The Political Machine [Game Review]

Game Play

Play involves moving your assets strategically around the game board, establishing and upgrading campaign headquarters, giving speeches or creating advertisements from a multiple-choice list. During set-up, you can adjust external factors such as the economy and the international tension level. In game maps show the relative wealth, liberal/conservative base, number of electoral votes, and polling data on a state-by-state basis.

When a question mark appears above a state, indicating a "political opportunity," the computer is very good at flying its candidate there immediately. Political opportunities can be positive, such as a "movie star" or "heckler" joining your team. These assets can be moved into battleground states to help your campaign. Sometimes the political opportunities are negative -- a "jaded consultant" saps the effectiveness of your campaign in that state, or a "time-waster" traps you in that state for the rest of your turn.

These notes come from playing the game at the beginner level -- I imagine that the higher levels are more challenging. I also haven't tried the online multiplayer mode (it requires at least a 56k modem, which I don' t have at home).

I did have some installation and interface issues. Four times, I tired to install it on my laptop (Win FX), but never got beyond the setup screen. It works on my desktop, but not when I start it from the menu -- only when I eject and re-insert the disk.

The game screen quickly becomes cluttered. When my candidate's jet landed in a tiny New England state and I got distracted by something else, forgetting where I put him, it took me several frustrating minutes to find him again. If there is a key that sends the game focus to your candidate, it's not documented very well.

At the conclusion of the game, the screen map zooms in on each state as the voting results are announced, from the east coast to the west, and your electoral votes are tallied. I found my heart thumping with anticipation -- that part was well done, though the voting results are always reported without a hitch -- no delays or recounts.

No Subtlety Here

Occasionally your candidate is invited to speak on shows such as "Barry King LIve" or "50/50," in which case you are presented with an issue and a list of possible responses; often that list represents a range of rhetorical approaches. I would like to have had the opportunity to see the effect of advertisements constructed with similar attention to rhetorical subtlety.

When purchasing an advertising campaign, you select an issue, and then take a stand by selecting "I Favor..." "I Oppose," "Opponent Favors," or "Opponent Opposes." The text of the ads is always the same, but a background slide changes in order to supply some emotional context. The limited options sometimes create very strange combinations. Playing as John Kerry campaigning in California, I wanted to rally my liberal base with an advertisement on the abortion issue. Here is the ad that resulted.

The "crying baby" slide simply doesn't go with the intended message. A related quirk: the manual indicates that an endorsement from the "Christian Confederation" will add 10+ to your "Right to Life" rating, but in-game it is actually implemented as a penalty to your "Abortion Rights" rating. In a similar way, it's not possible to promote Affirmative Action indirectly, by decrying racism; nor is it possible to challenge Tax Cuts indirectly, but preaching the value of a particular government program. The game is still fun, but role-playing a particular candidate is not particularly rewarding -- the game too often penalizes you for taking a real stand. But I suppose that's part of the "message" this game teaches about politics.

Mediocre Media Models

As in a real presidential campaign, the media play an important role in this game. Candidate attributes include a rating for media bias,
I like the newsticker that scrolls across the top of the screen, but I'd rather see it in larger type, at the bottom (where TV news shows put their tickers).

Progress is shown by weekly news wrap-ups and brief clippings from news articles. The writing in these clippings is uneven. For instance, I was amused by, "'Bush can kiss my Democratic butt!' one intoxicated staff member exclaimed during a campaign party," but I cringed at "With a forth [sic] of the election process behind us, one has to shrug their shoulders..."

There is no in-game mechanism that permits you to appeal to your candidate's record to respond to a false attack, which of course means that you are free to attack your opponent at any time, regardless of the truth. I would have liked to see the candidate's "integrity" score affected by such ethical choices. The game system features a "webmaster" who reduces advertising expenses in a particular state, and one of the media outlets that requests interviews is "JoeUser.com," but I would like to have seen a "blogger" asset, who might catch candidates for taking one stand in one state, and then the opposite stand in another state (which the game permits without any penalties).

Further Resources

At bedtime, my son and I have been going through America Votes: How Our President is Elected (Scholastic, 64 pages). The vocabulary is a bit advanced for a six-year-old, so I've been spending almost as much time explaining each page in my own words as I have spent reading it aloud to him. I'm thrilled that my son will actually sit through a page or two on gerrymandering, chads, absentee ballots, and the struggle for women's rights and racial equality.

And while an election game is fun, I haven't see anything nearly as cool as this animated political map of the country, which indicates on a daily basis (since June) how polling data indicate each state will wind up on Nov 2.

Update, 06 Nov. My wife suggested that I add a plug for So You Want to Be President?