The Sims teaching Governance?

So today in class we talked about the participatory culture on the internet that youth today thrive off of. Kids today are more internet savvy then ever and our culture is changing to adapt to the dependence we have on media technologies in schools, corporate companies, politics and even just at home. In the Jenkins reading, a few kids were mentioned as new media protege's for the next great leaders and activisits of our time. These kids included a young girl who became the president of an large online Sims community, a girl who started "The Daily Prophet" the online newspaper for the fictional Hogwarts school, and the boy who created Firefox at only 14 among others. Jenkins notes that they aquired their skills; how to campaign and govern, read, write, edit and defend etc; by peer and self-teaching on the internet. A commonality that I noticed among these kids was that a few of them enjoyed playing The Sims online.

The Sims is an offline and online game of simulated characters which are controlled by the player. The Sims online is one of the largest online gaming communities that has expanded to podcasts, twitter, facebook, and youtube. Players of the Sims Online can create virtual characters and become part of a community where they can be as active of a member of the community as they want. It seems like this is where Ashley Richardson, the middle schooler who gained control of Alphaville, learned how to govern over a city. Alphaville is the largest city on the Sims online. Alphaville's reign ended in 2008, but the Sims online continues to be a large community of multi-player audiences. Although I wasn't able to find any current sims communities (perhaps you have to be a member?) this website details the newest version of the Sims community, in which you can download and share sims creations with your friends. I didn't find anything like Alphaville with an online governance, but in regards to the Sims, it seems a little rediculous to me.

From what I remember of the Sims, it was a fun game to create houses, make people and dress them up and then control how their lives went (where they worked, whether they got married, had kids etc.) When I was in middle school, it never became about interacting with hundreds of other people in order to run an entire city. You had your own sim, and that was it. I agree with most of Jenkin's optimistic outlook on the power of kids on the internet, but i am not sure that it is right to promote that kids are learning skills readily applicable to real world situations from Online games like The Sims.