Response 2 – JamesA

Millenials are intensely underrepresented in our political system simply because they don’t vote as much as other demographic groups. Politicians are slow to offer solutions to problems that affect young people (i.e. high college tuition) because support amongst young people is not seen as important in our current political climate. While politicians such as Bernie Sanders do attain popularity with millenials, it’s only because they are willing to reach out. It’s apparent that young people need a little extra prodding in order to take part in the American political system. We came up with two potential solutions to this problem:

1. Use subliminal messaging in a news or some other sort of application to get people to start thinking about the voting process.
2. Get people involved in a game where they are encouraged to vote and will receive some sort of in-game reward for voting.

These two ideas could also be combined. Personally, I think the lack of voter involvement among young people is tied to a lack of tangible rewards. In a world of immediate gratification, some don’t even see the effect elections have on them. Furthermore, young people are often too busy to vote as they are otherwise engaged with things like mobile video games. In mobile gaming, reward systems are sometimes used to manipulate players into performing certain tasks. For example, Pokemon Go uses systems called “Pokestops” and “lures” to bring players to certain spots, effectively attracting them to one another. The idea here is that, because the game is more fun when played with others, bringing players together will keep them playing longer and buying more in-game items. Thus, there is a small reward associated with visiting a Pokestop to get players to keep doing it.

Mobile games can also be good at getting players to check back daily. Certain games encourage daily use by giving players rewards for playing every day without missing. This is referred to as “streaking”, because the player must continue the streak each day in order to keep getting bigger and better rewards. There are many advantages to having players engage with your game daily, the least of which is that your players will start to think of the game as an important part of their daily life, their routine. Perhaps voting could be tied to this “streak”, encouraging players to vote so they can continue to get in-game rewards at a faster rate.

I also think this strategy would be more effective in games with a social component. To go back to the Pokemon Go example: let’s say you’re a player and you visit a gym – a spot where players battle their Pokemon. You see that almost all the other players have the “badge” you get from voting. You might think “if all these players have this badge and I don’t, that means all these people voted while I didn’t.”

It was also discussed that getting people to vote could be accomplished in a more indirect way by simply getting young people more involved in world news and what’s going on in the world. The idea of including a news feed within a game so players have something to look at when nothing else is happening, could be effective.  Another idea we had was subliminal messaging. It was proposed that a news application (or maybe a university app, something that would reach young people) with subliminal messages included would be a good approach. A background that looks unassuming could actually hide the words “vote”, maybe with some letters obscured. This is less direct than my approach, and possibly more effective. Admittedly, there’s no way to prove you voted. People could simply lie in a game about whether or not they voted to receive the reward.

While I do think the idea of subliminal messaging is fascinating, and potentially very effective, I have some moral objections to it. It’s just too manipulative. While the goal of the project is manipulating people into voting, I think it’s a step too far. Also, I think the honor system could still work in a game, as long as the reward granted for voting isn’t desperately needed by the player. Perhaps it could just be cosmetic, like the “badge” mentioned earlier.