The Political Machine 2016 v1.1 update was released today! New candidates, issues, and more. :)
Play as one of over a dozen new candidates!
Choose from previous politicians who were petitioning for presidency! You’ve been asking when you could play as old candidates, and the answer is: right now! The added campaigners include Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, John Kerry, Ron Paul, and more.
Handle unexpected situations!
There is never any guarantee that things will go smoothly during an election season – heck, it’s probably guaranteed that things will go wrong during an election season! The newest event in this update will test how you deal with the death of a supreme court justice. Will you buckle under the pressure when the votes are on the line?
Take a stance on brand new issues!
How you choose to respond to the nation’s hot topics will have a direct impact on your polling results. The team has added some new and current real-world issues for your presidential hopeful to deal with on their campaign trail. Deliver tough speeches and prepare smear campaigns against your opponents for issues like the Flint water crisis, reducing the wealth gap, and more!
Explore new customization options and multiplayer features!
To enrich your experience, several new facial customization options have been added for female candidates. The team has also added UI scaling for folks with high resolution monitors. Multiplayer mode now also has a “time left” function that will show in each game to note how much time you have until the game auto-advances to the next turn.
The Political Machine 2016 v1.3 update went out today and brings the VPs in along with new political issues in the game. :)
In The Political Machine, you run for President of the United States. You can run using existing candidates such as Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton or create your candidate. One recent update allows you to simulate an actual election with the AI running each candidate’s campaign to see how well they do.
The simulation’s top issues for 2016, according to the Trump AI are Securing the Borders, Attacking Mrs. Clinton’s email handling and preventing domestic terrorism. For Clinton AI, it’s Reducing the wealth gap, Attacking Trump’s Erratic positions, and reducing health care costs. Of course, that’s only what the computer AI thinks they should do.
New candidates
Jill Stein (Presidential Candidate – Green Party)
Bill Weld (Vice-Presidential Candidate – Libertarian Party)
Ajamu Baraka (Vice-Presidential Candidate – Green Party)
Tim Kaine (Vice-Presidential Candidate – Democratic Party)
New issues:
Dakota Access Pipeline
National Anthem Protest
Zika Funding
I’ve been doing a lot of Hillary vs. Trump simulations (you can do that in the game, it’s one of the start up options) where the AI plays both sides.
It’s pretty interesting watching them go after Ohio so hard.
This week I worked on some balance tweaks and it’s a tough thing because it’s subjective.
For instance, on a scale from 1 to 10, what’s Ms. Clinton’s Stamina? I have it at 6 (Trump has a 7). It makes a big difference in the game because it determines how many moves they get in a turn.
Election Integrity (New) Politicians on both sides are questioning the validity of election results, suspect either vote tampering or voter suppression. This issue is especially important to Trump.
Probing Hillary’s Emails (updated) The FBI’s eleventh-hour revelation of new emails has added to the campaign chaos and increasing awareness of this issue.
New random events
Internet Revelations
Whether it was hackers or cyber-punks or just troublesome teens, someone has been breaking into emails and sharing secrets with the world, causing an unneeded distraction at this critical stage in the campaign. Reduces a candidate’s credibility with voters.
Foreign Interference
Foreign powers have developed a sudden interest in American democracy and seeing a specific candidate win. This has raised questions about the integrity of our democracy. This event reduces a candidate’s ability to raise money; it also raises the importance of the “Nationalism” and of “Election Integrity” issues.
Internal Party Revolt
Both political parties have rebels stirring in revolt against their candidate, questioning everything they do, said they’ll do, or quietly bragged about doing. Reduces a candidate’s support across the board.
Ah, I like that! This could become one of those games that pivots into something else completely like Tom has mentioned on his podcast! Maybe if Trump wins, we could fold it right into a zombie apocalypse game, maybe State if Decay - if Hillary wins, load up something appropriately dystopian, Syndicate or Deus Ex or the like.
I went through some of our ‘Exit Polls’ from the game to see what candidates people have been playing as, what issues were most important, and what party got the most wins.
That is interesting. I dont knwo what to make of the data :-)
Bernie supporters dreaming of what could have been or people creating their own ‘perfect’ candidate with the custom candidate.
