Political Games Forever

The Alberta election is today, and we have it covered with Premier Forever – Alberta. Enjoy!

Looking for an Alberta election game? Then look no further. We are about to release Premier Forever – Alberta, extending our provincial game series to another Western province. We intend to have the game released before the election on March 3rd.

The game will use the Premier Forever engine, and will feature 12, count ‘em, 12 Alberta scenarios. We’re excited about this game and the upcoming Alberta election.

The years included in this game are:

Alberta 1967, 1971, 1975, 1979, 1982, 1986, 1989, 1993, 1997, 2001, 2004, and 2008. Phew! An incredible opportunity to figure out Alberta politics, and enough to occupy the political wonk for many, many hours.

President Forever 2008 + Primaries was reviewed by Scott Colbourne of the Globe and Mail in January. Some quotes:

“Barack Obama wins the Iowa caucuses, with John Edwards in second and Hillary Clinton a distant third. He takes the New Hampshire primary in a landslide and seems destined to win the Democratic nomination and with it the presidency of the United States of America.

Yes, it’s all going according to plan in President Forever 2008 + Primaries, an election simulator for PCs, and now I unleash the big guns: click the “crusaders” button, select Oprah Winfrey, say goodbye to some valuable influence and command points and hello to a boost in the polls. [...]

A great way to learn how an electoral system works.”

For the record, it is difficult to beat Clinton starting in the standard October 1st scenario (which is what Colbourne goes on to note) – which is a testament to how well Obama’s real campaign has been run. The Democratic side is really monolithic at that point, with Clinton having a large lead nationally and leading in practically every state.

GameTunnel released their top 5 computer simulation games for 2007, and our US political simulation game President Forever 2008 + Primaries made it!

“The game is brilliantly, and often dauntingly, deep, giving players full control over every aspect of the political aspirations of the current presidential hopefuls (or your own custom characters). There are few more fascinating things to watch than the US President-picking process, and President Forever does it all in a riveting manner that kept us on the campaign trail for weeks.”

A review of President Forever 2008 + Primaries (US political game) from Race42008.com. The reviewer knows what he’s talking about, and there is some nice depth to the review. Some quotes:

“Let me warn you before we begin, however: once you get this game and learn all of its intricacies, you will become the biggest nerd you know. This game will have you thinking of politics more than you already do and dreaming up strategeries to win not only the general election, but your party’s nomination to get the chance to run in the general.”

“I give this game made by TheorySpark and 80soft.com a solid 9.5 out of 10. Simply put, it is amazing in its depth and scope.”

“You will probably lose the first couple times you play it, but once you get it’s intricacies figured out you will absolutely love this game. Your friends and family will never stop calling you a nerd, and you won’t care.”

“Oh, and the game is expanding, even as I type this. Once you buy the game (for 20 bucks, for crying out loud! It would be a bargain at three times that price!), you have a button called “AutoUpdate” you can turn on or off. Turn it on and leave it on. It checks for updates of the game every time you run the program. And by updates, some of what I mean is updated scenarios… tired of playing the 2008 scenario? Try taking on Kerry as Bush in 2004. Or try winning with McCain in 2000. Or play as Perot in 1992 and become the first independent President. Oh yeah – did I mention this game was deep?”

“The name of the game for President Forever 2008 +Primaries is replay value, and there is plenty of it to go around. You will never get tired of wasting entire afternoons, weekends, and yes, maybe even workdays pursuing your quest for the Presidency with this game. Buy it now. It will be the best $20 you’ve spent in a long time.”

Check out the review!

La Repubblica, Italy’s largest daily newspaper, recently featured our political game President Forever 2008 + Primaries. It’s summary:

“without any doubt the best game on the American presidential elections, President Forever” (translated)

If you speak Italian, you can read the article here.

Think your political game theory is tops? Then test it out. Try Politico.com’s Kingmaker game, here.

Essentially, this is an election market, but you bet nothing and get a big prize if you win. It’s your chance to apply all that political game theory you learned to the 2008 primaries elections.

You need to predict the actual percentages for the candidates in the primaries. Right now, you can make political predictions for the primaries up to Michigan’s on January 15, 2008. The person with the most points by March 4 wins.

You place your predictions by moving the candidate around. Here John Edwards’ chances are being set for the Iowa caucuses. A bar on a graph represents your prediction for each candidate. If you move the candidate up higher on the graph, the bar will become narrower, indicating a riskier prediction, because it covers fewer possible percentages for that candidate’s vote results. If you move a candidate to near the very bottom of the graph, you can cover a large range but with a much diminished payout. All in all, another neat political ‘game’.

(Or you can try this game.)

Have fun!

We are now close to entering the brave new world of online political games with President Forever 2008 Multiplayer.

We successfully tested a two-player online game, then a three-player game, and now a four-player game. You can read about these things here and here. Having played just a two-player game, all I can say is wow. This is politics like never before.

What will the online world for P4E8 look like? When it starts, it will be straightforward. A place you can meet other players, or start a private online game, with any other human player around the world. This is still a gigantic step beyond the current hot-seat games, where you need a roommate to be able to play against another human. With time, we will start adding extra features. A competition ladder, a recent game results page, and candidate average outcomes are at the top of our wish-list.

It will be interesting to see how online strategies, by humans who are far more resourceful than the computer players, will or will not mimic real-life strategies. You can even imagine campaign strategists trying out different strategies online to see how it might actually play out. The strategy is especially interesting in primaries like the Republicans’ current 2008 one, where players (candidates) are making alliances, non-aggression pacts, and deciding which opponents to attack and which ones to build up. As one pundit has put it, it’s a complex game of “bank shots,” and I can see this happening in online games with not just 2 human players in a primary, but 4, 6, or however many.

More updates soon.

When looking for 2008 polling data for creating or editing your own scenarios with Campaigns Forever, there are several good sources.

One is Pollster.com, which uses data analysis to create some nice projections of where the percentages really are at any given time, while trying to filter out the noise of any given one poll. They also have some nice graphs which give you a feel for the 2008 election up to this point.

RealClearPolitics also tries to do this, with a more simple averaging approach. Both have their strengths.

Pollster.com also has a nice blog section, which is easy to miss, with analysis of polls and polling related discussion. This post, for example, has a nice discussion on what it will mean for early primary and caucuses polling given that they are just after the holiday break. Check it out!

As speculated on in this previous post, “Fred Thompson and the Political Game Called Intrade”, Fred Thompson has now been surpassed by Ron Paul, John McCain, and Mike Huckabee on Intrade. Here are the latest numbers:

(Although Thompson is listed above McCain and Huckabee, their last trade numbers are above his.)

This continues the dramatic trend discussed in that previous post.

So what’s happened? …

(more…)