Expansion Suggestions

Published on August 16, 2004 By Baze0195 In Political Machine

Finally got the game on Saturday, my local Best Buy never got it in, but luckily CompUSA did. Anyway, I'm having a great time with it, although I havent gotten the chance to play online yet (I cant figure out how to start up an internet game, only option I see is to join one). Anywho, here's some suggestions I have for an expansion:

- Third Parties - Obviously, playing as a third party you won't be able to "win", but you can set other goals (5-25% of the vote). Personally, I would love to play as any of the number of Third Parties in the US. Theres a lot more strategy involved (getting that 5% requires a lot of campaigning on a miniscule budget), and I think would be a lot of fun, and harder. Some parties I'd like to see: Libertarian Party, CPUSA (Communist Party), Constitution Party, Green Party, American Party, Prohibition Party, Socialist Party. Mainly, the Libertarian and Green Party. Possibly, maybe even the option of running as an independant. The game mechanics would also expand to attempting to get on each states ballot, which is very important in third party campaigns.

- Historical Campaigns - Self contained campaigns that recreate past campaigns (political climate, historical issues, etc.)

- Primaries - Primaries for Republican and Democratic parties

- Conventions - Going a bit out there, but being able to plan out your parties Convention (i.e. getting speakers, celeberties, media exposure, picking out who attends (bloggers, left or right reporters, etc.), etc.

- Internet Advertising - Setting up a campaign site. The more money you put into it, the more donations and national exposure you get out of it

- Debates - Somewhat similiar to TV Interviews, following the standard debate format they use

Just some ideas. Reply with your own!

Comments (Page 3)

BenMilam

on Aug 21, 2004

I think the game should include sex and race. The voters should be broken that way too. If a female canidate is running that should have some impact. Appeal to black and hispanic voters should account for something.

Shmolnick

on Aug 22, 2004

Some good stuff here, I hope the game developers are reading.
Here's my list:

Improvements to current features:

- Get rid of the dopey illustrations and use real photographs. Virtually all of the candidates are news figures, there shouldn't be any legal restrictions on the use of public domain photos of public figures? Anyway, I'd like to see the real people.
- Make endorsements more politically realistic.
- Make more candidates available at the start of the game.
- More "news" stories on the effects of important events on tracking polls (vp selection, major speeches, scandals, etc.).

Suggestions for new features:

- Add debates. This would be awesome!
- Expansion packs should most definitely be historical campaigns. This would also be awesome! Imagine replaying Kennedy-Nixon from 1960! You could tailor the maps and issues to the time period. The beautiful part of this is you could make this a real franchise game with a series of historical campaign expansion sets.
- Expand the role of the Vice-Presidential candidate.
- Expand the role of news media in the campaign. Not sure how you would do this, perhaps you tie media coverage to the changing importance of issues and voter perceptions.
- What would be really cool would be to add more in-depth analysis of the issues and make this an option you could turn on or off. So if I wanted to play a long detailed and in-depth game, I could turn on in-depth analysis and other deeper features. If I wanted to play a quick game, these features would be turned off. This could be tied to expanded news media roles or you could even add a Pundits feature as the way to present issue analysis.

Great game by the way! I was getting sick of fighting in wars and killing alien monsters!

jscott991

on Aug 22, 2004

I like the illustrations better than real pictures.

Try Power Politics 3 (but keep in mind there is no save game feature as of now) if you want a slightly more realistic game.

matt07

on Aug 23, 2004

When playing with candidates in campaign mode you should get more points to improve their characteristics as you beat tough opponents. The way it is, it's almost ipossible to beat the last few guys with a custom character.

matt07

on Aug 23, 2004

Another suggestion is more of the issues should have republicans on one side and democrats on the other. There's way to many issues that both candidates support.

LDiCesare

on Aug 24, 2004

I'll comment a bit on some suggestions:

(a strategy game should be played over days ideally, not hours) I'd rather keep it this way, play in hours, not days.
About the VP: VP's definitely should be able to do something. They currently increase awareness a little bit and cost money/stamina to move... A consultant is way better.
Debates could be a good thing.

Patrick E

on Aug 26, 2004

I think debates and conventions are a must. I believe we should have an Independednt option and historical scenarios would be good.

Pol10

on Aug 28, 2004

I think it would be better if you had to WIN endorsements. You would have a score based on the things you speak on, issues you advertise on, etc. If your speeches and advertisements are consistently on workers and their jobs, you would win the Union Endorsement, and so forth. That would eliminate the "rush" to spend stamina points on capital just to win endorsements. That's pretty much how it's done in real life isn't it? I mean a Gay and Lesbian Organization wouldn't endorse George W. Bush no matter how much political capital he has.

Enderw2

on Aug 30, 2004

I agree with almost all of the ideas suggested above - some great ideas there.

From a big picture level, much as I love this game, it feels more like a resource allocation sim than a political campaign sim. The strategy is pretty generic and the only difference between Republican and Democrat is that it's easier to take the lead on certain issues depending on which party you represent. While this is true to life, you really should be able to (maybe even be compelled to) make some key decisions about things like how you want to run your campaign (ie clean or dirty) and whether you want to focus on hard issues (ie taxes, environment, War on terror) or soft issues (ie character, integrity, opponent's war service record, etc).

Fundamentally, I think we need to have the option to play more dirty tricks - if successful, this would lead to a reduction in the voters' assessment of your opponent's character, record, or stance on issues, but there should also be a risk that such tricks will backfire and be exposed, which in turn would reduce your own public standing. Arguably, this could be simulated by agreeing to divert funding to 527s (guess we could debate whether is dirty play or not!).

Re. focussing on soft issues, this would again have to be a two-edged sword - while you can attack your opponent's integrity, he/she can do the same to you. This would add a dimension to the decision of which candidate to play as, given that some are more vulnerable than others. I can see the integrity characteristic in the candidates profile, and the manual says that it impacts on voters' perception (hence the scandal-monger operative) but I'd like it to be available as a stronger card to play - some would argue that Dubya used Clinton's integrity as an issue in the 2000 campaign against Gore.

I also think that there needs to be more random or uncontrollable factors thrown into the game which would prevent each stage of the campaign game being a virtual repeat (albeit increasingly difficult) of the previous stage. This reflects the real-life struggle for all candidates to "stay on-message".

VCLeriche

on Aug 30, 2004

Why not get this: The Political Machine: The Canadian Campaign!

Deaniac

on Aug 30, 2004

I have a few ideas myself to share with the group...I'm not sure if it has been posted before, though.

1) More Newspaper News: Gossip, What's happening in the world, etc.- It seems that the newspaper only comes up when you attack the other candidate with a radio, tv ad or something like if your spin doctor withdraws from your campaign, etc. The newspaper should have some other articles as well (or headlines). That should include gossip (scandals, etc.), what's happening in the world (war, hurricanes, etc.) and polls. It would be a much better layout, and would provide more detailed information to what is important to the American people.

2) Being able to hold an election night speech- It would be so interesting if you could hold an election night speech...kind of type out what you're going to say...it would be very interesting & exciting. Also, more drama on election night. Not just who is who in each state. I mean something like Florida 2000, you being able to hold a recount, etc., etc.

These are just a few of my ideas...expect a lot more...tons more...
---Deaniac

Deaniac

on Aug 30, 2004

Deaniac

on Aug 30, 2004

Sorry for posting two times!!!!

cactoblasta

on Aug 30, 2004

I like the election night speech. If there was a list of possible topics (culled maybe from what you're polling well/badly on?) and you could choose which ones you wanted, then that would make a last-minute comeback possible. As it stands it's difficult to seriously change standing in the last few weeks of the campaign; a final speech would add an extra dose of realism.

Frogboy

on Aug 31, 2004

There are some good ideas here.

I can tell you that we are working on a v1.02 that does make a few tweaks:

1) There will be endorsement penalities in terms of cost. Some endorsements will cost more than others depending on your political party.

2) Updated issues / interview questions

3) Some AI tweaks

That should come out in the next couple of weeks.

Please be aware that unlike with Galactic Civilizations, Stardock cannot release updates on its own. It is contractually bound to go through Ubi Soft. And only Ubi Soft can "okay" releases and they have a very tight budget. So our ability to give tons of "free" updates is more limited.

However, if we self-publish an expansion pack then we can go nuts on that and just keep updating it whenever we choose. But I can say that it won't happen until after the election. From a strictly marketing point of view, both Stardock and Ubi Soft are happy with the game.

I agree with many of you who say it would be nice to have all these various features. But if we had done that, it wouldn't have been a $20 game. It would have been a $40 to $50 game like Galactic Civilizations was and that wasn't the price point that Ubi Soft / Stardock wanted to target.

So after 1.02 comes out, we'll have a good idea of how things are doing at retail. The reviews of the game are positive and most people seem to like the game a lot. If the game does well enough, we can do an expansion pack.

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