By Adam Smith on February 18th, 2013 at 6:00 pm.
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.
Apart from the removal of My People, drinkers, as a voting group, everything appears to be on track. In a game that is so focused on responses to data, presenting and processing information effectively is tremendously important, and that appears to be where most of the changes are occurring.
A new blog post also goes into detail about pressure groups and ‘lag’, which is an intentional feature of policy implementation here rather than the perfect excuse for being terrible at everything that happens online, ever.
18/02/2013 at 18:44 dsch says:
This is a lot like a political version of Football Manager.
18/02/2013 at 18:45 Lord Custard Smingleigh says:
He has a manifesto like a traction engine!
19/02/2013 at 09:42 Cross says:
Ouch, Lord Smingleigh. Foiled by a spam bot.
18/02/2013 at 20:53 Dorothy_Wildman says:
like Carl said I’m surprised that some people able to earn $9644 in a few weeks on the computer. did you read this webpage… http://www.ace60.com
18/02/2013 at 21:23 dsch says:
The spambots are multiplying.
18/02/2013 at 23:05 Lord Custard Smingleigh says:
Don’t just stand there, grab a shotgun and climb up on the counter with me! We’re going to get through this as long as we stick together.
19/02/2013 at 09:36 SuicideKing says:
Ah, thank god i brought the rock and paper with me.
19/02/2013 at 00:35 Gap Gen says:
No, I want to believe in a world where you can make $62 an hour but then after a few hours that has magically become $12k. A week later you’d be a billionaire.
19/02/2013 at 06:07 sinister agent says:
I dunno, it didn’t exactly work out for the Weimar Republic.
18/02/2013 at 18:53 mrwonko says:
So does anybody else mix up Cliffski and Cliff Bleszinski? Maybe it’s an alter ego?
18/02/2013 at 19:39 Ross Angus says:
(puts up hand)
18/02/2013 at 20:15 Andy_Panthro says:
He seems to get a lot of that, I can only assume it’s a little bit annoying.
19/02/2013 at 00:28 Gap Gen says:
Wait, is it Kudos or Democracy with the chainsaw guns? I forget.
18/02/2013 at 19:25 subactuality says:
I misread “cabinet ministers” as “cabinet monsters”. How disappointing…
19/02/2013 at 06:50 RedViv says:
I don’t get it. Where’s the difference?
18/02/2013 at 20:03 thematrix606 says:
Still nothing…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4waVhT1euQo
18/02/2013 at 21:15 Tom Walker says:
It must be incredibly hard to make a game like this without putting some of your own political bias into what works best. For instance, if you’d finished making all the mathematical models only to discover that f**king over the ethnic minorities made your society really prosperous, you’d change it, wouldn’t you?
That’s an example that would (hopefully) be fairly universally emotive, but I can’t help wonder how many lesser agreed-upon policy strategies might have been ‘balanced’ to meet the developer’s world view.
Still, looks good, eh?
18/02/2013 at 21:31 Triplanetary says:
Whether you morally agree with fucking over ethnic minorities or not, it can be a profitable policy. Witness post-WW2 United States. (The prosperity was the new feature, not the fucking over of ethnic minorities; that was going on well before WW2.)
Playing a game like this can involve a bit of roleplay. I played a fair bit of the first Democracy games, and there were policies I could have implemented that would probably have increased my reelection chances, but I didn’t implement them because I didn’t like them from a policy standpoint. Whether you choose to prioritize electability, prosperity, equality, or some other benchmark, is your own choice.
18/02/2013 at 21:33 Triplanetary says:
I love Cliffski for Gratuitous Space Battles. I played the fuck out of that game back in the day. But he’s incredibly uneven. Democracy was pretty good. Democracy 2 was a disaster. GSB was amazing. Gratuitous Tank Battles was… well, I wanted to like it. I tried.
So in all honesty I haven’t a clue whether Democracy 3 will be good or not. Just depends if it’s one of Cliffski’s on moments or off moments.
19/02/2013 at 00:31 Gap Gen says:
I took part in a forum (meta)game of Democracy 2 that was a lot of fun, but apparently the save files didn’t save each faction’s levels of support, so it never really worked. Shame.
19/02/2013 at 02:52 BubuIIC says:
What made Democracy 1 any better than 2? I thought it just had a better interface and was more detailed? Anyway, I played quite a bit of Democracy 2 and loved it. Also loved GSB and could not get into GTB… I agree with you there.
19/02/2013 at 02:57 Triplanetary says:
Better? Democracy 2′s interface was way worse than Democracy 1′s. Screen transitions galore, which wouldn’t have been so bad if the screen transitions weren’t unforgivably slow. But slow or not, in a menu-centric game, just give me pop-ups, please.
I also never understood why he felt the need to replace the real countries of Democracy 1 with the fictional countries of Democracy 2, but whatevs. That one didn’t bother me as much as the godawful interface.
19/02/2013 at 00:44 G_Man_007 says:
Secret love for Tony Blair in the logo…?
19/02/2013 at 05:22 utharda says:
Secret love for tony blair? I’d use tony blair as monica lewinski’s dress if you catch my drift.
Disclaimer, this message brought to you by Rupert Murdoch.
Crikies!
19/02/2013 at 09:50 Cross says:
Oi, Murdoch!?
JARATE!
/End (fluid) transmission
19/02/2013 at 10:47 Chris says:
In this game can you,
1.Can you let the banks fail?
2. Introduce the death penalty for littering?
3. Herd celebrities on to cattle trucks?
If yes, I want this game.
23/02/2013 at 01:08 Cerebulon says:
Wait, a couple of those political figures are from Dead Ringers… (A + Y)
Right?