Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

Democracy 3: Social Engineering

cliffski

Sooo.. I slipped this in  a bit under the radar yesterday because of the amazing 50% off deal this weekend for Democracy 3, but you may have noticed that Democracy 3 now has an expansion pack/DLC/whatever we call it these days. That expansion is called ‘Social Engineering’, and I talk about it in my relaxed and charismatic yet fascinating way in the video below…

For those who skip the video, first of all note you can grab the expansion from my site here or on steam here. It’s $4.99. basically it’s a policy & dilemma pack which adds 26 policies and 8 new dilemmas, but not randomly, more on a theme of ‘social engineering’, in other words, all those subtle imperceptible ways in which society is shaped by the government. The main game already has the ‘big blunt instruments’ like income tax and spending on health care, but this pack has the slow-burn stuff like public awareness campaigns and cycling subsidies. It also has policies that encourage entrepreneurship and a pro-business mindset from a  young age, and many of the policies take ages to take their affect.

This whole area is a thought-experiment hobby for me. One of my whimsical policy ideas if I was UK Prime Minister would be to reduce the temperature of all government buildings in winter to encourage people to wear warmer clothing. NOT just because it would save money & the environment, but because it would remind people in general that *in winter, you dress warmer*. This is a lesson the UK has forgotten. From what I’ve read: average indoor temperatures have risen from 12C in 1970 to about 17.5C (63.5F) today. Thats a huge increase in energy expenditure, and it doesn’t surprise me one bit. Recently, a government minister had the ‘cheek’ to suggest that in cold weather people put on warmer clothes. he was hounded for it, but it’s just common sense. Personally I think government should be more about this (long term influencing the behavior of society for the common good) and less arguing about relatively trivial tax/benefit changes that amount to under 1% of government income/expenditure…

Anyway, hope you like the expansion pack :D

 

11 thoughts on Democracy 3: Social Engineering

  3. Trust me, government buildings are cold in winter. It is not unusual to see people at their desks in coats/scarves.

  4. 1. This sale caused me to buy D3 and expansion, even though I didn’t really think I would like it that much.

    2. I got an update on Steam, which when you hit ‘news’ next to the update, had no explanation. It is unusual but best practice to have news for the game each time there is an update sent out.

    3. My main frustration with the game is that almost every interesting policy tweak I can think of (that might actually be interesting in the real world) is not in the game.

  5. I just wondered what happened when I clicked the X on he DLC that I bought, appearing in the Mod-section and it simply removed the whole thing from my game, nowhere to be found. It can be brought back by verifying the files again, but maybe the X for removal should simply not be present on bought DLC. It also caused some trouble not showing mods that I installed and re-scanning did not bring them back, I had to disable and re-enable the subscription in the Workshop.

    To Hunter, you can check the Steam Workshop, maybe you find them there or in hard cases make your own mod and implement the changes yourself as you see fit. :)

  6. Thank you Cliff for this amazing idea of a game! It’s a great educational tool, of course with some assumptions like cannabis increase means unemployment increase (I’d say it’s actually the opposite!)

    But damn you’re harsh on the assassination coding rules. hahaha

  7. Hey Cliff i really enjoy this game you’ve made and i’ve spent many hours playing it. i recently downloaded the new DLC and now it crashes after every time i barley start the game. i hope you fix this soon!

  8. Dear Cliff,
    I have really enjoyed the platform of Democracy 3. I found it very integral and interesting.
    I have some questions regarding the platform and I would like to contact you, if this is possible.
    I am a design researcher in Smart Cities and I would like to have some information about the platform.
    Please let me know if you can help me with this.
    Kind regards,
    Argyrios Papadopoulos

  9. I installed the DLC yesterday night and now Democracy 3 crashes every time I try to proceed to the next turn. Is there any solution?

    1. The problem was the mods… I deactivated them and now the game (v1.13) is running fine, at least on PC… I also run Democracy on Linux (ubuntu 13.10), but I have not checked this solution yet, but probably it will work…
      Thank you for the quick reply!

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