You Run the Smear Campaign

Zordak writes "I came across this amusing story on CNN about a new PC game published by UbiSoft that's hitting store shelves this week called 'Political Machine.' It's a strategy game in which you run a presidential campaign through speeches, ads, campaign stops, and good old-fashioned mud slinging. You can choose to be one of the current candidates, one of several contemporary political figures (like Hillary Clinton or Condoleeza Rice) or you can make your own candidate. The game attempts to be extremely realistic, including using statistical data from the various states."

Comments

Sigh

[FriedTurkey]

I think the purpose of this slashdot story is to start a flame war.

To reply to this story just insert into the blanks:

Can we {insert political dirty trick} like {politician}?

Topical gaming

[tod_miller]

Is this game going to be updated every election? New dirty tricks?

I don't know who would buy such a game, but whoever does, shouldn't be allowed to run a campaign!

I just know that both sides will buy a copy and even 'playfully' see what tactics might influence the voters.

It is so stupid and unlikely that you just have that feeling it *will* happen.

Graphics look quirky.

Re:Topical gaming

[tod_miller]

"The game won't be like a real election which is determined by a million different variables."

Heh, the election is either determined by one variable (which sways the most voters to one or the other side, thus negating all other variables), or by each voter, and I hope more than one million of the 300 million actually go and vote :-)

But, yeah, fair point!

Re:Topical gaming

[EddieBurkett]

Maybe I'm just simple minded, but I've played a few sims like this, and they are downright addictive. The final election will probably come down to one or two specific incidents, but the appeal of the game isn't the election - its the campaign. Depending on how long before the election you start out, I think the most addictive aspect will be unleashing smear or making a speech and then watching the subsequent effect on the poll numbers. Again, depending on the speed of this game, I could see it being a "let me just play through one more day before I go to bed" type game.

Plus, the political satire looks amusing enough to at least make it worth one run through, if not two (one on each side of the aisle).

TotalGaming.net

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are at all interested in buying the game or crashing some servers check out http://totalgaming.stardock.com/.

Could be fun

[FuzzyDustBall]

Im glad that games like this still come out... It reminds me of the old industry sims like detroit or ports of call. They arnt real exciting but fun to waste a few hours with. And if the game would be 2 player it would make it alot better.

I have it

[Mukaikubo]

And it appears I'm the first poster to actually have played the game. Well, here goes, any questions about it ask me...

Overall, it's a fun game to play a few times, but it gets old with astonishing speed.

Bush has it

[dtfinch]

It'll be his secret weapon in the campaign. He's not gonna put down the controller until he figures out how to beat the end guy.

Ultimate Strategy

[SightlessMind]

This game should be easy, just build your candidate around honesty and fairness and the political machine will bow down to you, right? ...right?

It's 1984 Again!

[Quarters]

COMPUTE!'S Gazette, a magazine dealing with the Commodore 64, published a program called "Campaign Manager" in their August 1984 (Issue 14, Vol 2, No 8) edition.

And for you youngsters in the crowd the word "published" can be taken literally there. There were pages of machine code you had to enter into an editor called "MLX" to compile and run the game.

I remember this because I had a broken leg in 1984 and had to spend most of the summer laid out on the couch. I typed that whole game in and played it incessently.

You can get a .D64 file of the game (along with the other software in that particular issue of the magazine) for use in C64 emulators here.

Re:It's 1984 Again!

[Yeechang Lee]

In addition to the disk image mentioned above, the article itself is available at the invaluable Classic Computer Magazine Archive.

This has been done...I think?

[Tom Courtenay]

There was a PC game a while back (maybe 10 years ago?) that I think was similar to this. You ran smear campaigns on people and tried to infliltrate their organizations through corporate sabatoge etc. I think it was a British game...does this sound familiar to anybody?

Floor 13

[Anonymous Coward]

You're probably thinking of Floor 13, in which you ran a kind of MI-5 without moral or legal restraints.