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SimCandidate - Why Aren't There More Political Sims?
Thanks to Slate for their piece discussing why there aren't more videogames simulating current-day politics. The article posits: "The U.S. presidential campaign may be the first true election of the digital age, but it's still missing one key ingredient. Where is the video-game version of Campaign 2004?" It goes on to suggest that "presidential politics lends itself naturally to the idiom and audience of today's games. Political campaigns are already structured like games, with an escalating series of discrete competitions that determine the eventual winner. In addition, there's an existing body of readily available data, going back many decades, that could be harnessed to craft the simulation" Would you play a modern-day political sim videogame?
For the same reason there aren't any religious sims, either.
Why hasn't there been a reality TV show yet, like
"Who wants to be a Senator?"
Are you an NBC-Crat or a CBS-ican?
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
The genre of first person shooters has been so wildly popular that it's pretty much dominated most of the game development that happens. It's had a stifling effect on other types of games.
.
There's just not enough money in the cerebrial games
This is America, damnit. Speak Spanish!
Until we truly understand schizophrenia, we'll never be able to accurately simulate politics (or religion).
Sort of how like in the ROTK special effects situation where they had to program independent thinking in the Orcs on the battlefield, and they kept having to make them more and more stupid so they wouldn't keep leaving the battlefield.
Strange how that works, eh?
Back in the days of the original IBM PC was a game called nomination. It was alot of fun and followed the primary elections. You picked your candidate then answer questions and got results on a timely basis. It was a text based game I believe (blue and white).
No, I wouldn't play a political sim. I can't believe anyone would want to play a political sim, even political theorists and hopefuls. Those who are experts in campaign management know they are practicing an art, not a science, and that any sim would be far too simplistic a model to make it 'fun' for the people who are into such things.
On the other hand, people play dating sims even though most of the same problems apply... and in neither case does the digital reward for success match the real life version.
I forget the name but in my junior year of high school civics class we had a choice of writing a paper or playing this poltical sim where you had to act as president to complete a specific scenario (like balance the budget, etc) by working with "congress"
it was all based on actual voting patterns and records and the sort...i wish i could remember. this is circa 1993/1994 so it was DOS based...
Start with a person running for councilmen, make decisions accordingly, try to raise to the rank of President, and the final goal, ensuring re-election, all throughout the span of a lifetime, with multiple paths to victory.
I think it would be a bit too complex however. Too bad...
Hard to program, I think, as well
But look at the development costs for a game today. Given that a political game will mainly, if not only, sell in the country which politics it's based upon and that games are a worldwide market (except the very peculiar and specific japanese market), do you think it's a risk worth taking for any large game publishing house? Maybe it could work as shareware or open source. But except a handful of gems, most shareware sims in the past have been quite poor, either in ui and polish (from bothersome to downright horrible) or in simulation depth (which is much more annoying.)
Before Black and White there was Populous, rather a fun game that came out for Genesis, PC and SNES, probably others.
Also, SNES has ActRaiser where you play God and ward of evil though acts of God and an Avatar in a side scroller.
None really get into the complexities of religion, but they are certainly themed in that way - leveraging mass devotion to an unseen entity that is quantified as mana by which the entity can act on the natural world.
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
it was the original SimCity...
For added realism, players could have cheat codes which allow them to edit the voting machine results:).
Alphanos
Sim City includes a lot of political aspects. It's not electoral politics, but players do have to deal with keeping their constituents happy. That, in fact, is the primary guiding factor of the success of a city (at least it was in the original, which is the only version that I've used).
I have been heavily involved in electoral politics for several years, and I'm really not sure of how it would be turned into a game. It basically involves working horrible hours, being paid terribly, and murkily navigating the waters of popularity. Political science is a science in name only -- there aren't the rules and standards that would permit it to be translated to gaming very effectively.
-Waldo Jaquith
Machiavelli: The Prince was sorta politically based... http://www.mobygames.com/game/techinfo/gameId,3902 /
Alright, the link is kinda weak, but I couldn't find anything better.
I'd guess that it's terribly complex to simulate the nuance and other features that make politics interesting. Who wants to play SimCampaign1.0 featuring random voting? Until only a few years ago (say 1999, for simplicity), most game makers had really weren't thinking about networked gmaes that would have sampled voting. Now it seems like something that might be a cool tie in for the sims online or something. Get elected to the city council and get paid 50 simoleans a week (have zoning control over a small hood) or something.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
make a complete joke out of our election system because of how it really works?
Where is the video-game version of Campaign 2004?
Lol, so, you start out running for mayor, promising the smaller companies (construction) projects if they support you, and donate towards your campaign. After elected, you help nominate judges to ease laws towards construction, which leads into more money for your election for the Governor. Easing tax burdens to keep large companies in your state, and try to make honey deals, you spend money on pork projects for all your supporters.
Deny the local transportation requirements that might have to cross the richer areas of town. As the money rolls in, you run for Senate. Promise to ease tax laws, or support some religious view to gain support. Slander everyone, showing how righteous you are, never broke any laws (or just got caught), and you are the perfect person for the job.
Now as Senator, you get to join some nice Committees. Maybe join Energy and Natural Resource, so you allow a nice company from your home state to "Ahem, Bid" on natural gas mining in federal land.
After some time, you get bored with milking federal and state money and decided to run for President. All you need is a platform. If you're the Republican you have the religious backing, but you have to ban personal freedoms, unless its gun control and force religion on some states. If you're Democrat you have try to pass gun control and help further rights, (gay, women, etc) and spend lots of money public programs that don't work.
So after you choose your poison, Democrat or Republican, (Not Liberal, as it doesn't support big government) and you get start going to the national caucuses. Oh the fun of promising even bigger pork projects, kick backs and under handed political back stabbing. Debate over issues and sound the same every year.
Then after elected, you appoint Judges that agree with your "wink" personal views. Make powerful political and business contacts that help family and friends make billions. Purchase some banks maybe. After your term, you quit, and collect a check yearly for the rest of your life. Of course, you have to build a library, and do lots of 1000 dollar a plate dinners. Everyone wants to throw money at you.
My god this game sounds fun, and it pays well too!
It makes we wonder why we don't use leadship simulators. I'm thinking of something like SimCity meets CivIII. Lots of variables to tweak that can have various effects on the nation and its economy. Then we could have cool elections based on the candidates playing the games to see who can score highest.
Of course, we'd never agree on how to score the results or which models to base the simulation on. After all, depending on how you slant the models you could have the ultimate propaganda tool...
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
We could get the government to fund it and then distribute it in countries it is bombing along with their leaflets, to show them just how great our political system really is, and what they can look forward too. I mean, the army has a video game, so why not the government?
The Supreme Court, playing Bush, delivered a finishing move to Gore, splattering a mess everywhere.
I hope someone else gets a chance to play this time. Quit hogging the controller!
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Here ya go, from an interview with special effects designer Richard Taylor:
o ry.asp?id=7530006A-C103-4E13-9A55-F6EFCC111ACC
http://www.canada.com/montreal/montrealgazette/st
Would you play a modern-day political sim videogame?
Only if it was open-source!
I know this isn't 100% on topic but I couldn't resist. I think a lot of people find this game stimulating if they only knew about it.
Would you play a modern-day political sim videogame?
Now that it's back up, I sure would!
Well... haven't we been simulating what would happen if the loser got a chance to govern for the past three years now?
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
It was my dream back in the days of BBSes to make an online game called congress. It would have been awesome.
When travelling, it's ok if the airlines lose your emotional baggage.
Most folks here in the USA can barely stand REAL politics.
But hey, if anyone can pull it off, it would be Will Wright!
A little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men... --Willy Wonka
Try out Nationstates.net. It's simple, it's addictive, and it wont take more than 15 minutes out of your day.
Let me fix what you said: They had to face the orcs and elves in the proper direction.
They didn't run away on purpose...they ran away because they were programmed to seek out an enemy yet they didn't see any close by. Without one close by, they ran straight forward to search for one.
Unfortunately, at the time, they were facing away from the battlefield.
are not interested enough in real politics - that impact their real lives - to go out and do something as simple as voting.
I have a feeling that the pool of people that would be interested is very small and of those, many would be too busy doing real political things.
I guess if it was simple enough and you could become ruler of the world or something people might dig it. I remember when I first played SimFarm. I lost interest because I kept going bankrupt. It modeled reality too closely. I finally found one scenario where it was pretty easy to get rich, eventually buy the crop duster, and I had fun flying around the map.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
My favorite political game on the C=64 was SSI's President Elect. It was a good simulation of the hard-nosed strategic side of the presidential race. It also taught me that you're all damn lucky that I'm not running for president!
There was also an early DOS game about U.S./Middle East politics that held my attention for a while. I don't remember the name, but I remember that my efforts usual (and not always accidentally) resulted in nuclear war. Ahhh, good times.
And Tropico is a great recent political game. People are often fooled into thinking it's a cheap SimCity builder, but if you crank up the political difficulty to where it should be, it's an interesting game of fighting to stay in power.
Surprised no one has mentioned this. While it isn't really a campaign simulation by the strict idea of what campaigning is, it does simulate a particular method of gaining power. Perhaps it isn't totally to the point that this news story is looking for but it is an option in my opinion.
Check out politika, if you can find it.
Look here
And something more recent: Republic
A place to start. If people find others, please post.
President Elect was an excellent game, with (for a game) a realistic grasp of electoral politics based on a database of actual state-by-state results from 1964 to 1988.
One could run as various historical candidates, or make one's own candidate by selecting the candidate's position on various issues.
It's mostly a resource management game: you spent money and time on different states or regions to sway the voters in those places. The trick was knowing which states were swing states, and spending your time and money there.
The game ended on election night, with each state reporting in and showing percentages and the color of the candidate who won it. The states reported in on a staggered schedule based on local poll-closing time, and once or twice I even saw one candidate declared the winner, only to see it change when all votes in swing states had reported in.
If I were not watching the webcast of Don Knuth's 10th Annual Christmas Tree lecture at 4:15 pm PST,
at http://scpd.stanford.edu/knuth/, I'd tip my hat to Strom Thurmond's illegitimate mixed-race daughter by playing Strom against Goldwater in 1964 tonight.
If they made a copy updated with electoral data and demographics through 2004, I'd buy it in a minute.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Who wants to play a game in which the only way to win is to cheat.
I thought part of the /. membership initiation was to type in at least 10 pages of Compute!'s Gazette ML code?
9 84 08-campaign.html
http://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/gazette/1
Evidently not...
"Political campaigns are already structured like games, with an escalating series of discrete competitions that determine the eventual winner."
That's just as maybe, but nobody in your typical gaming demographic really gives a flying f. Why? Well, to most of us, it really doesn't matter who's in office. It's about as exciting as a game based on Joe Millionaire. (Although a Quake mod might be a lot of fun...) It has nothing to do with how compatible the politics are to the gaming arena, it has everything to do with the popularity of it.
It doesn't help that politics are mainly a waste of time. (I personally find it amusing that so much money and effort was wasted going after Clinton for a non-impeachable offense. Yeah, I wanna play a game about that.)
"Derp de derp."
No way would I play that; where's the sex and wargaming in polit - oh wait, maybe it could work...
Nah, it's not because people wouldn't be interested, or because it'd be dull; it's because all the people who were upset by the murder and carnage of games like Manhunt would kick up a real stink at the level of immorality and depravity a political sim would include.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
1) The probability that your constituents liked what you were doing
2) The amount of political power you have
3) The size of you election fund
You can increase you funds by pandering to PACs and special interests, but if the voters find out you're dumping toxic waste in the playgrounds, you're out. The worse the transgression, the larger the monetary gain but the bigger the backlash if your caught.
Then you have a random generator of temptations and opponents. Your term consists of a series of votes, for which you can vote for the PACs, you heart, or the people. Say the heart and people match 90% of the time. You get to keep what you don't spend beating the other contenders. The more you spend, the better your chances for re-election. Might I recommend the trophy wife.
Sierra should ressurect the Leisure Suit Larry engine for a Bill Clinton game.
But they should to make a survival-politic game called "President Evil".
Gee, this is the most exciting idea for a game since they started making games based on... fishing!!!
But why stop there? I hear EA is working on something even more groundbreaking: SimPaint!! That's right, a realtime simulation of actual paint a wall, first drying, then aging, and finally flaking and peeling off!
Can you stand the EXCITEMENT?
snore...http://www.stardock.com/products/polmachine/
Around 2002 (multimedia revolution!), there were a slew of political themed games released, including a doonesbury one, which I bought. I might have been the only one.
Look at Republic. It suffers from the biggest problem with these types of games. The UI is going to be cluttered, and very very deep, and so reviewers are initially turned off. Unless you're Sid Meir, you're going to have trouble your game off the ground.
As an aside, I found it took me about 4 hours to figure out most of the wingdings in republic, and am immensely satisfied with the purchase. But I doubt the reviewers were as motivated as I was to get past that learning curve.
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
So...what would this game be like...you sit back and refrain from voting, and it just picks a candidate for you? EA Voter Apathy 2004!
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I have never played sims but it would be neat - Campaign 2004 and if it has florida governor, people who put websites like http://www.awolbush.com, etc it would be even better and more fun.
And not to forget, W. Clark who is a great candidate!
Speaking as someone who has run (winning) real-life political campaigns: no one who plays in the political arena would want to play a game predicated on getting a candidate elected. None of us would really want to design such a beast, either. Politics is a game already, and it isn't always the idea of "he with the most toys, wins," but it comes close. The tactics and the strategy it takes to run and win a campaign is not something I consider "leisure," and I doubt many people would disagree.
... and the idea has definitely been tossed around in my company. After much discussion, we came to the conclusion that there's more interesting shit we'd rather do.
West Wing, Wag The Dog, Primary Colours.. ETC...
Well, its funny that the post mentions SimCanidate. The only game I remember was the EXCELLENT and exceptional Doonesbury Elecection Game Campaign '96. Read about it here and here. The game itself was fun if you were a political junkie but it did have its own quirks.
I personally loved the game because of my love for doonesbury (you could have doonesbury characters as part of your campaign team). Bonus features of the game were video clips of classic US political incidents in the past 50 years. Highlites of debates, tv commericals, Dan Quale snafus. The game is most enjoyable for people who like to follow politics and I am guessing that the lack of interest might be why there wasn't a 2000 version. You can still find copies on eBay and I hear that some poli sci professors still obsess for a copy.
The doonesbury model itself is pretty eceptional covering a broad range of '96 topics and a huge array of canidates. The real difficulty with a political sim is the emulation of political dissent and sentiment (get people out to vote, create a better 'image' and getting points for well coordinated events (al gore's 65 year old medicare patient for example). you can even hire duke to do 'dirty work' and create smear campaigns. overall i would recomend the game but I still have a hard time seeing my gf play it over rollercoaster tycoon 2 or the sims.
I used to play "floor 13", here's a quote from mobygames:
"The premise of Floor 13 is rather simple. You are the Director General for a secret society that is based on the 13th floor of an office building in London. The sole purpose for its existence is to keep the current British government in power at any cost. Specifically, you must make sure that the current Prime Minister keeps ahead of his competition in the polls.
You are given a target date of 20 days, at the end of which your performance will be evaluated. If the PM is ahead in the polls, your agency will be expanded and you will be better equipped to handle the (numerous) really hard missions you'll encounter. If the PM is behind you will risk a reduction in available services or (if put into a bad enough situation) your job. If you hit the target date and you still hold your job, you are assigned another 20-day countdown to reach the said objectives once again (with the same rewards/penalties as previous).
During the time between target dates, you'll have to deal with various problems, both externally and internally. You may have to save the son of the US President from terrorists, break up a drug ring controlled by someone who just received an award from the Queen, or even prevent a scientist working with the British space agency from saying their latest achievement was a total sham (shades of "Capricorn One").
The organization you control is not a benevolent one and you will have to do some rather unpleasant things to ensure the democracy runs smoothly, such as searching and looting people's homes, calling in commando units for heavy assault purposes, wire-tapping and trailing people without bothering to go through legal channels, discrediting various people through the media and infiltrating various organizations. Also, it is the only game (perhaps only save for "Shadow President" and it's sequel) where you may perform assassinations on government officials (and you do that on a regular basis to boot), and is the only game AFAIK where you can (and will) "detain" your fellow citizens and torture them for information (the torture bits can get rather graphic at times, though it's doled out through a text report). If you get too over-eager abducting and torturing various suspects, assassinate people constantly or draw too much attention to yourself in general, eventually a man named "Mr. Garcia" will come to try to help you fly out of your office window."
it's downloadable from some abandonware websites, though I forgot whichone I downloaded it from, it's still very cool to play but it's really hard, I wish there would be a modern day variant on this game.
I'm surprised noone mentioned this already... play Quake 3 Arena as Bush, Gore, Lieberman, Nader, Cheyney and others.
In high school we had a political sim(can't remember its name though) In it you run as an independent with whatever ideology you want.
Unfortunatly we had to play with partners. While mine was quite hot, she was a liberal and not very bright, hence we took away some of the votes from the Dems and the GOP won.
ps - vote for the libertarians =P
There was the game superpower...but Im not entirely sure if it fits since it was so ungamelike that I dont think anyone ever played it.
I suppose there is also that republic game, but I havent really played that either.
Jainith
There's a new chatterbot-game just released called "AI Bush", created by two Loebner prize winners. I recently briefly discussed it att ml
http://grandtextauto.gatech.edu/archives/000161.h
Love to hear anyone's comments over there on our blog.
Also, on the topic of political games, check out
www.watercoolergames.org
and by 2002, I clearly meant 1996. You can see how I made such an obvious error.
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
1. Go to hollywood and become a star
2. Align yourself with whichever party's in power
3. ???
4. Election!
I remember reading a while back that Fox had been planning a reality TV show called "The American President" I think where the audience would narrow down the field and finally pick a candidate that would be able to run with some X amount of dollars or something. It was supposed to be like a political American Idol. I'm not sure whatever happened to that idea.
I think they said it was going to air on FX or Fox Family.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
Since politics are very specific to the country in question, there's clearly a much smaller market for this kind of game to begin with. I don't live in the U.S. and wouldn't want to play a game that revolves around U.S. politics. I'd say that today's break-away games depend on international sales as much as anything, and you just won't get that with a political game that's married to any one political system. However, I could see an Indie company doing this sort of thing.
Does anybody remember these games? Great litle 'be a president' sims. Little out of date by now though. ;)
Waaaay back when I remember a game called "Race for the States" (or similar) which came from Compute!'s Gazette, typed the damn thing in on my C64 - was a simplistic, but fun game where you had to run around and do what you could to get elected. Also for the C64 was a pretty good semi-political game Dragonriders of Pern. (Not quite as interesting as the old Mayfail boardgame though.)
"There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
When I was a kid my dad had a political sim game. It was the most boring thing I've ever played.
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.
http://www.stardock.com/products/polmachine/
Comes out this Spring. The Political Machine.