September 8, 2006, Lee Gottlieb wrote:

Hi all,

Mirek, thought you, and the others would like to see my message to Benjamin Stokes about creating a possible DD game. I didn't have Benjamin's email address, but I did have his co-director's address, so I sent it to her to be forwarded to Stokes

Dear Benjamin,

My name is Lee Gottlieb, and I am an associate of Miroslav Kolar and a member of the World-Wide Direct Democracy Movement. He has informed me of your discussion of a game that teaches about direct democracy. Strangely enough, as a result of reading about the growth of social games in a recent issue of Ode Magazine, a marvelous publication to which I subscribe, I also have been thinking about how such a game could dispel the ignorance and wrong thinking about direct democracy held by the masses of common Americans (common versus privileged.)

I have taken the promotion of DD a bit further than many other DD advocates, as you can discover by visiting my website voicesfordd.com. I have actually envisioned a working DD and some of the benefits it offers to ordinary, working citizens--as well as a plan for initiating DD in the U.S. I call this society "America." It has been designed to be a role model that I hope will help generate a desire for DD within the American people. In my plan, I discuss some of the obstacles to be faced and overcome by citizens striving to change their existing political system to a DD system. Overcoming these obstacles should make for an interesting DD game and spark the imagination of unimaginative people. After all, DD is the only true democracy, and the only political system with the potential to create a society in which neither individuals or groups can grasp control of government, nor within which the great differences between wealthy privileged citizens and working citizens can exist.

I have envisioned two entirely different versions for such a game. the first in which citizens--wishing to participate in the decision-making processes for producing community budgets so they can decide how and where their tax money should be spent--overcome the problems of convincing their political representatives to allow them to do so, and devise a logical addition tho their political system that would expedite their participation. In real life, this would mean the eventual creation of "Citizen Advisory Committees." These would be fashioned after Professor Dienel's "Planning Cells" that have been used successfully in Europe since 1970: the existence of which the American Establishment keeps secret from common Americans.

The second version of a DD game would be a bit more controversial. The major problem to be overcome here would be citizen dissatisfaction with the honesty and integrity of their corrupt political system, and the main objective would be to create a peaceful citizens' movement to transform their political system from a representative to a participatory democracy.

As with most DD advocates, I am merely an ordinary citizen, retired from the work force, with little surplus funds to finance such a project. But I ask of you, with the urgent, and immediate, problems of humanity to be overcome, such as global warming, plantary environmental pollution, overpopulation, growing poverty and starvation, and constant and unnecessary wars, which our political leaders and economic rulers have no intention of ever solving, why must a commercial organization be the one to produce an educational tool, such as a game promoting DD? Where is it written the masses of Americans must pay for their survival? Why can't concerned individual computer programmers handle this as an open source project, with volunteers offering whatever time and skills necessary?

Isn't survival a strong enough motivation for placing such a DD project on an open source basis? Why don't you pose this question to your programmer associates? After all, what could be a better introduction to DD than DD games created by many concerned individuals wishing to educate their fellow citizens to the benefits of DD, and the ways to peacefully transform their corrupt representative political system into a DD system?

Benjamin and Suzanne, I thank you for your consideration

THE FUTURE WILL BE WHATEVER
CURRENT GENERATIONS WILL IT TO BE!
www.voicesfordd.com
apleafordd.blogspot.com

September 12, 2006:

From: "Benjamin Stokes"
To: "Lee Gottlieb"
CC: "Suzanne Seggerman"
Subject: Re: DD game

Dear Lee,
Your idea for a game is powerful, and open source is the way to go.

But so far, open source gaming projects have had a lot of trouble producing
quality results. I'm totally into the idea though, and will be
discussing it at a panel in DC at the Serious Games Summit. As for
telling our developers, in truth, we just bring people together -- we
don't control or operate any developers. Does this help answer your
question?
Benjamin
PS -- Keep the great ideas with the games coming, and in fact, feel
encouraged to post some of your ideas to our listserv to see if you can
find others who'd like to work on the project with you. But I would
put a little more emphasis on how you'll gather the resources for marketing
and distribution -- a key part of a game project, and one that's
difficult with open source.

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