Democracy 3

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IamLEAM1983
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Democracy 3

Post by IamLEAM1983 »

You're staring at the newspaper or at your tablet's newsfeed and shaking your head at your country's leadership. “I betcha I could do better than these morons”, you think to yourself. Then, without being entirely aware of it, something like The West Wing's theme starts playing in the back of your head. You daydream yourself in top-notch Business Casual, strolling through the Parliament or the White House.

Hopefully, this doesn't involve tigers as official pets or stripper poles being installed at random.

The fun thing about video games is that they let you experiment with systems you normally couldn't directly influence. As a single voter lost in a sea of millions, I couldn't possibly hope to strong-arm Stephen Harper or Barack Obama into running things the way I'd like them to. It's part and parcel of democracy as a system, and for my voice to mean something, it has to be a part of those other millions; all those other shlubs I so rarely think about but that influence every single policy, every single subsidy and every single tax bump.

With Democracy 3, though, I got to play Prime Minister and President for about eight hours total. I was re-elected twice in both cases. In terms of term-wide popularity, I more or less curb-stomped JFK's statistics!

Do I have a future in politics, guys?

Right off the bat, you'll notice that Democracy isn't like the rest of Positech Games' stable. They're of the Gratuitous Tanks and Gratuitous Space Battles fame, and after two titles that mostly consisted of you making things asplode for the sake of making shit go boom, playing something that's laser-sharp in its focus and shockingly sober in its execution is a bit jarring. For most of the game, you'll be staring at a screen filled with various bubbles arranged in clear groups onscreen. There's the Law and Order group, the Taxes group, the Narcotics and Health group, etc. Each statistic is connected to the others through a web of influence that becomes visible if you let your mouse hover over the bubble. Red means bad, green means good. The faster the trail goes, the more influential that value is. Soon enough, you realize that everything is interconnected – and that you can't just pick a social group as your favorites and assume that nobody else is ever going to bitch about the unavoidable neglect that will arise in the other groups. On top of that, you're governing a scale model of the country you picked at the beginning of the game – a few thousand realistically generated voters standing in for your complete voter base.

Apart from the bubbles – which represent as much active policies, observable statistics, problematic situations or beneficial perks – your voters and citizens are the obvious driving force of your party. Placed along several different extremes, you can end with a Socialist commuter who also has ties to the wealthy, or a Capitalist Conservative who stands as part of the religious right while still strongly supporting environment-friendly policies. The game smartly understands that being a Capitalist isn't all about hardcore profit at the cost of hardcore labor laws, and that being a Socialist doesn't mean you're about to hang a portrait of Josef Stalin in your living room. It models the kinds of wants and needs you'd expect low-income, medium-wage and wealthy people to have, the demands of corporate society as well as those of the work-from-home crowd. Each of the bigger categories shown at the center of the screen are basically guidelines, sum totals of the likes and dislikes of people who, inevitably, will never fall completely in line with your party line.

Push too far to the right, for instance, and the Socialism-inclined crowd will desert you. Push too far to the left, and the Capitalists will feel slighted. Discourage Creationism as a school-taught system and you'll find yourself losing votes from the religious groups – if not public condemnation. Push those science grants too far and you'll attract only low-income people, who inevitably will contain a variable part of your immigrant voter base, which will also twist racial equality in your country out of shape – which will in turn stoke hatred in the White Power or Black Panthers-esque clandestine groups the game also models! Obviously, if you're dead-set about following the Hardcore Socialist ideal of the Providential State, you're likely to run the country's GDP into the ground – and a bad credit report could reflect badly on your Capitalist voter base. Keep sinking in the eyes of the international credit unions and banks and even your Socialist buddies will eventually start to roll their eyes. You can absolutely kill yourself with kindess no matter which way you slice the proverbial fruit.

The trick, it turns out, is to start as if you intended to shower the State with subsidies and grants galore. That means upping the taxes, signing bills that generate more cash than they cost you. Once that's done, pick a general heading and stick to it, while keeping an eye on moments where your attained equilibrium looks like it could topple. Once that happens, stick water in your wine for a few terms. Lower those income taxes, cut those public school programs and let the fat cats have their way. Sail through the resulting ideological shitstorm for a few more years, and then wrest your ship back into its intended course. Don't flip-flop too often, however, because your voter models react to how quickly policies are altered or even removed, following the general population's polling. This alters each and every voter's Cynicism score. The more of a Cynic John Doe is, the more likely he is to think you've altered this or that policy just to keep a straight face in front of a specific community.

Always and forever, though, remember that holding two ideologies at once is impossible for the average government. John Doe the Voter can be as complex as he wants to be, but people want absolutes. Considering, if you're swinging Capitalist, always keep in mind what that means. People should work hard and earn the wages that follow in line with their hard work. Their efforts should be theirs to profit from and rah rah rah – you can pretty much parrot Andrew Ryan's speech about Rapture if you want an exxagerated fix on ideological Capitalism. If you're more of a Socialist, keep an eye on the associated center-screen meter and remember that this school of thought involves a model of State that pays for essential services – not useless cruft that is and should be the province of the financially endowed. No real need to go binge on Keynes or Marx for more info, seeing as the two voter groups are diametrally opposed – along with several others.

Do this right for up to five terms, and you're liable to be re-elected. Managing that triggers a pretty epic mix between what feels like a Final Fantasy victory fanfare and The West Wing's portentous, solemn and oh-so-important score. The game only has two or three songs, but they all mostly scream Western social-militant pride, packing just the right amount of Marching Band vibes to keep it well north of the Roland Emmerich 'MERICA! treatment, while still evoking the kind of swelling patriotic pride I'm sure a lot of people across the world happen to feel, whenever their country reaches the end of a tight, but righteously motivated electoral season. One track basically goes You are a model of democratic application and social justice! Well done! and another goes Things just got hot in your national office of choice...

As obviously, not everything that goes wrong is your fault. You can be racking up a surplus in the tens of billions that one of your country's most used overpasses will collapse, killing a dozen people and injuring several more. Blame will be shifted on your lack of management of your roads' infrastructures – but it could also be just an earthquake. The stock exchanges could go berserk and your GDP could tank that you won't have done anything to provoke that. Some sound policies could lead to more radical factions from elsewhere around the world deciding you need to be eliminated.

In fact, I eclipsed JFK until the very end of my American career. Unnamed Middle-Eastern terrorists bombed my armed convoy while I was rolling through a quaint rural town as part of my third Electoral Season blowout and blew me to Kingdom Come. Achievement Unlocked, the game says, as I've reached the status of Legitimate Ruler. To quote a certain movie, I'm not the President Fake Mini America wants; I'm the President Fake Mini America needs. Looking at the web of influence and at my voter base, I realized I'd dissatisfied the Religious elite to such a degree that I'd ended up giving fuel to Extremist factions outside of my country! The burst oil pipe I'd almost welcomed with a grin (I won't ever authorize fracking or oil sand exploitation, ever, not even if you tell me they're a huge financial manna for my budget) turned out to be the work of these terrorists...

In a sense, there's a tiny bit of Roguelike tension in there, too. Seeing as you just can't possibly be the political equivalent of the Messiah, someone is inevitably going to have it out for you. You're going to piss someone off, somewhere – even if you try and be the nicest guy ever put in office.

This is, honestly, like a Politics-based take on Spore, and a great What-If machine. What if America elected a guy who's so much of a hardline Socialist as to make the country break away from its Capitalist roots? What if a Canadian economist who's heavily influenced by George Maynard Keynes figured it was time for us to outdo our neighbours down South? What if the UK went Bizarro and figured nuking the monarchy would be a swell idea? What if France finally found a Leftist politician who wouldn't be such a total weenie or a Rightie who wouldn't be hell-bent on turning into an even worse monster than Rob Ford? (I invoke thee, ghost of Charles de Gaulle!)

It has mods, too. The one I tried put me in charge of Greece, circa 2012, to see what I'd be able to do with a country that's choking on debt and culturally-enforced tax evasion. I'm sad, there was no option that said “Stick Theodoros Pangalos in bariatric surgery and make him publicly apologize for his stupid Mazi te fagame* comment” as the first thing I'd do during my first term in office.

I'm even sadder that there's no Saints Row IV mods available. I'd totally use them if they were available.

Inaugurating a National Panda Burger Awareness Day seems pretty badass, in terms of Presidential actions.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go make faces at Bill O'Reilly in my redecorated Oval Office. I stuck pinball machines in it. In my head, at least.

Play me out, Super Dignified Music Celebrating the Democratic Institution!



*a now fairly iconic saying in Greek that can be translated as “We ate it all together”; in reference to Greece's formerly healthy budget surplus. Pangalos' comment triggered a deluge of insults, seeing as the wealthy political elite actually did “eat” most of it – in lavish bonuses and princely lifestyles.

It doesn't help that the guy's obese, too.
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