How would you guys and gals feel about a game set in the world of US politics? I know it’s a touchy issue for a lot of people and while I’ll do my best I think some bias is more or less inevitable when doing something like this. In order to minimize this, the focus will be on the individual people involved instead of directly looking at the merits of policies or anything like that but again, I know better than to think I can avoid having any opinions end up in the finished product.
I don’t mean to rain on your parade, but a couple of things:
A. I’m not sure how much interest there is going to be in such a thing, but I could very well be wrong. That shouldn’t keep you from doing what you want though.
B. I’m not sure how much I like the idea of a potentially politically charged game being on my site. Not because I disagree with the concept, but because it invites people to begin bringing political discussions on my site, which are strictly banned. If the understanding was that ZERO posts containing political discussion would be tolerated, and would be enforced according to the rules I’ve laid out concerning political posts, then that would be fine. Post discussing the game, the mechanics, etc. would be fine. Posts, for instance, arguing about the portrayal of certain political figures in the game would not. It would be mechanics only. If that can be done, then you have my blessing.
I think you’d need to edit the rule, Kilif, since it currently only bans political talk unless it is directly related to the content at hand.
(I also think that the political ban is a boon, I’m very political and if there were certain recurring arguments I probably wouldn’t frequent the site, which would be a shame because I like it here.)
Personally I am struggling to think of anything less sexy than American politics, but I likewise wouldn’t be surprised if there were a hotbed of folks who wanted to fatten up a bunch of old rich people (and I’m not here to degrade them for their taste if so).
[quote=“Kostromama, post:3, topic:1191”]I think you’d need to edit the rule, Kilif, since it currently only bans political talk unless it is directly related to the content at hand.
(I also think that the political ban is a boon, I’m very political and if there were certain recurring arguments I probably wouldn’t frequent the site, which would be a shame because I like it here.)
Personally I am struggling to think of anything less sexy than American politics, but I likewise wouldn’t be surprised if there were a hotbed of folks who wanted to fatten up a bunch of old rich people (and I’m not here to degrade them for their taste if so).[/quote]
Right you are, it would need to be updated to handle this.
To attempt to answer the original question (while skirting around the site’s rules) I probably wouldn’t be interested personally.
Remember you have an international audience here, not just US citizens. So any game that is based on the political system there would have to take pains to explain what is going on as you can’t assume people will know (and that will be hard). It’s the classic problem of what you can rely on as general knowledge in your player base. While it’s safe to assume everyone here knows that eating too much makes you fat, you can’t assume that people know how the US political system works. How much do you know about English/Scottish/Welsh/Northern Ireland politics, about European politics? On a day to day basis I can’t remember which is the (more) right wing party in the US, and which animal represents each one. My only real reference points are occasional news stories (usually only prominent every four years), and the US remake of House of Cards (the original British version is still much better in my opinion).
You could set it in a ficitional country - with a much simpler (and thus more easily explained) system. You could make it so the player’s initial choices set the game’s perspective on policy so any bias would be in the direction the player’s character would “approve” of. Or you could go for really satirical - making fun of the whole thing. Just some thoughts.
Thank you all for the thoughtful feedback! You’ve helped me see that this is honestly too much of a minefield to be worth diving into, especially since politics is such a contentious issue these days.
In case anyone was curious, the basic premise was going to be that you were an up and coming politician whose image was built at least partly on your looks, but who was finding staying in shape increasingly difficult in the face of so many formal dinners and feel good events where you would be expected to sample local foods while on the campaign trail. You’d engage in intrigue and maneuvering as the main plot, with the weight gain kept in the background, at least until it started causing problems for you.
The overall tone would have been a lot closer to say The West Wing or Charlie Wilson’s War than House of Cards, so generally pretty idealistic and focused on the human side of politics. Current politicians would certainly not have been depicted because aside from being kinda creepy that would just be too much of an invitation to derail things into real world politics.
How about modifying the concept a little bit? Trade out politicians for socialites. You still have to schmooze and make friends, but that way you can sidestep the minefields associated with more political topics.
To reduce the charge, you could simply set the game in a fictional country instead of the USA. This also lets you customize the amount of law complexity.
It’s funny, I had also thought about setting it in the past/future to get around this issue but I’d thought that using present day US politics I could skip over explaining how things are supposed to work as well as providing me with an easy source of details to pull from. I’d also considered having history diverge sometime around the 70’s from the real world, both to avoid having any current politicians appear and to allow me to avoid taking issues straight from the headlines.