The Political Machine 2008

Jun 20, 2008

The silly season in politics begins as Barack Obama and John McCain face off for the Presidency of the United States. While news reports cast this as a clash of Good vs. Evil (or Evil vs. Good depending on which way the media bias falls) the dedicated strategy gamers over at Stardock decided that we all needed a break from elephants and donkeys trampling over everything on their way to the White House. Their quick fix is The Political Machine 2008, a light-hearted value-priced "beer & pretzels" simulation of the US Presidential election that offers some fun strategic gameplay along with the profound realization that all politicians are basically bobbleheads.

The premise of The Political Machine 2008 is about as topical as it gets. Players can harness their inner Karl Roves to guide cute McCain or Obama characters or a number of other political heavy hitters including George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Al Gore, Hillary Clinton or Abraham Lincoln through a 41-week campaign on their way to Presidential glory. Each candidate is presented in a cute little bobblehead form that does a surprisingly good job of conveying the essential character of the person they're supposed to be representing. Should the included candidates be unsatisfactory (and really, how could they not be?) the game offers a terrific create-a-candidate system that owes a not-small debt to Nintendo's Mii system. In our case, we used it to create simulations of GameSpy editors that came surprisingly close to the real thing (and were thus pretty much unelectable).

Under the candy-coated exterior there's a pretty robust strategy game. Every candidate in the game is given a series of RPG-like characteristics that rate their personal qualities and abilities such as charisma, personal appearance, fund-raising ability, credibility and experience. Each of these will have an impact on the way a player must run their campaign. "Media Bias," for example, will impact how much of an uphill battle your candidate has in swaying independent voters (George W. Bush rates a one while Hollywood golden child Al Gore nets a nine). "Experience," on the other hand, determines how difficult it is to get the endorsement of various special interest groups (here Barack Obama nets a two while Dick Cheney scores a 10).

Once players have picked their candidate, party and opponent, play proceeds to a stylized version of the U.S. map with all 50 states highlighted. The player can then move their candidate from state to state performing as many actions each week as their physical stamina will allow. Actions include building campaign offices that can raise money or build up political capital used to hire political operatives like smear merchants, or garner all-important endorsements from fictional political action groups like the Christian Confederation or the National Association for Women. Players can also give speeches, run issues-oriented ads on topics such as the war in Iraq, illegal immigration or the high price of gas, hold fund-raisers or appear on nationally broadcast programs like "Barry King Live" and "The Coldcut Repertoire." Once a candidate is out of stamina, the week is over. Once 41-weeks have gone by, it's Election Day, where the game tallies awareness versus how well the candidates' positions synch with that of the state to decide a winner.

The best part of playing the game is realizing just how like a classic strategy game a political campaign is. Each state is worth so many "points" in the Electoral College and, as in reality, there's no one solution that will satisfy everyone in America. Take a stand for drilling for oil in ANWR and a candidate will see their fortunes rise in Alaska (3 electoral votes) while falling among Democrats everywhere else. A Republican looking to put a traditionally "blue" state in play by taking a more liberal position on an issue on gun control or Global Warming risks alienating their base in places like Texas where they can't afford to lose. Navigating between these shifting dynamics and trying to thread the magic path that leads to 270 electoral votes is an amazingly compelling strategic challenge even if you're not a political junkie.

There are unfortunately a couple of issues -- some gameplay related, some technical -- that keep The Political Machine 2008 from being the ballot box winner it wants to be. As much fun as navigating the waves of public opinion are, it's all too easy to take up mutually contradictory positions on issues without penalty. Advocating universal health care is one thing, but if your opponent also advocates lower taxes it'd be nice to be able to call them on it and have these positions affect the voting more than they seem to.

Some of the issues are also too broad and can be used as an all-purpose club within the game. It'd be great to jettison "the environment" as an issue (who's not rhetorically in favor of the environment?) for more concrete policies such as off-shore oil exploration or building new nuclear power plants. The game also needs to offer a bit more graphic information to the player. It'd be nice, for example, to get a nationwide overlay of your opponent's awareness in addition to your own. The "Strategy" screen needs to be automatically synched to the "Polling data" screen in order to plan which states need attention.

The biggest gameplay issue, though, is one of replayability. When the 2008 election loses its luster, the game offers several really fun scenarios, such as the American election of 1860, a parody election in Europe as seen through the eyes of an American high school student and the leadership of an alien world. There's also a campaign mode where players can try their hands against great political figures of the past ranging from Teddy Roosevelt to the nearly unbeatable George Washington. The problem is that there's no randomness to any of these scenarios. Once a player understands the issues and how different regions of the country react to them, the games end up becoming very similar as players chase the same states over and over. A public opinion randomizer or giving the player the ability to create their own issues or scenarios would have helped tremendously.

Finally there's the issue of multiplayer, where what should be one of the game's shining moments instead falls down thanks to poor implementation. Technical and design issues abound with Stardock's own multiplayer lobby such as a poor chat system. We had tremendous difficulty actually getting a multiplayer game up and running: Sometimes the game wouldn't connect to the setup lobby, other times it wouldn't recognize that both players were ready or it wouldn't allow player to pick candidates of the opposing party. There is a LAN setup that does work and once players do manage to get a game going it's terrific, but getting there is such a tough process that most people won't bother. (Stardock has acknowledged some problems with the multiplayer systems and is working on solutions.)

In the end, despite the issues, The Political Machine 2008 stands out as a really solid "beer & pretzels" strategy game. As disappointing as the game's lack of replayability and the technical issues that mar its multiplayer component are, the game still offers a tremendous amount of gameplay at a bargain price of $19.99. Political junkies and strategy gamers looking for a nice change of pace will certainly appreciate it. If it didn't quite deliver on everything it promised, it certainly came closer than any real-world politician in recent memory.