Game Moderation Abolition Amendment (Passed)

[Yelnoc]

We could realistically just do whatever we wanted if there were no consequences as long as we were all personally popular.

As far as I can tell, this has been true of Atlasia throughout its entire history even with a Game Moderator.

Then the question becomes why do we bother worrying about what a bill costs or where you get money from or any of that stuff? Why do we bother being concerned about what the economy is doing or really doing anything different at all since all we seem to do is react to events that happen in real life. So if what we do changes nothing, why do we simulate anything past the elections themselves?

Atlasia is an elections simulator. The governing structures obscure this, but there is no government simulation. Yes, legislation is debated and voted on, but then what? It is entered into the wiki, its content filters back into the political narrative of the time, but ultimately it is forgotten. It doesn't matter how dedicated the GM is, how much they write about 'the economy' or 'foreign affairs.' The GM cannot hold players accountable for their actions in government. The GM can always be ignored, and no amount of legislation will fix that. Because Atlas is an elections simulator, the only thing which matters is the campaigns. At the end of the day, players will vote based on their relationships with other players (friendships, yes, but also perceptions of dedication (e.g. activity) and political expediency).

As it stands, it doesn't matter how much a bill costs or where the money comes from. There is no money. There are only forum posts. Yet people go through great lengths to pretend that is not the case. For example, I spent much of 2011 tracking through the entire legislative history of the IDS and cross-referencing those bills to actually existing state budgets to create a budget for that region. I served as speaker for long enough that after each fiscal bill, the budget was updated. PiT and I made sure that Imperial spending stayed within the confines of what we considered to be "realistic." But at some point (perhaps after I left, it's been years so my memory is fuzzy) the budget stopped being updated. And it didn't matter. Because the budget was ancillary to the functionality of the game. The budget's primary function was always political. I took on the budget project when I was new to the game, in order to gain some credibility as a "serious" member of the legislature. That credibility allowed me to become Speaker and from there shape the narrative of the IDS (and in a small part, Atlasia) for about a year and a half.

Note how the GM does not make an appearance in the above story. The GM at the time was...Badger? I don't really remember. But whoever it was had their hands full trying to figure out the effects of some complex healthcare reform bill (reform from what? your guess is as good as mine). And I think they might have been studying to pass the bar exam, or something. Anyway, they had their hands full. The players were able to crunch the numbers on their own. However, there was never any simulation. We never heard about what effects our budget was having on the Imperial "economy" or whatever. The GM can't be everywhere. And even if the GM had been superhuman, it wouldn't have mattered. I remember when I served as SoIA and then GM I kept employment numbers for the regions which were tied directly to my perception of legislative "activity" in those regions. Nobody cared. I don't think anybody read my "office" thread.

The cold, hard truth is none of us want to play a government simulator. Sure, there are plenty of people who vocally wish the GM was more relevant, but no one is willing to empower him to that extent. Because doing so would require fundamentally altering the mechanics of this game. It would require introducing new ways to hold government actors accountable which supersedes the electoral system. For example, doing away with player-voter elections altogether in favor of GM-simulated elections which reward good governance and punish bad governance. That game might be fun if done correctly, but would likely need an actual programmed game engine to work. The alternative is to get rid of all aspects of government simulation altogether. To not worry about tracking the effects of past legislation, or even keeping tabs on past legislation. Rather, acknowledging all bills as what they really are, showpieces which allow elected officials to act out political debates for the benefit of their constituencies.

The current situation is exhausting and somewhat damaging. The game moderation staff are set up to fail. They can either bang their heads against a wall for the duration of their term or throw their hands up and be inactive. I spent a good portion of my GM term inactive due to not having a computer, but frankly, I was glad I had that excuse. And then as I sketched above, those players who do engage in the pageantry of drafting thorough budgets and complex laws gain significant political advantage not because of the content of their proposals, but rather because of the veneer of "seriousness" attached to their efforts. Because these are time-intensive endeavors, the system (perhaps I should say "the culture") gives an advantage to those who have an incredible amount of free time.

It is my position that eliminating the entire Game Moderation staff (that is, all members of the cabinet which engage in any sort of simulation regarding the economy, 'foreign affairs,' 'domestic affairs,' etc.) will rejuvenate the game. An Atlasia which does not try to mirror an actually existing nation but which focuses on the true meat of the game, the relationships between players and the electoral system, will be much healthier.

[Yelnoc]

I disagree to some extent with the premise of Yelnoc's otherwise excellent post - the game is about elections, but the difference is that the 'governance' element is, as I mentioned, based around debate rather than on 'results'. And that's fine - I think us analysing and discussing the costs and merits of legislation is a lot more entertaining and actually healthy for the game than someone handing down the gospel by fiat.

I don't think we disagree. The 'governance' element functions as an arena for ideological debate, the performance of which forms a component of the elections game. However, those who envision this game to simultaneously be a government simulation pine for a system in which the results of the 'decisions' made by governments have tangible consequences, as opposed to the current set up where activity of the moderator staff, consistency of story lines, differing understandings of game history, and unwillingness of elected officials to cooperate with moderation staff make all attempts at story-telling and game moderation futile.

I cannot imagine a set of reforms which would fix all of the above problems. Let's take them one-by-one.

• GM Activity: When the GM is inactive, the system collapses. There are very few people willing to take on the position of GM to begin with, considering what a thankless job it is. Of that very small pool, few (if any) have the time, energy, and imagination to produce the various plot points needed to give the game it's "story" and worry about cost estimation and legislation consequences. That's a huge amount of drudgery to ask a person to do, which is why some of that work was farmed out to the SoEA and SoIA. But the same problems apply to those positions- no respect, no real ability to influence the game. Why bother with it?
• Story Consistency: Apparently we annexed Canada while I was gone? Under what circumstances, I don't know. I'm sure there are some helpful mod posts somewhere from that time, outlining how that happened and what the initial reactions were. Whether annexing Canada could possibly have been made to sound like a logical and not Germany-in-the-Sudetenland aggression I don't know. Has that plot point resurfaced to influence future 'foreign policy' story lines? I doubt it. This sort of one-off plot vomit is the stuff of nightmares for a dedicated GM who wants to figure out the 'in-game' or simulated situation in which Atlasia resides.
• Historical Understanding: Related to plot consistency is our understanding as players of plot. The lack of consistent story telling, coupled with the immense age of this game, makes it easy for confusion to arise as to what kind of debates should be taking place in government. To use an example from my time in the IDS, when creating the budget I found that past governments had passed various contradictory tax plans many many times without understanding that the previous governments had already covered that ground. This may be less a problem at the Federal level, due to the presence of players which preserve a very long institutional memory (looking at you North Carolina Yankee), but it is still a problem inherent to this system, which becomes particularly difficult when people refuse to acknowledge a shared understanding.
• Non-Cooperation: Oakvale's example of ephemeral policy fits here. Ultimately, we take our cues from the real world. When something interesting happens outside, we like to react to it, even if it contradicts the Atlasian version of history preserved by the GM. Another, particularly egregious form of non-cooperation is when elected officials refuse to interact with the story points created by GM's, either because they don't find them interesting, or they feel the plot does not fit with the (their understanding of) the game.

Because of the above issues with the GM system, it really doesn't matter what the GM does (or doesn't do). The game grinds on. "Fixing" the issues presented, so that policy makers had to interact with the GM in good faith, and so that their decisions actually had consequences, would require an intense overhaul of the game, reworking Atlasia to become an actual simulator of both public policy and a living game world, rather than just an elections game on a political geography forum. I am not convinced that is achievable, at least, not without a dedicated programmer and an external website. There are some reforms which may move the game in that direction, though ultimately will change very little. First, however, I want to address a proposed change which would just make things worse.

If you're going to eliminate the GM position, DO NOT simply transfer all GM power to the SoIA and SoEA. Please! Bad, bad idea. Oakvale put his finger on one problem, that of the cabinet member who can use his moderation powers to hand himself victories, is a real problem. Without a GM to crack down, BS like that will likely become more common. Just as pressing, without a leader on the moderation staff, the SoIA and SoEA will be free to act independently, which will only worsen the problems of continuity and plot vomit. On the contrary, if you eliminate the GM, you have to eliminate the entire moderation staff. Doing otherwise will simply make the system even more broken.

Another potential "solution" I want to address is wiki modernization. The problems of 'story consistency' and 'historical understanding' may appear to fixable by updating the wiki and making everyone read it. Because we have made it an expectation for GM's to maintain an internally consistent game world for the rest of us to interact with, an up-to-date wiki would certainly help them. But how do you force every elected official to know Atlasian history before engaging in debates or reacting to plot? The biggest problems are the first and last bullets; the middle two are more the result of inactivity and non-cooperation than problems in their own right (yes, this is a poorly structured post, I'm sorry).

If you want to create a GM-driven game where external stimuli, to borrow Polnut's term, matter, I see two options.

• Kill Continuity: Our difficulty maintaining continuity is only a problem so long as we care about continuity. A hard reset after every GM leaves office, or perhaps after every presidential term, makes worrying about making policy and story fit with Atlasia's long history irrelevant. It will also hopefully boost cooperation by making all story lines similar to our real world, thereby eliminating the problem Oakvale identified.
• Kill Elections: This tackles non-cooperation head-on by creating a system of reward and punishment, forcing players to cooperate with the GM and actually respond to stimuli. Nobody is going to go for this of course because it kills off player-driven elections, and this is, of course, an elections game

I am unable to think of any other 'reforms' that actually change the structure of the game in a positive way, while preserving relevance of the GM. Both suggestions have serious problems of their own, which I'd be happy to get into if anyone is actually interested in either. Of course, my preferred option is to completely eliminate the role of game moderation. For me, that is the most honest course of action, which acknowledges our capacities as a group without imposing unrealistic expectations on our GM staff or each other. I truly believe that debating bills without any larger context (then, implicitly of course, the state of the debate around said issue in the US/wider Atlas forum) would make this all a whole lot more fun for everyone involved.

To Cynic, Polnut, and everyone else who wants to see the Atlas change so that the GM is in fact relevant, what do you propose? Perhaps I am overlooking something. Please sketch out how the game could be altered so that players respond to stimuli and GM's stay active.