Oct 29, 2021
Espiocracy - Rafal Grochala
What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary (The Vision) and find out more on Steam page.
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This dev diary is outdated. The game implements staff of intelligence agencies through sections with operatives instead of individual operatives. New iteration of this set of mechanics will be described in a future dev diary.
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There's no spy fiction without sharp characters. Espiocracy, as a character-driven game, leans into this trope and places operatives behind most actions of the player. Operatives are closer to George Smiley than to James Bond - hard workers in the background rather than stars stealing the show, but they won't shy away from rare flashes of entertaining story arcs that we all cherish in spy genre.
Operatives - also known as operators, officers, agents, spies* - are employees of intelligence services in the game. Agencies commonly have hundreds of them and the largest ones (CIA, KGB) can sport tens of thousands. To preserve grand level of the strategy, player interacts only with a group of the most valuable (top) operatives.
Primarily, they exert positive influence: improve outcomes of operations, enrich intelligence collection in a particular country, mentor other operatives, and so on.
Details of their activity depend on the position in two-dimensional map of intelligence expertise, from technological to human intelligence, and from counterintelligence to foreign espionage. This system represents design principle typical for Espiocracy - simple enough to understand at a glance, complex enough to allow emergent strategic situations. Here, by gardening proper roster of top operatives you can steer the agency into the direction of technological surveillance behemoth or into empire of human manipulation.
As the game is focused on interaction with external world, there is no micromanagement of internal affairs. Operatives are fairly autonomous, don't require constant stream of orders, and do their thing wherever they have been posted.
Operatives directly perform operations - from infiltration to assassination - which will be covered in a separate dev diary. It suffices to say that their involvement follows macromanagement and autonomy, for instance instead of skill paths, characters grow by doing (or fall into alcoholism after too many murders...).
Operatives can seek new opportunities and bring them to the table if they are interesting enough:
They rarely cause problems, but this game couldn't be called Espiocracy without this (rare) negative event:
Depth dominates over breadth. There are multiple parameters instead of +X% traits. The actual traits are rare and cover exceptional attributes - such as PTSD.
These parameters are shaped by the world, grounded in events as they happened in the history (before 1946) and in the game (since 1946). If player's country is engaged in a war, you can expect that some veterans will end up as operatives and years later shore up in the group at the top. Local historical tidbits - such as names from the epoch or levels of illiteracy - are further increasing authenticity of characters.
Top operatives form a loose team. They socially interact and can form subgroups. There is synergy effect in like-minded group, but their efficiency can quickly get stale if kept without influx of different perspectives. Moreover, their views matter not only individually but also en masse, where for instance anti-Asian group of top operatives can hinder alliance with an agency from Asia.
Operatives are persistent over many years, also beyond the service. After leaving, they live in the world, either keeping low profile or becoming an influential actor who, say, writes books about espionage like Ian Fleming or... becomes the president like Vladimir Putin.
System of operatives went through many significant iterations. This dev diary presents elements that are well-tested, but it's certainly nowhere near final version.
It turns out that controllable human-like characters are pretty hard to get right in a strategy game. Extent of player's agency, required attention, detail of actions, positive and negative contributions, level of influence on the game world - all of these aspects amount to an intricate subject.
One of the largest - and most surprising - factors that requires subtle balance is... pre-gameplay player's perception. One of the early prototypes leaned more heavily into characters and led to the game being seen as "X-COM clone". Too large focus on management can quickly push the game into vicinity of tycoons. Too many numbers and sRPG players expect the attributes of this genre. As Espiocracy is, first and foremost, historical grand strategy game, the design of operatives aims to strike balance right between fun but not central and important enough.
All screenshots are obviously early work, as can be inferred from the lack of icons.
The next dev diary "Units" will be posted on November 12th.
If you're not already wishlisting Espiocracy, consider doing it:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1670650/Espiocracy/
There is also a small community around Espiocracy:
---
* - Meaning of terms "agent" and "spy" can vary widely. There are circles which use them to stress the difference between recruited foreign individuals and own operatives employed by the intelligence service. However, it remains semantically controversial, since, for instance, FBI employees are called agents and some services refer to their director as the top spy.
---
"What do you think spies are? They're a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors, pansies, sadists and drunkards, people who play cowboys and indians to brighten their rotten lives" - John le Carré
---
This dev diary is outdated. The game implements staff of intelligence agencies through sections with operatives instead of individual operatives. New iteration of this set of mechanics will be described in a future dev diary.
---
There's no spy fiction without sharp characters. Espiocracy, as a character-driven game, leans into this trope and places operatives behind most actions of the player. Operatives are closer to George Smiley than to James Bond - hard workers in the background rather than stars stealing the show, but they won't shy away from rare flashes of entertaining story arcs that we all cherish in spy genre.
Grand Level
Operatives - also known as operators, officers, agents, spies* - are employees of intelligence services in the game. Agencies commonly have hundreds of them and the largest ones (CIA, KGB) can sport tens of thousands. To preserve grand level of the strategy, player interacts only with a group of the most valuable (top) operatives.
Primarily, they exert positive influence: improve outcomes of operations, enrich intelligence collection in a particular country, mentor other operatives, and so on.
Details of their activity depend on the position in two-dimensional map of intelligence expertise, from technological to human intelligence, and from counterintelligence to foreign espionage. This system represents design principle typical for Espiocracy - simple enough to understand at a glance, complex enough to allow emergent strategic situations. Here, by gardening proper roster of top operatives you can steer the agency into the direction of technological surveillance behemoth or into empire of human manipulation.
As the game is focused on interaction with external world, there is no micromanagement of internal affairs. Operatives are fairly autonomous, don't require constant stream of orders, and do their thing wherever they have been posted.
Interaction
Operatives directly perform operations - from infiltration to assassination - which will be covered in a separate dev diary. It suffices to say that their involvement follows macromanagement and autonomy, for instance instead of skill paths, characters grow by doing (or fall into alcoholism after too many murders...).
Operatives can seek new opportunities and bring them to the table if they are interesting enough:
They rarely cause problems, but this game couldn't be called Espiocracy without this (rare) negative event:
Depth
Depth dominates over breadth. There are multiple parameters instead of +X% traits. The actual traits are rare and cover exceptional attributes - such as PTSD.
These parameters are shaped by the world, grounded in events as they happened in the history (before 1946) and in the game (since 1946). If player's country is engaged in a war, you can expect that some veterans will end up as operatives and years later shore up in the group at the top. Local historical tidbits - such as names from the epoch or levels of illiteracy - are further increasing authenticity of characters.
Top operatives form a loose team. They socially interact and can form subgroups. There is synergy effect in like-minded group, but their efficiency can quickly get stale if kept without influx of different perspectives. Moreover, their views matter not only individually but also en masse, where for instance anti-Asian group of top operatives can hinder alliance with an agency from Asia.
Operatives are persistent over many years, also beyond the service. After leaving, they live in the world, either keeping low profile or becoming an influential actor who, say, writes books about espionage like Ian Fleming or... becomes the president like Vladimir Putin.
Behind The Scenes
System of operatives went through many significant iterations. This dev diary presents elements that are well-tested, but it's certainly nowhere near final version.
It turns out that controllable human-like characters are pretty hard to get right in a strategy game. Extent of player's agency, required attention, detail of actions, positive and negative contributions, level of influence on the game world - all of these aspects amount to an intricate subject.
One of the largest - and most surprising - factors that requires subtle balance is... pre-gameplay player's perception. One of the early prototypes leaned more heavily into characters and led to the game being seen as "X-COM clone". Too large focus on management can quickly push the game into vicinity of tycoons. Too many numbers and sRPG players expect the attributes of this genre. As Espiocracy is, first and foremost, historical grand strategy game, the design of operatives aims to strike balance right between fun but not central and important enough.
Final Remarks
All screenshots are obviously early work, as can be inferred from the lack of icons.
The next dev diary "Units" will be posted on November 12th.
If you're not already wishlisting Espiocracy, consider doing it:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1670650/Espiocracy/
There is also a small community around Espiocracy:
---
* - Meaning of terms "agent" and "spy" can vary widely. There are circles which use them to stress the difference between recruited foreign individuals and own operatives employed by the intelligence service. However, it remains semantically controversial, since, for instance, FBI employees are called agents and some services refer to their director as the top spy.
---
"What do you think spies are? They're a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors, pansies, sadists and drunkards, people who play cowboys and indians to brighten their rotten lives" - John le Carré
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