The Political Machine 2008

The Political Machine 2008, recently released by Stardock Entertainment, capitalizes on election year excitement and frenzy to put you behind the wheel in a campaign for the presidency. By allowing the player to utilize numerous political tools and undertake a wide variety of activities available to candidates, Stardock successfully imitates one of the most realistic aspects of a campaign: an excess of things to do contrasted with a dearth of time and money. Inundated with information and decisions, you must make crucial choices within your resource budget to maximize the probability of winning the White House. Though this may be unappealing to some, the task is far from unachievable and rewards those meticulous enough to use to their advantage the wide array of campaigning possibilities.

As you probably have already discerned from the game’s title, The Political Machine 2008 focuses on the United States 2008 presidential campaign, though that is not all it offers. Furthermore, the game is not so linear as to force you to play as McCain or Obama versus the other; historical accuracy is flexed here for the purpose of increased variability. Players can choose to control Republicans such as John McCain, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Representing the Democratic Party are Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards, Al Gore, Bill Clinton and Bill Richardson. In addition to these characters, extra politicians on both sides of the aisle are unlockable through the course of the game. If that is not enough to satisfy your appetite for variety, you can choose to create custom characters and alter them to your liking!

After picking your character and opponent, you go to battle against one another in an attempt to win the White House. The actual gameplay is rather chart and data heavy. Flying across the states, you will want your candidates can give speeches and place advertisements in an attempt to lure voters to your side. However, no politician can succeed without a grasp of what issues are important in a particular state. For this reason, the game includes data on precisely this. Only well researched speeches and advertisements that appeal to your audience on issues central to them will benefit your campaign. To increase your knowledge of these issues or voters’ awareness of your candidate, you will want to build campaign headquarters in many states. In addition to increased knowledge and awareness, these structures provide your campaign with benefits such as increased political clout (which can be used to win endorsements from special interest groups), or increased political capital (which can be used to hire political operatives to enhance your efforts). Of course, not all of this is free, and at times you will want to throw a fundraiser to generate extra revenue for these activities.

As if there was not enough data already, each candidate has rankings on certain characteristics such as stamina, experience, credibility, and religion. These attributes affect things like how much traveling is possible, the amount of money raised at a fundraiser, and how successful speeches are at generating support. Most importantly, however, are candidates’ positions on issues. This affects how likely different states are to support him or her, as well as what kind of advertisements or speeches s/he can give. It is important to note, however, that issue positions are fluid; speeches and advertisements can change them over the course of the campaign.

As you can tell, there is a lot to keep up with, but Stardock has included several different map filters to assist in that task. With one pull down menu, or a press of an F key, you can choose to color differentiate the states based on many factors, including their awareness of your candidate, their wealth (which correlates to how much money you can raise), and, most importantly, the polling data, which shows where your candidate is winning, losing, or caught in a dead heat. This filter was so vital that I left it on throughout all of my games.

Despite the previously described plethora of numerical data, actual gameplay is rather simple. Just click on the state to which you want your candidate to move and tell her what to do. Of course, you will not be able to do everything you desire, but this limitation both reflects the reality of a campaign and equally hinders your opponent. After your character has done everything he can for the week, enter the next week by clicking the “turn” button to find your character fully refreshed and one week closer to the deadline. After a prespecified number of turns (usually 41), the campaign ends and a winner is declared as each state turns red or blue (starting on the Atlantic and moving West) in imitation of a major network’s election night coverage.

If you get bored of playing the 2008 campaign repeatedly (even with varying historically inaccurate candidates!), you can choose three other campaign scenarios: the 1860 election, Europa (which is touted as the continent of Europe through the eyes of a high school student), and Dregni, a fictional world. Though the maps and issues change, the main idea remains: you must campaign hard in battleground states and attempt to lure independent voters to you by advertising, giving speeches, receiving endorsements, hiring political operatives, and building headquarters.

By far the greatest strength of this game is its wide amount of data to process and options to undertake. Those interested in politics will note how the game incorporates American realities like Iowan love for corn subsidies or Floridians’ focus on Social Security. Further, the different options available to the player make it possible to achieve the same ends many different ways. Do I want to go on TV in favor of the auto industry to win Michigan votes, or should I win the heart of the steel industry in Ohio by coming out strongly against outsourcing labor on the radio?

Unfortunately, despite the wide amount of data and choices, the game can get monotonous rather quickly. Minor variations about where to locate headquarters, advertise, or which political operatives to hire do not add enough variety to sustain interest over a long period of time. Even the alternate campaigns such as Europa or Dregni do little to fight this; they mainly change the appearance of the map and the issues discussed while leaving the sometimes tedious gameplay unaltered, as the motions of establishing headquarters, advertising, speech-giving, and fundraising do not vary.

Ultimately, this criticism is what makes me classify this game as good rather than great. I must applaud it for being interesting and relevant to what is going on in the world. It is fun to play for a couple of hours, and you might even learn something in the process. Unfortunately, the game has little replayability or lasting power, will likely be more of a weekend distraction rather than a new passion for most people, and will be out of date in a few years. So is the game worth buying or not, especially given that it is priced at an agreeable twenty dollars? My verdict is that this game is missable for most, but certainly worth the time and money for political junkies.

John Lentz Jr.

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