The Political Machine 2020 is Here, It's time to enter the race!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1188680

https://youtu.be/xlQdcErv49s

Win the hearts and minds of America’s voters and take the 2020 presidential election by storm in Stardock’s popular political strategy game. Choose a candidate and run against a computer opponent or a candidate controlled by another person over the Internet.

Candidates include current Democratic front-runners like Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders, as well as Internet favorites such as Andrew Yang and Tulsi Gabbard. Republican candidates include Donald Trump, George W. Bush and Mitt Romney.

Don’t like any of the current candidates? No problem, just create your own! Or, if you believe everything is going to hell in a handbasket, play as the Giant Meteor and adopt some truly wild ideologies (ban all video games - they’ll rot your brain!).

The Political Machine 2020 features brand new unique ideology trees for candidates, which allows them to play very differently from each other. Throughout the game, you’ll visit Town Halls to gain ideology points that you will be able to spend to own certain issues. For instance, Bernie Sanders has ‘Medicare for All’ as an issue he can own, while Donald Trump can use points to purchase the ‘Build the Wall’ issue.

Do you think you have what it takes? Take to the campaign trail and show the nation why you should be the next President of the United States of America!


Participate in Town Hall events to earn ideology points and solidify your position on hot issues with your voters.

Use your power and money to purchase ads to discredit your opponent and influence voters. The greater enthusiasm your base has for an issue, the more effective your ad campaigns will be.



Accept invitations to various talk shows across the country in order to share your opinion on issues important to the American people.

Play as one of several candidates, each with their own custom stats like stamina, intelligence, charisma, media bias, and more.



Customize your own front runner and race for the White House.

Purchase advertisements, travel across the country to campaign, and hire operatives to enhance your PR or cripple your opponent. Be wary - if you overspend and need extra cash, it might come from somewhere that will shake voters’ confidence in you!



A sophisticated underlying simulation model uses census data and real issues to test your political savvy.

With poll tracking and leaderboards, you can see how well people are playing as their candidates or what issues they are supporting over time.



Torrid affairs, natural disasters, email scandals, and other "breaking news" events can pop up and change the direction of the campaign for better or worse.


https://store.steampowered.com/app/1188680

By Brad Wardell

The biggest, most game changing feature of The Political Machine 2020 are the ideology trees. Each candidate can have their own ideology tree which makes Bernie Sanders play quite a bit differently than say Joe Biden.

For today's entry, I am going to try out making a custom candidate and choose the Fascism ideology.

I'm going to loosely base him off of one of my favorite villains of Stephen King's book, The Dead Zone:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEE141IC4Q8



We include a bunch of ideologies with the game. They're pretty easy to make your own. In short, an ideology is a list of key issues that candidate can get behind during the campaign. I'll show you here how they work and how they can affect the game.




[He has early support from his home state of Maine.]



Ideologies tend to have multiple heads to them. Trying to go down a new path gets very expensive while, by contrast, the more extreme you get on an existing ideological branch the cheaper it gets. It is very tempting to pick "crazy" stuff.

Here, we have Nationalism, a Stronger Federal Government and Socialized capitalism. None of these seem too crazy...



















This is a phenomenon that exists in the real world. Most savvy politicians don't advertise some of their more controversial positions. The challenge is to see if you can still win even if you have a horrible, horrible platform.

But it's a very delicate balance because you can't win the game simply because most people agree with you on the issues. One only has to look at the primaries to see that many candidates have perfectly fine platforms and positions. What they lack is enthusiasm.








The North America crazy position got people talking about your candidacy (not in a good way). But now you can take out ads talking about something generic like "Good jobs". Everyone supports that. But mind you, people are still talking about the crazy positions you took.





The fascist platform hinges on disarming the population. The problem here is that we have Stillson running as a Republican so this will really hurt him with them. Let's see what happens.





Once you disarm the population, it's now time to start getting rid of the wrong people... But it probably would not be a good idea to publicly promote that position if you want to win.

















These polls are an exaggeration of real world polls. On the issue of United North America, everyone who answered our survey said those who thought this was an important issue voted for Bernie.

Same for Mandatory gun buy back. Those who believed this was an important issue voted for Bernie as well.


Stillson did get Wisconsin. This was more of a voter turn out issue. Even the AI running the Democratic candidate fails to visit enough thus, even though they like Sanders, the enthusiasm wasn't sufficient to get people to go out and vote.

Lessons Learned

So what is the lesson? If you're going to run as a fascist, keep your crazier plans to yourself. Just like real politicians.

By Brad Wardell



The Political Machine is a strategy/simulation game. What has made it so popular over the years is that while it is a game, it has a pretty serious and robust simulation running behind it. Most of the data is collected from a wide array census results, surveys and demographic research.

Every four years when we update the data, we are constantly surprised on the changes we see in different states. The opioid epidemic is one example. This issue wasn’t on our radar four years ago. Now it’s actually a pretty big issue in numerous states.

But in other areas, we can’t rely on data. We have to make subjective judgments. Take candidate design for instance. Mayor Pete has gone through a few designs this time. Some people are easier to create caricatures than others. He’s hard. At least that’s what the artists tell me. Mr. Buttigieg is doing well in the early primaries but should he become the nominee, can he win?

Some candidates are harder to win with than others. I would say Pete Buttigieg is a bit harder to win with than some of the others. Here’s why: He has low minority appeal and for Democrats, there are a few states that become pretty hard to win as a Democrat if your minority appeal isn’t strong. The problem however is that minority appeal is a subjective rating we give the candidates. That’s why it’s so tricky. What makes us qualified to say his minority appeal is weaker than say Joe Biden’s? We have some polling data but that’s really a cop-out on something that is simply a rating on a scale from 1 to 10.















Overall, Mayor Pete is a bit tougher to play as than say Hillary Clinton or Barrack Obama but a skilled player can definitely win.

Let the Campaign Begin!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1188680



Stardock announced its new political strategy/simulation game today, The Political Machine 2020. The PC strategy game allows players to choose a candidate and run for President against either a computer opponent or a candidate controlled by another person over the Internet.

Candidates include the current Democratic front-runners including Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg, as well as Internet favorites such as Andrew Yang and Tulsi Gabbard. Republican candidates include Donald Trump, George W. Bush and Mitt Romney. Players can also design their own candidates to take on the campaign trail to win the hearts and minds of American voters.





“This game takes politics and brings them to players in a way that is fun and interesting,” said Stardock CEO Brad Wardell. “We use current data to model the US and voters in the game. The game emulates some of the unexpected things a candidate might have to deal with -- natural disasters, national tragedies, economic crises -- and immerses the player right in the middle of the insanity.”

The game now features unique ideology trees for the candidates. This allows each candidate to play very differently from one another.



“During the game, candidates will visit Town Halls which give them ideology points,” said Wardell. “They can then spend these points on owning certain issues. For instance, Bernie Sanders has ‘Medicare for All’ as an issue he can own, while Donald Trump uses points to purchase the ‘Build the Wall’ issue.”

Each issue is modeled on a per state basis with their voter support based on polling data to allow for an accurate simulation of how those issues will play out in different states.

“Since the object of the game is to win 270 electoral votes, players have to focus on winning the electoral college, which means paying attention to what issues voters care about in swing states. What plays well in Texas or California might hurt you in Ohio or Florida,” said Wardell.





Previous editions of The Political Machine have predicted the winner of nearly every state since 2004 with the exception of the 2016 edition, which was infamously patched due to it predicting Donald Trump would win Wisconsin.

“The game relies heavily on simulating voter enthusiasm, minority turn-out, and what political issues are most important in a given state,” said Wardell. “Sometimes the results surprise us, such as in the 2016 edition where the game was projecting Donald Trump to beat Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin. We assumed we had a bug and patched it but it turned out, the underlying model was working. Turn-out is key.”

The 2020 edition is a complete rewrite of the game with vastly improved graphics and a more sophisticated simulation that combines polling data, voter enthusiasm, and the most recent US census results to deliver a game that is both fun to play for casual players, and realistic enough for political wonks.

The Political Machine 2020 will be released this Spring.