsson, who led the development of the Council for CCP, said that the company was very impressed with its input.
"The elected representatives were awesome. The quality of the feedback was extremely good," he told the BBC.
Mr Cruse was equally satisfied with CCP's openness to the Council's suggestions. "They did absolutely everything that I could have expected, and more," he said.
Power politics
But the game is more like a benevolent dictatorship than a real democracy. Although the council is elected democratically, CCP is not obliged to approve their requests.
"They have a voice, not a vote," explained Mr Oskarsson.
CCP must be autocratic because there are technological limits to what the developers can do, said Jim Rossignol, the author of This Gaming Life, who writes about the role of videogames in society.
"There's always going to be a certain element of antagonism between the developers and the players," he said. "Players' imaginations always exceed what developers are actually capable of."
Mr Oskarsson had the difficult task of designing EVE's democratic system.
"My main goal was to make it as transparent and as simple as possible," said Mr Oskarsson. "I got into political philosophy
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