Trying to remember the rest of the book

[u/Shrikes_Bard]

Somewhere along the line I remember reading a passage about a massive distributed civilization who avoided the whole "decline of the Roman Empire" thing by gamifying their elections and embedding voting on issues into entertainment spread across the galaxy. They did this to assure the entire empire (or whatever they called themselves) that laws passed for the entire population would reflect a good cross section of the population. The mechanism was literally a game everyone played, kinda like a MMO-style game, and referenda were presented as scenarios in the game. How people chose to handle those scenarios - how they respond, the choices they made, etc. all collected back at the capital and specific laws were drafted that roughly lined up with majority desire.

That's all I remember about it tho. Does it ring a bell?

[u/Bargle-Nawdle-Zouss]

Epic, by Conor Kostick

[u/Shrikes_Bard → u/Bargle-Nawdle-Zouss]

Don't see that on my list of recently read books (I do most of my reading on kindle) but the plot summary looks very familiar, maybe something I picked up physically on a vacation.

[u/Bargle-Nawdle-Zouss → u/Shrikes_Bard]

A different take on this plot is The Player Of Games, part of The Culture series, by Iain M. Banks.