With each of us being little more than a kilogram of meaty slop and a stringy nervous system which would fall vaguely into the shape of a human if slapped out on a table or hung from a doorframe, it's fascinating to see how other people interpret the world and its complexities. So hey, look, here's Democracy 4, the latest in the government simulator series from Positech Games. After 15 months in early access, it's now out in full: a detailed model of how Positech think politics works, for you to try to gain and keep power.
]]>Dearie me, Positech Games have been lucky. While the UK's political situation stumbles into chaos on all sides, like a Three Stooges skit full of pratfalls and kicks up the jacksy, Positech have launched the Electioneering expansion for political strategy game Democracy 3 [official site]. What convenient timing! The expansion lets players campaign to win elections and maybe I'm getting ahead of myself with this ha-ha-hilarious satire given that you need candidates before anyone can go electioneering.
]]>Ha ha hooo elections, eh? In that there politics. With the votes. And those things they say. With those ideas they have. Hitting the ole campaign trail. Kissing all that baby. Shaking a hand. Posing with them famous folks. And the things they say! Did you hear what that one said? And then the other one...? Putting papers through your door. Love it. Knocking on my door. Sitting inside my TV. Electioneering. Love 'em all. Happy times. Big japes. Shaky hands. Kissy face. Good jokes. Good jokes. Proper fun.
So yeah, the next Democracy 3 [official site] expansion will add electoneering. Topical.
]]>Positech Games have released Democracy 3: Africa [official site], a standalone expansion to their political strategy game. It's the same basic 'try to run society through decisions and a billion buttons and charts and statistics' idea as regular Democracy 3 (see Wot Graham Thinks of that) but hopped on over to Africa. This means a makeover and a few changes to the policies and societies it simulators, but at heart it's pretty similar. It's an expandalone, yeah?
]]>Welcome class. Take your seats and take out your note paper.
We've all struggled through a game with a bad interface, one where none of the icons are clear, the screen is cluttered, and elements are unresponsive. Those problems still rear their heads in every genre, but I think we've more examples than ever of how to do an interface well. Let's look at a few of them.
]]>"If you want to play a deep, balanced politics simulator, and prove your ideals correct, then Democracy probably won't satisfy past a couple of hours of play," our Graham said in his Wot I Think of Democracy 3. "But if you want to teach someone about the basic connections that form society, Democracy 3 is the perfect way to do it."
Come next year, you'll be able to poke at the underpinnings of other, perhaps less familiar societies, as the political simulator's developers Positech have announced a standalone expansion named Democracy 3: Africa [official site].
]]>For a game about the inner workings of government, Democracy 3 [official site] is surprisingly violent. I don't think I've played a game of it - whether I built a land of hugs 'n' kisses or a brutal police state - which didn't end up with me being violently turfed out of office by explosions in Westminster. Maybe the new Democracy 3 update will help: it doesn't reduce the number of security threats, but it does make it easier to track how ready you are to deal with them.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
That there are so few detailed modern political simulators has always surprised me. It seems like such fertile territory, given internet presence seems to go hand-in-hand with an outspoken political stance. But I suppose it is one thing to loudly object to something and another to bury yourself deeply in putting your beliefs into practice. Importantly, Democracy 3 [official site] isn't about the sound and fury of getting yourself elected, and instead is concerned with how to keep the ship afloat once you are in power.
]]>What are the best Steam Summer Sale deals? Each day for the duration of the sale, we'll be offering our picks - based on price, what we like, and what we think more people should play. Read on for the five best deals from day two of the sale and how to play the monster summer sale game.
]]>I’ve never much thought about what goes into the little white tablet I swallow when I’m hungover, have the sniffles or another bout of Geek’s Disease.* It’s just chalky magic, right? Well, no: it’s the result of millions of dollars, aggressive R&D, production facilities of breathtaking size and precision, ruthless marketeering and impossibly sinister downplaying and mitigation of side effects. While medicine-themed management game Big Pharma doesn’t go for pharmaceutical industry’s jugular, Goldacre-style, its pills-as-merciless-industry approach is certainly a welcome change from the bland, smiling, comfortable faces that advertising tells us medicine are all about.
]]>Democracy 3 is a political simulator that works best when treated as a toy rather than a strategy game. Put aside your instinctive desire to win and instead just tinker with its societal web and play out different what-if scenarios. "What happens if the welfare state is dismantled," you ask. And in the game.
The last expansion let you push those what-ifs into extremism, and the just-released Clones & Drones DLC seems to exist on a similar knife-edge between timely, politically-charged issues and 'ooh won't that be fun to make people do.' Check the trailer below.
]]>I couldn't tell you about the potential effects of tweaking tax by a few percentage points and I don't know if I'd be interested in exploring them. It's part of why I haven't played Democracy 3, I suppose, and why I'm an ill-informed garbage citizen. I'm a blue-sky thinker, me. I work in unconventional ideas. The big ones. Weird ones. The type Positech's government simulator is starting to dabble in with the release of its Extremism DLC. This arrived in the usual places yesterday at £4.99.
]]>Graham recognised the brilliance of Democracy 3 in his review while also drawing attention to its limitations. I agree that the joy of the game is in tweaking and plucking, observing the way that a decision influences the cat's cradle of government, and how the taut lines of the interface tremble and intersect. The new Social Engineering expansion adds 26 new policies and eight new dilemmas. Cliffski explains: "with social engineering you get to influence the population in far subtler ways. From TV ad campaigns to promote healthy eating to free parenting classes, city farms and a smart-meter program". The scalpel rises and a country dies by a thousand subtle incisions.
]]>Stardate -309131.9634703195 (or so a random website tells me it is): a videogame is released, on the internet. I think Oor Graham plans to bring you An Opinion on social networking meets Star Trek comedy game Redshirt a little further down the line, but according to the Captain's Log (my RPS inbox full'o'press releases) The Tiniest Shark-developed, Positech-published sci-fi, turn-based management sim has made itself available for purchase as of this very day. Disaster-strewn social ladder-climbing within the confines of a starship also puts me in mind of Red Dwarf at its most well-grounded, which is a good thing. I do hope there's a Gazpacho Soup achievement.
]]>Democracy 3 made Alec into Nick Clegg and Adam into an Orwellian nightmare, but their terms are over. Now Graham has been elected to tell you Wot He Thinks about Positech's political policy simulator.
Democracy 3 is a game about a user interface. Look at this thing.
]]>If you live in the UK, you already know democracy is a roguelike: a meatgrinder for the human soul where flawed characters venture into the dark in pursuit of great treasure, subsisting only on potions before eventually being paralysed and eaten by a newspaper. Luckily, I love roguelikes, and that's part of the reason why I've enjoyed the three hours or so I've spent with Positech's Democracy 3, which is out now.
]]>I returned to Democracy 3 in an attempt to put right the wrongs of my previous administration. On my first visit, I broke Britain, crushing its culture and creating a country reminiscent of Clockwork Orange, filled with gangs and ultraviolence. During my second stint in government, I expected to inhabit the middle ground, hoping to discover stability in mediocrity. As always, the plan didn't quite work out and the actual experience was far more interesting than I'd anticipated.
]]>Damn you, Democracy 3, and damn you Cliffski. I wouldn’t say I’m quite at the point where I sympathise with the many blood-sucking insects that make up the UK’s political scene, but I worry that I’m starting to think like one of them. When I began playing, I was determined to do the right thing. A couple of hours later, I realised I didn't know what the right thing was anymore. Two days in, I'd have chopped off my own hand for a few more votes.
]]>I've been playing an early, unfinished version of Positech Game's government sim/political strategy game Democracy 3.
I really did want to make Britain a better, happier place for everyone. Trouble is, no-one else agreed. I compromised my own values and I punished people who were just like me, I scrimped and I saved and I took desperate actions. I tried to think long-term, but I also fought seemingly endless short-term fires. The middle-class hated me, the rich abused every tax loophole they could find, the poor took to alcohol abuse and crime. The socialists and greens cheered me, sure, but that didn't matter a jot as the nation's money haemorrhaged its last, and the public understandably voted for the other guy. I tried to help them all, and they all hated me for it.
Professor Brian Cox and his mates were dead wrong. Things can only get worse.
]]>Peek behind the scenes of power and you'll find paper trails and perfidy, but behind the curtain at Positech the scene is entirely different. In the first development video for Democracy 3, Cliffski discusses the new additions to the third game in the political simulator. We'd already heard about the major changes to the private sector, which will allow for more variety in the workings of individual nations. The graphics in the video are taken from Democracy 2 and, in a display of absurd detachment from reality, Cliffski notes that in the new game, cabinet ministers will not all resemble the same few gray-faced husks, cloned and seated side by side.
]]>When he isn't mounting gratuitous battles between war-vehicles of various sorts, Cliff Harris likes to model the political world. The next project from Positech will be Democracy 3, which will benefit not only from updated code, being 95% written from scratch, it'll also update its political world to incorporate the events of the last five years. Much has changed since Democracy 2's release and the new game will include reflections on the global credit crunch, Occupy movement and Arab spring, while also reflecting technological and scientific advances. An updated GUI and stronger modding support are also set for inclusion when the game is released "sometime this year". I enjoyed the previous version, so colour me intrigued.
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