14 DAY TRIAL // Politics is a terribly complicated thing and there aren't many games out there that have a clear political agenda. There's talk of politics in games and there are even some games that try and sell "diplomacy" as the same thing with "politics," but no game dabbles in the real life constants of campaigns, candidates, debates, Presidents and Vice Presidents.
One notable exception to the rule was 2004's The Political Machine, a complex game that put the player in the elegant shoes of a campaign manager for a real or fictitious candidate with the clear goal of getting his man President. The game was so well crafted and so close to real politics that Brad Wardell, who is Stardock's CEO and Lead Designer, said that the game was predicted as early as June 2004 and that Ohio would be the main swing state to decide who becomes President of the USA.
Now, Stardock is announcing that it's working on a sequel to the 2004 game. The core mechanics of the game are the same and the goal is again to win the United States Presidency, but there will be some changes under the hood. A player might either pick a historical candidate, a contemporary figure, like Barack Obama or John McCain, or a historical figure. But he also has the option of customizing his own candidate by allotting character points to various areas of expertise.
There will be television appearances to tackle, debates to be won and lost, spin doctors to be hired to create campaign messages and primaries to be won. The game will take the player from around the summer of 2007, when potential candidacies are first announced, to the finish line that is Election Day 2008, when the President is actually elected.
The visual element also gets an upgrade, with candidates being represented as big bobble heads and the other areas of the game getting slick 3D look. The game is set to be released in June of 2008 and will feature a multiplayer mode where players can go head to head in on-line campaigns.
Given the influence that politics can have over videogames, it's nice to know that videogamers can also influence politics, even if it's, ironically, through a videogame.