
Show HN: Fantasy Congress – a fantasy sports website for politics - asebold
https://fantasycongress.com/
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zrail
Gosh. I'm having trouble expressing how I feel about this. I mean, good work I
guess, but this seems to fundamentally misunderstand what the political
process is supposed to accomplish. It's not about (or shouldn't be about)
scoring points and winning. It should be about serving constituents and doing
things to make the city/county/state/country better.

I realize there's a lot of "should"s up there. In my opinion the attitudes
that exist in the current political machines are much to blame for the
divisions in our societies. McConnell is at the top of your leaderboard
because he's driven by a naked lust for power, not because he's ever done
anything right by his constituents.

~~~
uoaei
If you're interpreting the scores as "goodness" you're missing the point, yes.
Your concern seems to be that efforts to dispel that perspective are sparse.

I think this would help people learn about the various politicians in the same
way that fantasy football players learn the stats, strengths, and weaknesses
of individual players. It turns Congress from a two-headed behemoth that
regularly doles out pain and suffering except to a privileged few, to a
cacophony of opposing voices that each are relatively consistent (with some
exceptions) about the things they tend to advocate. It sets up context for
people so that when they see "Congressperson X says Y" they have a sense for
how that aligns with the currents within Congress, within parties, and within
people.

~~~
clairity
> "If you're interpreting the scores as "goodness" you're missing the point,
> yes."

no, words have connotations, and "points" has a positive-esteem connotation.
change the word to something like "kills" and see how the connotation changes.

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asebold
Hey HN, I've been hacking away at this for the past couple of years. Launched
in February. Hope you get a kick out of it as much as I do.

Fantasy Congress is an online game where data about members of congress is
converted into points. Players select members of congress for their team and
acquire points based on legislative activity of the U.S. House and Senate.
Like fantasy sports, teams compete in small groups called leagues. At the end
of a predetermined number of weeks (called a “season”), the team with the most
points in their league wins.

~~~
munk-a
Just a pair of UX comments:

Being able to search via State as well would probably help a fair bit. The US
has a reputation for being quite bad when it comes to awareness of
representation - so forcing a name based search probably isn't great for
supporting users - if the search was made into a live responsive search (where
the table view was refreshed on each keypress) that'd probably be even better.

Your arrangement of Next/Prev page really messes with my brain - it'd be good
if these buttons stayed in the same horizontal position when you move from the
first page to any other - it's particularly confusing in this case since there
isn't any standard pagination widget bar thingy - instead there are just two
naked buttons which swap places when you move from the first page to the
second.

~~~
asebold
Oh thank you. These are very valid points. Appreciate the feedback!

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vorpalhex
I thought this was a really neat idea, so I went to sign up and found it's
$19/month.

I'm entirely cool with paying for neat games, but $19/month for a simple
drafting game is a whole lot of cash. $5 - $10 a year? Sure, maybe after some
kind of quick trial like a single league.

~~~
asebold
Hey thanks for the feedback. I'm still working on pricing. I've been thinking
of adding the ability to pay for one league at a time, as opposed to monthly.
For $19/mo, the thought is that you'll invite other people to play in your
league (anyone you invite gets to play for free), and that it's easier to get
one person to pull out a credit card as opposed to coordinating 8 or 12 people
to do so. So if you split the cost with your league members and you're playing
with 9 other people, it comes to $2/mo for each person (if you play for 8 or
12 weeks, that's $4 or $6 per person total). Also I figure some people would
want to pay for some of their players, for instance educators playing with
students.

Also I would consider this more than just a "simple drafting game". The
application gathers and reconciles all the data to calculate daily points and
manages various league, draft, and team states. It was labor intensive to make
and there's a lot of features people still want implemented.

~~~
lostmsu
Maybe you should make a way to split subscription more prominently? Or at
least say something like "Subscribe, and invite up to X friends to play for
free with you".

P.S. I am not a marketing person, so have the idea massaged by one before
actually adding that.

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jimkleiber
Similar to what @zrail said, I felt a lot of things when I read this and feel
even more as I explore it.

A few weeks ago, I pejoratively told my friend that politics is following the
fantasy sports trend, emphasizing the individual's performance over the team
performance, and how I wish we cared more about the team. That being said, I
initially felt really annoyed about this.

The more I dig into it, the more I relax, not knowing in which direction it
would go. More people may learn about the process as you've mentioned. We may
also put even more focus on the individual performance and care less about the
team. But maybe, just like fantasy football, people start having less loyalty
to their team (in this case, basically Team Republican and Team Democrat),
breaking the strong party affiliations that seem to exist today. I really
don't know how it'll go.

I guess the thing I'm most curious about right now:

How did you decide to distribute the points in the way you did?

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LargoLasskhyfv
Where is the fun in it when it lacks the theme of 'Genesis - Land of
Confusion'
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yq7FKO5DlV0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yq7FKO5DlV0)
, or more general
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spitting_Image](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spitting_Image)
?

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lostmsu
Have you considered a different model, where people play for free, but when
they want to bet real money you take a small cut instead? I think it would be
hugely more popular and profitable.

Not sure if that would be classified as gambling though, with all related
regulations.

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bovermyer
I love this. But when I went to sign up, I discovered that it would cost $19 a
month.

If I'd known up front that it would cost, it would have been less of a shock.
As it stands, that killed my buy in, at least for now.

~~~
asebold
Hey thanks for the feedback. I'll make that more clear on the website.

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ngonzal
This is a very cool idea, I'm curious what kind of data sources/APIs your
using to calculate points?

~~~
asebold
Hey thanks! All data comes from the US Government Publishing Office
[https://www.govinfo.gov/features/api](https://www.govinfo.gov/features/api)
and [https://api.data.gov/](https://api.data.gov/)

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JSavageOne
Interesting concept.

If I had some advice - I clicked into a congress member's profile, and had no
idea what to do next. I think you'll get more engagement if you have something
more actionable there, like a button saying "Draft this representative!"

~~~
asebold
Oh, that's a great idea. Thank you for the clear feedback!

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anxman
How is "fantasy congress" different than what we have now? All I see are a
bunch of elderly white people fighting about who is lying more. It's like
watching octogenarian married couples.

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sandymcmurray
Reminds me of a small detail from John Brunner's sci-fi book "Shockwave
Rider". If I remember it correctly, citizens who voted were then allowed to
bet on who would win the election.

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tectonic
Great idea!

~~~
asebold
Thanks!

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Fauntleroy
A deeply saddening statement on the current state of US politics.

