Ping: Political Sim Fans

[WSUCougar]

Thought you guys might be interested in this new game, from the Galactic Civ folks:

The Political Machine (http://www.politicalmachine.com/)

[amdaily]

I wonder how it will compare to that "Election 2000," or whatever it was called, game.

[astralhaze]

From reading their info and checking out the screens, it looks like it could be very addictive.

[Senator]

Excellent. Thanks for the link.

[Calis]

I remember reading that this one was in development during my short stint playing GalCiv, but had completely forgotten about it.

Looks like it could be a lot of fun. It just seems like a hard game to pull off though with an longevity, have to add a buncha stuff in.

[Barkeep49]

President Forever (http://www.hotpotsoftware.com/p2000/p2000.htm) was also pointed out recently. There's a demo there people can download.

[amdaily]

President Forever (http://www.hotpotsoftware.com/p2000/p2000.htm) was also pointed out recently. There's a demo there people can download.
That's the one I was thinking of. How does the Forever version compares to the 2000 version.

[amdaily]

Dola,

I havent actually started playing the demo yet, but the setup is great! I have turned the spies feature on and have released Cheney and signed Condi; now on to Washington YEEEEEAAARRRHHHHH :).

[Icy]

I'm going to download the demo to give it a try, but i would love it if once you win the elections, you could keep playing as president, like the good and old Shadow president, else i think i would get bored of just trying to win elections for nothing.

[Taur]

Damn, very dissapointed that it is now an "empire building" sim. I was hoping that the next political sim would let you start out at the bottom of the ladder and work your way up. Year after year; City election, after County election, after State election, and finally National election. Wheeling and dealing all the way. Creating friends and enemies along the way. Watching your attributes increase with each election.

Not, just a one shot done kinda game. Seems like a game that would quickly find it's way to the back of my closet.

[pskov]

I'm going to download the demo to give it a try, but i would love it if once you win the elections, you could keep playing as president, like the good and old Shadow president, else i think i would get bored of just trying to win elections for nothing.
Shadow President still is a great game. You can get it at the Underdogs still.

[Icy]

Shadow President still is a great game. You can get it at the Underdogs still.

Does it run on XP?

[Jon]

I wish there was a president sim that would let you work your way through the primaries.

[Icy]

GREAT!! shadow president runs perfectly on WINXP!!!
Here is the link (free download as it's an old game) for the ones that doesn't know it:
Free download (http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=963)

[Wolfpack]

I had been kicking around a notion that I could run a presidential (or primary) campaign with members of FOFC being the candidates using a board game called "Road to the White House". I'd make some adjustments to the gameplay to make it a bit more realistic (for one thing, a candidate doesn't stay in one place for a full week, so I'd probably have each candidate make 3 moves/week, while the surrogates moved once a week). I'd send each player a private message explaining what they can do and where they can go and afterwards post the resulting headlines in the Dynasty section. Don't know if there would be any takers or patience for such a contest, though (doing this via FOFC is bound to crawl the game a bit).

[QuikSand]

I'm a big fan of that board game (RTTWH) -- have been unsuccessfully trying to scare up a live game recently. I fear that it would really crawl, though -- it's a long and tedious game anyway.

[Wolfpack]

Yeah, it would play slow, probably if the pace were done as quick as possible, the best to be hoped for over the internet would be a week or two per real life week, especially if you upped the number of moves a candidate could make (though perhaps the best way to describe it isn't moves, but actions...move to a city, fund raise, move to another city, etc). I'd also update the headlines so that they're more grounded in reality, since the game was originally made back in 1990. I also thought about updating the map, but couldn't figure out how the designer arrived at his, though I have a rough guess. It always annoyed me that North Carolina had only two stops in spite of having the (now) 11th largest population in the country while several smaller states got more stops (like Alabama or Arizona). Of course, adding new cities means all the travel routes would have to change as well.... If there were interest, though, I'd probably just update the population numbers for the cities already in the game and not worry with adding new ones.

[amdaily]

I found a couple more politicals sims:

http://www.lanterngames.com/games/comingsoon.htm

http://pp3.kelloggcreek.com/pp3_frames.htm

[lanterngames]

I found a couple more politicals sims:

http://www.lanterngames.com/games/comingsoon.htm

http://pp3.kelloggcreek.com/pp3_frames.htm

I just wanted readers to know that we at Lantern Games have a blog that has additional information about our Presidential Election Game -- http://www.lanterngames.com/blog/

And I'm also happy to give specific information about the game. Interested parties can contact me at [email protected]
www.lanterngames.com

Dawn

[Barkeep49]

Is there a feature list some where for Frontrunner?

Looks like it'll be a good year for us political junkies.

[Tekneek]

I'm a big fan of that board game (RTTWH) -- have been unsuccessfully trying to scare up a live game recently. I fear that it would really crawl, though -- it's a long and tedious game anyway.

I've had this game for years. It has spent most of its time sitting in closets. I've hardly been able to bribe people to attempt playing it with me. :(

[Wolfpack]

It isn't a simple game, to say the least. The couple of times I've tried to fly it solo, I find myself spending a lot of time re-checking the rules to make sure I haven't bungled anything. True, you can strip a lot of chrome off of it (issue bonuses, bonuses for moving to a particular location, etc), but the chrome in this instance adds quite a bit of character and distinctiveness. Lose it, and it's just roll-the-die-and-move, mostly.

[sabotai]

My idea of a political sim would be what Taur described. Think of ITP, but with politics. Or, have it be like a virtual world, where stuff keeps happening, and you could create new people to start at certain levels. It'd be a neat idea to do as a "MMORPG".

[Barkeep49]

I agree that the simple running for office sim leaves much to be desired. I think an ITP type sim for politics would be terrific.

[Wolfpack]

The tricky part to something like this is that whoever programs it essentially programs how he thinks the world would react to the players. For instance, I can easily see extremists of all varieties jumping in and becoming Congressmen and passing bizarre laws willy-nilly. The programmer has to account for it in some fashion and typically will filter it as he sees the world. You kind of saw this in the original Shadow President where you could set up free trade at-will with the rest of the world (including the Soviets and China) and slashed taxes, the American economy would boom. In addition, you could invade just about any country, win, and have staggering popularity. I think the programmers were at least Libertarian, if not conservative in their belief about the world.

One other thing, how do you propose to make things like filibusters entertaining? :)

[Tasan]

Okay the Kellogg Creek one is the sequel to the Doonesbury Political sim, Power Politics...I'll keep my eye on that one.

For those of you that don't know, I'm running a fairly in depth dynasty on President Forever here: http://dynamic2.gamespy.com/%7Efof/forums/showthread.php?t=20697

I didn't get to update it last night, but it will be updated tonight. The game is only 12 bucks, so I'd really recommend you pick it up, I think you'd get your money worth out of it, even if it doesn't hold you very long.

[Aardvark]

Anyone know if any of the computer games include the primary campaigns? I remember that Road to the Whitehouse focused on that, not on the general election. (To my mind, the primary campaign is a lot more interesting than the general election to simulate.)

[JonInMiddleGA]

I think you'd get your money worth out of it, even if it doesn't hold you very long.
And, as my luck would have it, I decide "okay, $12, how bad can it be?"

Credit card x-action? No problem.
Download? No problem.
Install? No problem (AFAIK)
Double-click to start? No problem.
Pick candidates? No problem.
Click to continue? "P4e has caused an error in DIBENG.DLL P4e will now close"http://dynamic2.gamespy.com/%7Efof/forums/images/smilies/confused.gif

[kcchief19]

Jon, I played my first full game of P4E without a crash, but I will say that the lesson I learned from President 2k was to save early and often, because at some point it was gong to crash. As long as you remember to save often, you don't usually lose too much.

I'm not sure what my grade on this game will be. On my first trip through it, my impression is that the improvements from the earlier version are good -- some of the tedium of the first game has been reduced and there are some new wrinkles that make it fun. My early impressions are that you aren't given enough resources to do too much -- you can't do more than about three things at once, so it takes a while to create foot soliders and such if you want to keep your candidate and VP on the campaign trail.

Other parts of the game are a bit of a mystery. I still haven't figured out how to create "spies" yet. I'm also worried about the difficulty level -- in the first test run without trying too hard and failing to spend half my budget, I managed John Kerry to a victory -- albeit close victory. As the results were coming in, after I lost a couple of states that I thought I was going to win, I realized that if I won the states that closed later that I expected, I was going to have to win a state I hadn't planned to win -- and the only state left that I wasn't planning on winning that wsa too close to call in the final polls was Iowa. There was a certain Electoral College joy when I won Iowa and realized it was over. Granted, I only won 273 Electoral votes, but that was enough. :)

One thing I wish this game had was a better election night. I think it was Power Politics that did a great job with this -- you could check the results coming of each state as the polls closed, and the game would call states realistically -- you could count on a Democrat winning DC with 84 percent with 1 percent reporting, but in a tight race it wouldn't be called until the very end.

I remember playing with some friends one night in college we had an election night that wouldn't end. We were running three candidates and had set the paramaters up to make it a bit easier for the third party to play the spoiler and pick up a state or two. That's what happened. We had some east coast and midwest races that went past California being called. I had the pluralit of electoral votes, but lost when the election was thrown into the house of representatives.

If P4E had that kind of drama, it would be a great game. Unfortunately, while Hotpot Software seems to be fairly solid at programming, outside the occassional crash, but they don't seem to jazzed about feedback, because there's no message board or any feedback setup.

[Barkeep49]

I agree that election night is a big disappointment.

As to spies look under "Players" and scroll to one of the other campaigns.

I'd be interested to see if anyone can win P4E as a 3rd Party Candidate. I've cheated (maxed out cash and stats) and best I've been able to do is come in a close third. If someone does it I'd love to know how.

[Senator]

I have never really found a political sim to come very close to what it feels like to run a campaign. And I should know. But then again, as fun as it always is for me, the average person might find it very dull.

[Primal]

Shadow president
That was a great game.

[JonInMiddleGA]

FTR, a re-install cleared up the problem.

Meanwhile, fast playing my way through just to learn the ropes, I've managed an easy Bush win over Kerry, won going away with a "created" candidate+Powell over Dean/Clark, lost miserably to Bush while playing as Harry Browne, and lost as Bush/Powell to Kerry/Clark (although Nader became the 1st 3rd party candidate to win a state, picking up South Dakota very late).

-- So far, I'd say there's too much weight given to picking the centrist position (I'm hoping to test that theory with a created candidate tomorrow)
-- Negative ads don't backfire often, but when they do, they're campaign killers.
-- IMO the ebb & flow of what issues are important/not important to the voters is too extreme for the short time period the game represents. Maybe over a primary season there's this much fluctuation, but not in 6 weeks.
-- I'm not wild about the way the game handles endorsements. It's too easy to get an endorsement from someone who is your polar opposite, just by using those automatic +10 points (I can't remember what they're called right now - political points or something like that)
-- There's some cute touches that play well, such as "Pop stars give benefit concert" for Browne, saving his campaign in one of the games with a $2m donation
-- Graphically, the game is appealing. There's an occasional clunky moment with the interface, information under less than obvious menus & such, but overall it plays reasonably well

If they follow through with the multiple election add-on in mid-February, then I'd have to agree that the game is indeed worth at least $12.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Just a little update to my update ...

I had a little time this morning, so I thought I'd fire the game back up & at least get started on my experiment with "the ultimate centrist". Create the character, start the game, load 'em up and ... nothing.

Re-boot. Back through the sequence & the same DIBENG.dll error crashes me out repeatedly. No problem, I'll just re-install again & fix it.

Wrong. This time, the re-install didn't help, I still can't get the game to start.

Meanwhile, no response yet to my email support request from last night.

I'm gettin' the feeling this one wasn't quite ready for primetime yet :(

[kcchief19]

Interesting ... I thought about an experiment tonight where I would try to run John McCain as a third-party candidate to see if you can get a third-party to do well. When the candidate editor didn't really help me, I decided to poke around in the game files to see what could be done.

First the good stuff -- virtually every setting for a scenario comes from a plain ol' text file. You can do a great deal of customization if you want. You can change the setting for how the economy is, what TV interviews are included and even headlines. You can also change how important certain events are. The game also has some built-in expansion -- there are settings for the number of states (up to 70!).

The REALLY interesting thing -- the scenario file has settings for dates, such as what day is election day, when are the debates and when the campaign starts. Here's the catch -- there are TWO possible start dates: one without primaries and one WITH primaries! It looks like the concept for the game includes the possibility of starting the game that way. I'm going to write the designers to see if the functionality is planned.

There are two drawbacks that I see. The first is that it is a pain in the ass to customize a scenario. You can certainly use the defaults, but the big pain is the region settings you have to specify the percentage of voters who are affiliated with each party and what percentage are strongly committed/leaning, so there are a whole lot of numbers for each state that if they don't add up, you're cooked. But it's nice to know that if you wanted to create any election scenario, you can do it.

The other drawback is that you look to be limited to four parties/candidates. I started customization by trying to add a fifth party, but now I see that the best way to handle it is to overwrite one of the other parties and tweak it.

I warn you, if you're interested in the customization, there are spoilers in there -- if you study and look at the numbers closely, you'll find out which states are winnable/not winnable in the scenario. You'll also see that out of the box, it looks to virtually impossible for a third-party candidate to do too well. :)

[Barkeep49]

You'll also see that out of the box, it looks to virtually impossible for a third-party candidate to do too well. :)


Thanks for doing all this. Great analysis. It makes me feel a lot better knowing that even with "cheating" my failure to win as a 3rd party had less to do with my skill and more to do with the game working against me.

[Barkeep49]

DOLA -- After doing some poking myself there seems to be a bunch of features left undone. For instance matching Federal Funds. Additionally they seem to have had Buchannun instead of Browne as the original 4th person which makes sense. I hope that someone takes the time to do some more scenerios since it could be fun.

[Barkeep49]

I played a game last night with a cheated candidate and changed the How Established Value to 5. I managed to win a plurality of the electoral votes, although fell short overall (damn you Oklahoma and Tennesse). Nader managed to win Hawaii which was the first time I had seen him win a state. I could have won but had some bad luck and made a couple of minor errors that could have been the difference. I'm going to give it another roll and am confident that I could win this time.

[amdaily]

I went through the electorate trends file and moved 10 points from the democrats and 10 more from the republicans and gave the to Nader. I then increased his funds to $72 million, but left the "how established" option at 2. I ended up taking California, Texas, and New York. The final electoral breakdown was Bush 267, Dean 151, Nader 120.

I would be most interested in finding out what is with the "with primaries" option :)!

[kcchief19]

Confirmed -- got a response to my e-mail. Primaries is a planned add-on for a future update. As it is, this game is a pretty good bargain for $12. If he gets the primaries featured implemented, this could be a darn good game.

[lanterngames]

Is there a feature list some where for Frontrunner?

Looks like it'll be a good year for us political junkies.


Frontrunner, 2004 Presidential Election Game

WHAT:

The most significant election game on the market today, Frontrunner takes the game of politics and cranks it up!

AUDIENCE:

The most innovative election game available – designed for:

Families:
Work as a team to build a successful candidacy

Students:
Perfect for junior high to college students

Educators:
Recharge Political Science, Government, and Social Studies classes

Political enthusiasts:
Strategize your way into the Oval Office!

FRONTRUNNER IS:

· Provocative
· Stimulating
· Exciting

FRONTRUNNER IS BASED ON FACTS:

State populations are controlled by artificial intelligence based on actual state demographics, census data, and voting patterns throughout the entire United States.

This means Frontrunner is not just fun – it’s realistic.

PURPOSE:

· Excite people about the electoral process
· Support democracy in an entertaining way
· Encourage voting and demonstrate its importance

HOW TO PLAY:

Convince key interest groups to vote for you as you maneuver your way to the White House.

Manage regional, national, and international current events that pop up throughout the game.

Balance charisma, support, and stamina to win the game!


FUN:

Frontrunner lets you jump into politics like you’re out there kissing babies and shaking hands!

Lantern Games … we put the game into politics!


UNPARALLELED:

Frontrunner fuses hyper-intelligent game dynamics with an unrivaled 3D interface.


FEATURES:

· No average Presidential Election “spreadsheet” game – Frontrunner action is dynamic and fully interactive

· Game play is “real-time” – think fast, because your opponent is!

· Play the game 2 ways:

1. Nominate and run as yourself, or
2. Choose from candidates from actual, historical, and fictional campaigns

· Challenge yourself or take it easy – choose from 3 difficulty levels

· Pit your skills against 1 to 3 rival candidates and their ‘Campaign Managers’

· Heat up your campaign as you try to grab votes July through election day

· Sweep the game – grab issues and endorsements crucial to your campaign

· Track game play with a dynamic ‘CNN-style’ U.S. map and instantaneous news feeds

· Win over crucial interest groups based on state’s actual population demographics, census data and voting patterns

· Polarized issues make game-play exciting

· Historic expansion packs to follow early ‘05


SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:

Frontrunner runs on Windows 98/2000/Me/XP

Be sure to contact me with any questions [email protected] or check out our website www.lanterngames.com

Thanks! :)

[Barkeep49]

Was coming here to bump noticed the feature list for Frontrunner. The real time element of that is intriguing. Will have to check it out.

Was going to bump since I've been playing Presidential Forever with the newest upgrade. Played as both Kennedy and Nixon in 1960 as well as Perot in 92. All were fun. Small change that I really have liked: your foot soldiers in a state will automatically change, if you want, from fundraising to campaigning or vice versa based on how well you're doing in a state. Really does help that financial bottom line. Anyone else played with 1.1?

[amdaily]

I have. Solid update, but now I'm to anxious for the next. I want primaries :)!

My first three games were as Nixon, Reagan, and Bush, each an easy win of course :).

[timmynausea]

Was coming here to bump noticed the feature list for Frontrunner. The real time element of that is intriguing. Will have to check it out.

Was going to bump since I've been playing Presidential Forever with the newest upgrade. Played as both Kennedy and Nixon in 1960 as well as Perot in 92. All were fun. Small change that I really have liked: your foot soldiers in a state will automatically change, if you want, from fundraising to campaigning or vice versa based on how well you're doing in a state. Really does help that financial bottom line. Anyone else played with 1.1?

I played a little. Destroyed Nixon as Kennedy, and got by Reagan as Jimmy Carter. It seemed to me that on the older campaigns, especially 1960, the other candidate ran out of money really early. I'm going off memory, but it seemed like Nixon was out of money with 3 or 4 weeks to go, so it had been close but over the last month i blew him out. (I got around 400 electoral votes.) Reagan also ran out with a week or two to go. Did you notice this at all? I was thinking that maybe there was some kind of AI problem with the smaller amounts of money involved in the older campaigns.

[Barkeep49]

Yeah I noticed that candidates ran out of funds more in 1960 than in 92 or 04, but found that they ran out at about the same time in the latter two. I think in general the AI doesn't do as good of a job as the humans at finaces. For instance I never run out of funds AND I never do fundraising. Foot soldiers are perhaps too easy to raise once you get some momentum going and then become an easy source of cash.

[timmynausea]

Yeah I noticed that candidates ran out of funds more in 1960 than in 92 or 04, but found that they ran out at about the same time in the latter two. I think in general the AI doesn't do as good of a job as the humans at finaces. For instance I never run out of funds AND I never do fundraising. Foot soldiers are perhaps too easy to raise once you get some momentum going and then become an easy source of cash.
That's a good point about the foot solidiers, actually.
Over all, it's a fun but entirely flawed game. Really it just whets my appetite for a truly great career-based political sim as opposed to the single election format of President Forever. I'm hopeful that Jim will create that sim. It doesn't look very promising, though.

[samifan24]

I'm bumping this thread because I went back for it to see if there'd been any discernable progress on any of the other games mentioned in this thread and, as far as I can tell, all are at least another month off, if not more. Also, in reading over the literature on each's website, I was sort of surprised to realize that all are essentially the same game: campaign manager. I already own President Forever, so why would I want another campaign manager game? I'm not saying I wouldn't look into other games, but I think the campaign manager game as it stands in President Forever is, as others have mentioned, a fun yet ultimately flawed gaming experience. I'm hoping that a real career-driven political sim comes out in the future, that'd be one of my dream games. Ah well, just bumping this for any others who may be interested. (Wow that was a long tangent)

[Barkeep49]

I too would love to see more of a political sim then a campaign manager game, but I do enjoy the campaign manager genre and so would likely invest in another game if it either was as cheap and as fun as President Forever, or else considerably better and more expensive. I think doing a political sim though is a lot harder then a campaign game which is probabally why we haven't seen it since Shadow President.

[Young Drachma]

I haven't played President Forever since the update came out. I liked it some when I first had it, but I couldn't keep myself occupied with it. Maybe I will more later. Frontrunner is actually being made by the company here in the boons where I live, so I suppose I'll pick that up and support the local folk.

Hopefully, it'll be good. It looks like it might be. Indeed its a good year for political games.

[Barkeep49]

Bump in the interest of us political junkies having a place to talk about the games themselves.