Comments on: Three Moves Ahead Episode 50 – Designing Government and Debating Detail

By: Quinten

Quinten — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 22:23:51 +0000

I asked miss Rand, and she told me that Government is the enemy. That’s why I think there should be an action adventure game where you play a CEO and the final boss is Obama in a a Bolshevik mech. The games name is Red Alert 4: Capitalist meltdown.

By: Michael A.

Michael A. — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 18:44:43 +0000

The Government is the enemy? I thought Big Business is the Government. ;-)

By: Ginger Yellow

Ginger Yellow — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:44:54 +0000

“Tropico is an excellent example of this. The capitalist faction will complain if you don’t have any factories, but they don’t seem to mind that those factories are state owned and controlled, along with every other building in the country, and that every single person on the island works for the government.”

In the new game, you can turn your hotels over to the private sector – you have no control over them but still collect taxes. It’s not much, admittedly.

“What I want to see is a game where the government is the AI and you control private industry. SimChamberofCommerce. Like a city builder, it would require that you are essentially the God of enterprise but the adversary in this case is Government.”

There are games that sort of do this: the Capitalism and Industry Giant series. Admittedly, the government isn’t really the enemy, but you control an enterprise rather than having a planned economy.

By: Ebyan Alvarez-Buylla

Ebyan Alvarez-Buylla — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:38:56 +0000

@Thomas Kiley – The overarching sentiment seems to be exactly your qualms with Democracy– that sliders and dialog boxes, outside of a larger context of a more fleshed out game, leave something to be desired.

I would actually add to this statement and echo Bruce’s feelings on Hearts of Iron III: tweaking sliders to enact trivial, minimal results is simply not rewarding enough to keep me caring about a game.

By: Thomas Kiley

Thomas Kiley — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:19:56 +0000

I was surprised that Democracy didn’t come up, it being THE government game. I only played the demo, but the problem I found was it was sufficiently realistic that you never felt like you had won, just made a compromise. Which is fine except the game was too discrete, despite its best attempts, there was a limited number of set options. This meant that your compromise rarely felt like you were appeasing differing views but rather compromising with the system.

Also, without the out of government context, the decisions felt meaningless – something which a people focus may bring.

I would like to see a social-government game – ideally with a human game manager so that you could be more creative with your laws rather than just choosing between two options.

By: Quinten

Quinten — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 19:51:40 +0000

I think Sim City is a very conservative game, reflective of the pull and tug between government and business. They aren’t uber left because all the mayor (that’s you) is doing is zoning, and building government buildings. The whole point is to make money, which requires private business. Tom probably doesn’t like it that the people don’t rise up and nationalize the industries. I am bothered that there isn’t a Dagny Taggart mod that let’s train companies build their own track and routes.