With Oceana: A Virtual Democracy, the Honorable Lee H. Hamilton and the Center on Congress at Indiana University will help young people learn about representative democracy with a new online video game that encourages them to become better informed about our government and more civically engaged in their communities.

Today, video gaming is pervasive in the daily lives of American teenagers. Half of all teens reported playing a video game "yesterday" and 97 percent of all teens play computer, Web, portable, or console games. In addition, one-third of all American teenagers have played a computer or console game at school as part of an in-class assignment.

While most of these games have no civics content, there are popular video games like SimCity where players learn about a problem in society, explore important moral and social issues, or help make decisions about how a community, city, or nation should be run. Recent research by the Pew Charitable Trusts and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has demonstrated that video gaming experiences can increase teenagers' political knowledge and commitment to political participation.

In a recent survey young people who had civic gaming experiences reported much higher levels of civic and political engagement than their peers who had not played civic-oriented video games. In other words, video games have the potential to help young people master civic knowledge, learn civic skills, and practice citizenship.

Oceana will be a spectacular 3-D virtual world made up of several island nations called the United Islands of Amerigo. The governmental structure of this nation is directly analogous to that of the United States. The rules of the game will be very familiar to video game players. They are based on two basic imperatives: Be Informed and Get Involved. Players try to get the most wisdom points by Being Informed or by learning about how representative democracy works and about the important issues in their nation. Players try to get the most action points by Getting Involved or by working on an issue individually and in collaboration with other players.

These are some examples of issues that islanders may confront:

A third score is the player's team score. Once a player chooses a priority issue, he or she will see a list of the other players who chose that issue as their priority via the internal social networking tool. This group becomes a team. The goal of the team is to get their issue to the top of the leader board by the end of two weeks by amassing the most wisdom points and action points connected to it. Players start out by completing basic solo activities, or "quests. " Once they have mastered the basics via solo quests – What is representative democracy? What is federalism? How does a bill become a law? – they will move on to a multiplayer mode in which they collaborate with other players to get things done. Activities may include creating persuasive flyers to hand out to others on the island; writing a letter to their Representative; setting up a booth in the town square to get signatures on a petition; starting an issue-oriented blog – the same kinds of political activities young people might undertake in the real world. Students will take online tests to demonstrate their mastery of solo quests.

In addition to the island world, players will be able to travel virtually to tour Washington, DC, a place of legend for the United Islanders. Through a combination of self-exploration and guided tours, students will learn the foundations of American government – such as how a bill becomes law, the role of Congress, and the checks and balances system – along with key democratic political concepts, such as the importance of dialogue and compromise.

Though there will be players with more points than others at the end of the game, in Oceana everybody wins from a civics perspective. By earning wisdom, action, and team points, young people will learn:

The Center on Congress believes that Oceana has enormous potential as a teaching tool to help interest young people in our government; to help them understand key features of our system; and to do so in a broad context that helps them learn key lessons in civics, particularly the central importance of citizen engagement to the entire political process. Oceana will help students to develop critical-thinking skills by identifying problems in their community, then researching these problems, and then presenting a well-reasoned and documented argument about how they might solve them. Using a video game for civics education is a logical way to introduce the younger generation to the vast potential for cyber-democracy – using information technology to learn about, connect to, and influence our government.

Oceana: A Virtual Democracy will be teacher-friendly. This video game will teach to national civics and emerging technological literacy standards and do so in ways that grab students' attention. It will support the social studies curriculum by building four capacities in young people: disciplinary knowledge, cognitive and critical-thinking skills, commitment to democratic values, and citizen participation.

The Center on Congress is working closely with a wide variety of educational partners to help design, develop, distribute, and market Oceana. We have received grant support from the following organizations to support the development of a video game on representative democracy: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Pew Charitable Trusts, AT & T Foundation, Paul Ogle Foundation, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.