Political Games Forever

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!

In a way, President Forever 2008 is a political board game. You can easily imagine a board laid out in front of you with a map of the states, political cards and tokens for various game activities, money like in Monopoly, and so on. It is turn-based.

The difference, of course, is that political board games are limited in the complexity of the world they can simulate much more so than computer political games - and it’s difficult to create playable players without other humans around in a board game. In a sense, then, games like President Forever 2008 + Primaries are really sophisticated, hyper-board games.

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!

I thought it would be fun to go through the TheorySpark political simulation games that have been released up to now. Here they are:

December 19th, 2003: President Forever 2004. The game that really started it all. ‘Nuff said.

June, 2004: Prime Minister Forever - Canada 2004. Our first parliamentary simulation game, this featured the ability to target ridings (the equivalent of districts, constituencies, or divisions in other political systems).

September, 2004: Prime Minister Forever - Australia 2004. Our first foray into politics in the southern hemisphere. First game to feature Australia’s Two Party Preference system (curious what that means? try it out!). Just as Australia’s animals are a little different, so are their politics.

April, 2005: Prime Minister Forever - British Version. Renamed from U.K. due to an unfortunate acronym. This game engine could accommodate the most districts yet, with Britain having over 600.

April, 2005: Premier Forever - British Columbia. A little provincial game. Fun.

August, 2005: Chancellor Forever. Our first non-English speaking version was released simultaneously (Kanzler Forever), it also featured the pretty neat German electoral system. (You can try it out here, or if you sprechen die Deutsche, here).

January, 2006: Prime Minister Forever - Canada 2006. Our first sequel within the parliamentary games. Expanded game engine. We never know when Canada will have another election, so this series keeps us on our toes.

October, 2006: President Forever 2008 + Primaries. Added primaries functionality, and a host of other features. This was our biggest single project ever, and much of the changes were ‘under the hood’ (that is, you can’t tell by looking at the game how much it actually has changed - hopefully, we’ll be able to demonstrate this more later).

June, 2007: Campaigns Forever for President Forever 2008 + Primaries. This was the first full campaign editor, made for the American game. It is what we use to make the official campaigns, but now anyone can make their own.

October, 2007: Prime Minister Forever - Australia 2007. Retained the 2004 game engine, but added a new 2007 scenario.

Next will be another important add-on for President Forever 2008 + Primaries, Multiplayer, which we will be announcing more details of very soon (right here).

Then look no further.

I have just finished playing President Forever 2008 + Primaries Multiplayer. It changes everything.

Playing a game against computer players in P4E8 is fun, but it isn’t exactly the most challenging experience anymore for me. It was like trying to rack up yet another really high high-score on Civilization II … “What, only 300% this time? Let’s try for 350% …”

We have recently completed 2-human-player multiplayer games for President Forever 2008 + Primaries Multiplayer (soon to be unlimited human players), and now everything has changed. Just adding 1 human opponent makes everything much more difficult. Your opponents are no longer predictable. Thought you could bank on dominating New Hampshire? Think again, as your human opponent maneuvers to slip in and steal it from you. You strain to determine your opponents’ strategies, trying to figure out what they’re focusing on and what they’re ignoring. Endorsements suddenly become an exercise in nerve-calming. “Okay, I’m almost there … almost have the endorsement … What? They plowed 5 PIPs at the last moment! Ugh!” And so on.

Probably the nicest new feature that comes in handy for multiplayer is the timing feature. Now the game host can decide how long each turn lasts. This makes for adrenalin-pounding turns, as you frenetically attempt to make those ads, get a good read on the latest polls and momentum numbers, create strategic footsoldiers, get in barnstorming, AND … What?! Next turn. Much more like the heat of a real campaign, where your decisions almost always are in the context of limited time.

Next up is seeing what it’s like playing with more than 2 human players … Will report back soon.