Overview

Modpol is a toolkit for integrating user-created governance processes into online multiplayer games. We have already developed a prototype, and through the Creative R&D Lab we hope to develop it into software ready for large-scale use. Ethnographic research with users will explore the experiences they have and the possibilities future development might unlock. We also intend to entirely redesign the prototype user-experience, to ensure that Modpol is far more accessible to diverse users. Additional software development will help ensure that Modpol is sufficiently reliable and functional to be usable in the context of gaming and other everyday uses. The goal of this project, ultimately, is to make more widespread and available the means for practicing democracy online in varied and culturally appropriate ways.

We are developing Modpol initially as a mod for Minetest, a free, open-source game engine that resembles Minecraft. Its user community is youth-driven and all-volunteer, with many members in low-income countries. Members of the Minetest community have been involved in the development of the current prototype, and we will continue to steer development in ways that follow their stated needs. But because Modpol is designed so that most of the codebase is platform-agnostic, progress made working with a community like Minetest can be ported to other kinds of games, as well as to other non-game online spaces. The software is written in Lua, a lightweight and widely supported extension language.

With Modpol, gaming platforms gain the ability to incorporate user-generated governance mechanisms, which can in turn connect and compose with each other. Groups of gamers can thereby test out different sorts of decision-making mechanisms within their games and develop best practices about what kinds of governance suit their relationships and their goals.

Background

Existing online tools inhibit community self-governance in ways that disempower social movements and undermine resistance to Big Tech—a design pattern known as "implicit feudalism." As a result, most people lack opportunities to practice the arts of democracy in their online lives, weakening their capacity to practice democracy in their offline communities and governments. The habits and assumptions of tech elites become imposed against the longstanding legacies of collective governance among diverse cultures.

In contrast, our community has developed a guiding framework called “modular politics”—a way of designing online social systems for diverse, culturally sensitive governance practices, which are also portable and interoperable across many different contexts. This means that governance practices from one community can be shared and experienced by others, facilitating embodied and creative exchange. Modpol puts the concept of modular politics into working code.

Modpol is an experiment in digital democracy, designed to bring diverse, multi-cultural governance practices into the environment of an immersive metaverse. Rather than specifying what governance should look like, Modpol is designed to be a foundation on which users can create their own governance processes—by mixing and matching existing modules, as well as by developing their own. Thus, in addition to serving as a basis for various forms of governance, we hope that Modpol will cultivate a community of practice, in which users can share, test out, and learn from each other’s governance practices.

This project has been additionally informed by feminist perspectives. For instance, it is an attempt to challenge the all-too-common patterns that Jo Freeman diagnosed as the “tyranny of structurelessness,” and to fill the need she identified for “democratic structuring” in communities. We also honor the international process that developed the Feminist Principles of the Internet, which included a commitment to “democratise policy making affecting the internet as well as diffuse ownership of and power in global and local networks.” While Modpol begins in game-spaces rather than public policy, we believe (with many leading feminist thinkers) that practices of everyday life are inherently political and also have important shaping effects on large-scale politics.

We carry out this work in the context of the Metagovernance Project, which is a 800-strong global, intercultural community of researchers and designers exploring the future of online governance. Through study, software development, open standards, and play, we work to work toward a world made more just, democratic, and interconnected through self-governing networks. Metagov has a strong commitment to intentionally incorporating perspectives from across cultures in our work. For instance, during the course of this project, Metagov will also be hosting its new Groundwork Fellowship, a program that supports the work of governance practitioners in and from marginalized communities. We will carry out the development of Modpol in close collaboration with the wider Metagov network.

Budget

• Software development: $7,450
• UX research and design: $7,450
• External game design consultant: $1,000
• Metagovernance Project indirect costs: $1,600

GRAND TOTAL: $17,500