Category: game design

I’ve taken some time out of my GSB2 coding schedule to manage and test and work on another expansion pack for Democracy 3, called Democracy 3: Extremism. This is a huge big list of new policies and situations that represent more extreme politics. I can already predict that a lot of players will be annoyed it isn’t MORE extreme than it is.

What does political extremism mean to you? within a democratic context? I’m not talking armed mobs that overthrow the government, but parties with actual popular support. I’ve tried to walk the line between including some fairly extreme views, whilst also keeping it credible as a policy a western government might actually put into place. I’m also slightly wary of acting as fodder for any exploitative tabloid journalism along the lines of ‘Game developer endorses culling the elderly!’ for example.

When you sit down to analyze it, extremism is really a hard concept to nail down. One of the policies in the pack is ‘close all airports permanently’, presented as an environmental move. I’m sure a lot of people would think such a policy was insane, but there are quite definitely environmentalists who would argue it’s entirely reasonable. There are people who would ban private education and private healthcare, and others that would consider that practically stalinist. The base game lets you legalize or ban gun ownership, both positions that encourage cries of ‘extremism!’ in different parts of the world.

Obviously a lot of this is skewed by where you live and your background. I’m from the UK. In the grand scheme of things it’s a pretty liberal country. You can have state or private education or healthcare. Gay marriage is legal, we have pretty good freedom of speech. Divorce and abortion are perfectly accepted (abortion less so, arguably). We have very strict gun controls, and fairly strict (but not strongly enforced) drug laws. All of this gets reflected in my own prejudices. I don’t find the fact that we make gun ownership very hard to be at all extremist, yet if you banned private schooling I’d consider that an extreme move. (I went to a state school FWIW). I’d consider outlawing homosexuality insane, and consider scrapping the state health service equally insane. There is no real pattern at work here, we are all skewed by what we are used to. My position on healthcare is to the left of my general position on state-provision, almost certainly because I’ve lived all my life in the UK…

What I’m getting at is that extremism is very culturally dependent, and often entirely illogical. I consider a ban on divorce or homosexuality nuts, but many such bans exist in the world, even in the rich developed western world. Sex toys are illegal in Alabama, abortions are illegal in Ireland. It’s not a simple case of the left wing wanting to ban stuff, or the right wing wanting to ban stuff. there is no logical pattern. Stuff seems ‘extremist’ because we aren’t used to it. One of the policies in the pack is national flags on every street corner. A crazy idea in the UK, but in the USA? probably not so. Another is compulsory church attendance, seemingly crazy in the UK, maybe not in Alabama? Subsidies for new cars. Extremist? maybe a bit? but we have experimented with that in the UK. Forcing the unemployed to do community work? I bet that sounds extremist in some countries. Public Tax returns? A punitive wealth tax?

I look forward to peoples debate and discussion when the expansion gets released. My politics are very fluid. I think a lot about what I think, and my politics change over time. Twenty years ago I was against positive discrimination, but now I have finally changed my mind. Analyzing your opinions on political issues, putting them into context and rationalizing them against the backdrop of your other views is a fascinating thing to do. It’s always good to re-examine what you believe.

Except Free to Play, that’s just evil :D

From my forums, but thought blog readers may be interested…

For those new to economics the laffer curve can be read-about here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve
I’m not going to debate the validity of the theory, merely describe how it is implemented (and adjustable/moddable) within the game.

Basically the laffer curve is saying that higher taxes may bring in less income than lower taxes, at some ‘hard-to-define’ point. In other words, you can set the tax rate *too high* if you goal is to raise money for the state. At first glance it may look like the laffer curve is not modeled in Democracy 3, but it is. If you look at the slider for income tax, you will see that at high levels, it brings in more money than at lower levels, which might seem to imply a non-laffer simulation. However, the values shown below the slider are simple calculations, not forecasts based on full models.

If you set income tax punishingly high, more income will be raised, in the immediate term. However, this high rate also acts as an input to ‘bad’ situations such as brain drain (I can see an argument for suggesting it should affect corporate exodus too). If the brain drain kicks in, there will be noticeable hit to GDP (12%!). This lower GDP will affect income raised by the tax, because almost all taxes in the game are in some way scaled by GDP, in terms of what income they raise. Therefore, it is entirely possible (and indeed likely) that when looked over a medium to long term, a higher tax rate brings in less revenue. Of course, this is only one argument. You may wish for higher income tax rates for non-revenue reasons such as political popularity with socialists or a more equal society.

So in short, the laffer curve is in the game, albeit in a fairly complex and ‘binary’ way. You could easily make a ‘laffer mod’ that more directly introduced a gentle curve to GDP from higher rates of income tax, without using the situation-triggering mechanism.
Hopefully that makes sense :D

Here is a new video I had made to explain this part of the game, i hope you like it…

I have a lot of feedback that the game is too easy. I suspect some of this is because of the following factors:

1) People start with the UK< a fairly easy country

2) People are playing ‘to win’ not to actually mold the country as they wish to

3) People do not spot the difficulty slider :D

However, the simulation DOES need some difficulty tweaking, as it does seem to get into virtuous circles (or the reverse). From, a game POV, these are disasters, but the trouble is, they seem emergent from a dispassionate attempt to build an accurate simulation. Do they exist in the real world? I suspect so.

For example: I read a lot about how entrepreneurs are fleeing Italy and France. This is due to high taxes and corruption and incompetent government / bureaucracy. The net result will be more unemployment, and a brain-drain that guts French and Italian economies, leaving them with the less successful employees and businesses, thus reducing government income, meaning taxes need to go up…making the whole situation worse in a spiral.

On the other hand countries that are doing well, seem to get richer and richer.

What I am thus on the lookout for are ‘automatic stabilisers’. Not in the traditional government finance sense, but in an economic model sense. For example…

Pollution is a good one. if you have no industry, you have no pollution, but a booming industry (China!) leads to more pollution, which then affects health and eventually lowers productivity, thus reducing industry back down from it’s peak.

on the opposite side, look at wages. The economy collapses, so unemployment shoots up and wages drop to rock bottom, meaning business competitiveness shoots upwards allowing for an export boom and the economy bouncing back.

Yes. it’s MUCH more complex than that. Nevertheless, these sort of things are already in the game, but I suspect their effects are too weak. I shall experiment, in-between talking to reviewers, dealing with advertising, handling the vats rush of online discussions about the game, fixing bugs…and I’ll sleep at some point. BUSY BUSY BUSY.

Feel free to suggest stabilisers I have not thought of…