How to become a virtual president of Russia

While the world political scene is covered by fire, and the right -wing populists, supporters of increasing taxes and social responsibility, burst into it, there are a completely convincing simulator on the Web for many years. In the open world of Roblox, you can read Twitter Russia Today, try to get into parliament and untie the wars between Great Britain and the USA, but in fact this world lives much more harmonious than ours. At the request of Samizdat, Yegor Sennikov, who studied political science for seven years, went to explore Roblox, having managed to work as a jailer and pizza pedestal, and realized that the real world was much crazy than any imagination.

I run around the courtyard of the prison. Shots are heard around, but so far, fortunately, bullets are flying past me. I run on, go into the building and begin to climb up - onto the observation tower. Other police officers run here - they have assault rifles in their hands, from time to time they shoot at the rebellious prisoners. At some point, I get tired of watching this, I run down the stairs, run out into the yard-and at the same moment I catch a shot in my head.

***

Of course, I was not running around the prison, but my gaming avatar, reminiscent of a lego figure - a little crooked, a little ridiculous, but with a sweet smile on his face and orange hair.

If you are more than fifteen years old, then you are unlikely to hear such a name as Roblox, but this game universe has existed since 2004. In many ways, it resembles a hit of all times and peoples - “minecraft”, but in popularity it is yet inferior to it.

One of the features of Roblox is that you can create any, most diverse games, the only serious restriction is an architect’s imagination. Therefore, there are almost twenty million game worlds of different sizes and calibers.

Before going to study one of the most curious manifestations of Roblox, imitating a real political life, I tried to play at least a little other users of the games from among the most popular. There is a pizzeria simulator in Roblox, where you start from a modest position of the courier and run along a small town with a hot order in your hands (while you run, you shout to yourself: “What the hell are I doing here?”), There are races on non-coherent square cars, an acid look of a game that refers to some incomprehensible anime; There are even Safari simulators per person - those who survive win.

It seems that everything is here at all.

The game sometimes leads to unpleasant stories in the game: last year, a scandal erupted - the game character of a seven -year -old girl attacked other players and simulated group rape ; The company had to urgently make excuses and promise that measures would be taken so that this would not happen in the future.

But still there is more positive in the local open world. And it is not surprising that the capabilities of the platform are actively using a variety of reconstructors, creating virtual copies of the veins of 1916, imperial St. Petersburg or towns in the American wild West.

Actually, in this segment lies what I wander around the site, filled with online games for teenagers: local inhabitants decided to simulate and parody the life of the real world to the fullest. At the same time, they did not become trifling - and rebuilt here a parallel version of political world order.

***

I will make a reservation right away: you can play Roblox for weeks and months - and never notice that an additional political world is built in the game; He does not climb into your soul and does not try to attract attention, which is great different from the real one. But I, as a person who studied political science for seven years in different universities, can not pass by - and hastily leave the simulators to prisons and stop breed pizza (although the owners of the political scientist’s diploma are not deprived of the risk of stopping at such a profession in reality) in order to study the local political structure (especially since, to their horror, I find that no one has written scientific articles about politics in the world in the world Roblox).

First of all, you need to understand how to find out political news from the world, the inhabitants of which are similar to the fruit of the unnatural union of men and construction blocks from Minecraft. It turns out that this is not difficult-on Twitter there is a Roblox version of the world's largest media: Russia Today , BBC , ABC News, CNN and EURONEWS (the latter, however, stopped writing-which is not very surprising, because there is no European Union in the game itself).

In addition, many countries in the world of Roblox have their pages - I sign up to Russia, the USA and the UK, as well as to the UN, FIFA , the Kremlin, both wards of the British Parliament, the British Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the State Department, a number of other government institutions, as well as on Twiters of local political leaders. I have to highlight a separate tape on Twitter - otherwise I begin to confuse real news with virtual ones.

The political virtual world is interesting. There are many groups that are the digital analogues of countries: it is not difficult to get citizenship, it is enough to send a request and confirm that you are not a robot, but to achieve any significant post, you will have to spend time.

Inside these groups there are related games: for example, in the Great Britain group there is a London simulator - with robberies and cars. In addition, the armed forces of different countries have their own groups (symptomatic, but these groups are ahead of the groups of countries)-here I can’t stay and spend a little time, fighting on the side of American troops against terrorists somewhere in distant deserts.

Politics is seething here. The game map of the world is not entirely identical to real: here, as I said, there is no European Union, but besides this, there is still a British empire in Roblox (though just the other day it has been renamed the Commonwealth of Dominions), the Russian Federation (which, with a recently elected president with a melodic Russian name UKR41NIAN, became an empire and declared its rights to the rights to Alaska), the Italian kingdom, Australia recently left the British Empire, and the USA (in virtual population) is the largest country.

Britain here storms almost in the same way as in our world - I still can’t get to meetings of the parliament (during which the deputies argue in the game chat), but I see the echoes of these disputes on the local BBC tweeter - the elections have passed twice over the past two months: the conservatives and the Party of Independence of the UK, but the party took the top in the recent extraordinary elections Royalists - and she even managed to form a minority government.

A funny fact, but in the British parliamentary elections in the RobLox world, not a majority system is used, but a proportional one - it is clear that there are simply no districts in the game, but in fact, the reform of the electoral system that Britain is often discussed here, hoping that it will make the political system more representative system.

At the same time, the elections, although toy, but quite serious: in order to become a candidate, you need to be a party nominated, and then conduct agitation in your favor.

The main international care of the past winter is not Brexit, but the war between Great Britain and the USA. Everything spun because of the espionage scandal, and then quickly flowed into the war, which they tried to end several times, but, despite the agreements between the US President and the Prime Minister of Great Britain, the peace treaty did not vote in the Senate-yes, the votes of deputies were required, and the quorum could not be recruited. But recently it was still possible to agree-and the countries even announced the beginning of versatile cooperation.

It seems only partly it turned out to build a beautiful Russia of the future: Russian virtual elections seemed to have passed quite openly and democratically, but they still won the candidate from United Russia - in the elections he gained 57.74 percent of the vote, and the photos from the inauguration appeared on the Twitter Russia Today - the same channel also conducted the same debate of all candidates, for which in which in The virtual space was built by a special hall .

***

The tape of my Twitter is now similar to messages from a crazy house - a bizarre arranged, but close to reality. “Queen Mother Marina Wellessley left our community ,” “Canada signed a peace treaty with the United States ”, “the Republic of Georgia and the Russian Federation announced the signing of a peace treaty, shortly after Russian troops crossed the Georgian border. In exchange for the world, Georgia invited Russia to annex Abkhazia ”... although this news is not so much and differ from real messages from news agencies.

Most discussions in the game take place in a discord - a game messenger in which you can exchange both text and voice messages. It is in these disputes that new bills are often discussed, representatives of various countries are “found”, new laws are developed and decisions are made on the support of the parliament of certain projects. In the future, after the discussion, final documents appear: they are posted in Google documents or google disk. Here , for example, you can see the ultimatum of the Russian president of the United States of America; Here is the appeal of the king of Great Britain to subjects; And here you can read the court decision on the loud trial - a whole gang turned out to be in the bench of the defendants.

When I find that in the world of Roblox (well, at least in Britain) there is also my own judicial system, I stop and think that it is time to somehow streamline my feelings from the virtual political world. It looks so much like ours, but still very different. What is first of all?

The emphasis on hostilities and the army immediately attracts attention. Groups created around the armies of different countries, as I said, exceed the size of the countries themselves. However, this is not surprising-we will not forget that we are in the online game and no one has yet canceled the popularity of the shooters; It’s more fun to shoot at enemies and ride on tanks than to sit in parliament. Moreover, for the main audience of the Roblox listening in court or elections, there is a clearly more abstraction than the management of a virtual combat aircraft. Still, battles and wars are fascinated by players more than a discussion of the Law on Migrants or Debats on an increase in the number of deputies.

In addition, it is impressive that, despite the reconstructions of the virtual world architects, whose fantasy causes the disappeared empires of the past, in general the game world strives for democracy, and not for dictatorship. Key decisions are made as a result of collective discussion and voting, the elections are extremely open and transparent - if you wish, you can study who voted for whom and why the final decision was just that, and not others. All this, of course, occurs in a rather strange entourage: various parts of the British Empire freely come out of its composition, after which they turn to the UN in order to recognize themselves as a sovereign state, but the British empire does not cease to exist - and sometimes the country's composition returned back.

But the spirit of democracy here is still more active than in other political simulators: for example, for an experienced player in a series of Democracy games, it was not difficult to bring his political system to the dictatorship, despite all the restrictions laid down in the game mechanics. Roblox does not work out in the world-most likely, due to the fact that the power of the community is great here, and not one person.

Finally, it should be noted that players are quite accurately copying the real world, but focus on official and most often state institutions. There are ministries and parliaments, General Staff and Army, Army and Navy, Courts and Prison, Embassies and Constitutional Courts, there are even sporting events - such as the World Cups and Olympiads. All this is copied with meticulousness and love, but what is very lacking here is a private sector.

The game world is quite formalized, there is no Apple or Google company here, politics rotates around itself and a variety of virtual military conflicts. At the same time, the game itself makes it possible to build a virtual business: in Roblox there is an internal currency and various business symptures, there are paid servers and games. But all these trends have not yet reached the political world of the game - like universities, schools and NGOs (and this despite the fact that one of the most popular user games in Roblox is a high school simulator). Maybe they will come later when the game world will increase strength and increase the number of users.

The political world of Roblox is a very convincing layout of our world. Let it lack some parts, and the inhabitants are still not enough, but for some reason he inspires hope for the best. At least for something more understandable and open.

In the meantime, I close the twitter of the virtual RT and go to real news feeds.

"Jean-Claude Junker nearly launched the first lady Rwanda "

“Merkel shows memes to the leaders of the European Union? "

"The President of Sudan al-Bashir is overthrown."

I think I'm at home!