BECOME A POLITICAL GAMER
Ever thought about what it would be like to run the government as a president or a prime minister? Or do you think that such a job would very easy because it allows you to exercise the power? Perhaps you want to test certain political ideology in a simulation and see how it works? In either case, the game Democracy 4, the latest of the series with long tradition allows you to do all of that and way more. It does not contain spectacular CGI and there is no action to which classical gamers are used to such as RTS, RPG, or FPS. There is only pure politics and your mission is to retain the support of your people through the elections.
With a higher than average learning curve and a bunch of structured data about policies, Democracy 4 may not offer as much fun as you expect from the game. But it does a really good job at simulating what it was created for. Obviously, the number 4 in a headline indicates that there were 3 versions of this game before. So for those who hear about it the first time it is worth mentioning that its creator company Positech Games has over 15 years of experience in the development of what today is known as the most realistic political game on the market. This is the best we humans could come up with so far in translating one of our weirdest social sciences into a game.
Should we make it the mandatory norm to reach a certain success score for every person to qualify as a politician in real life? Armies around the world already use different combat games for their soldiers to gain experience so why should it be any different with politicians. Moreover, should we include this game in the civic education programs of children in order to become acquainted with the world of politics in an interactive way? If there is such an opportunity that could result in increased citizens’ professional capacity then we should seize it. Welcome to Democracy 4 ladies and gentlemen! Do not let the screenshot of its interface intimidate you.
DESCRIPTION FROM THE CREATORS
“Democracy 4 lets you take the role of President / Prime minister, govern the country (choosing its policies, laws and other actions), and both transform the country as you see fit, while trying to retain enough popularity to get re-elected…
Built on a custom-built neural network designed to model the opinions, beliefs, thoughts and biases of thousands of virtual citizens, Democracy 4 is the state-of-the-art in political simulation games. A whole new vector-graphics engine gives the game a more adaptable, cleaner user interface, and the fourth in the series builds on the past while adding a host of new features such as media reports, coalition governments, emergency powers, three-party systems and a more sophisticated simulation that handles inflation, corruption and modern policy ideas such as quantitative easing, helicopter money, universal basic income and policies to cover current political topics such as police body cameras, transgender rights and tons more.
Democracy 4 is the ultimate sandbox for testing out your political ideas. We all think our politicians are useless and that we could do a better job ourselves, but is that really true? With one eye on the budget, one-eye on the polls, and somehow finding time to watch out for terrorist attacks at the same time, you will find that staying in power while changing society for the better is a tougher job than you ever imagined.
Would it really be a good idea to legalize all drugs? to give the police machineguns? to ban abortion? to invest heavily in green energy? would UBI really work? can you stay elected after cutting pensions in half to pay for your science budget? There is only one game that lets you find out!” Source
