Advertisement
Tomas Rawlings: We did a game, when we first started doing news games about four years ago, when Romney and Obama were fighting it out. We did a little game back then, one of the first we ever did. That was a bit of fun, and I was pleased with it, but I always felt that there was a lot more to it than we fit into that game, which we made in under a week. There's a lot more to politics, and it's bugged me since then.
Advertisement
I read an article a while ago that described modern democracy as a 19th century version of it, but living in a 21st century world of technology. And I think that's where we're at—the technology that these big campaigns are using, under the hood, if you like, is way more advanced than we think it is. We still think that we're the voters, we assess the issues, and we make a choice. But there's a lot more complicated stuff going on behind the scenes, and I want to explore that. And a game is the best way to do so.Read on VICE News: What Do You Think About the US President?
The design of this game absolutely makes sense for it to be something you play with your mates when sitting around a table. The backstabbing elements of it are all the more fun when you're right there with your best friends, or your partner—it's funnier to drop a sex scandal on them, in person. But that aside, I learned my trade as a game designer on pen-and-paper stuff, games like Dungeons & Dragons and Call of Cthulhu. I was asked to do some lecturing on a game technology course, where the students were learning how to make digital video games, and I asked: "Can I get them to learn about making board games?" That might seem completely apathetical to a group of people learning 3D art and coding, but that's a great way to get a pure player experience, to strip away the technology and focus on what the player actually gets to do, and how they interact with other players. I'm a huge fan of physical games, and they've contributed a great deal to the digital world. It's hard to imagine a games industry without Dungeons & Dragons, as its concepts and ideas are in the very DNA of what we do in video games. But I don't really see one as better than the other—I spend way too much of my time playing both. So this was a great opportunity to do a physical game, and we've gone for it.
Advertisement
So you pick your candidate, and it's your job to get them to office, using fair means or foul. Your candidate will have strengths or weaknesses, which you need to play to. The basic way the game works is that you turn over a state card, let's say Iowa, and that will allow you to draw a certain number of voter cards. So you place those cards in the middle of the table, and take turns to grab the number of voter cards that your appeal allows you to take on each turn. That's the game: You grab the number of votes that correspond to your appeal, and the more votes you have, the better. You win the state, you win more states, and whoever wins the most states, wins. That's the idea of democracy as we understand it, and that's the core of the game.However, then the fun bits come in. Politicians and their managers don't just go out there campaigning for votes. They do all these other things. And this is where the two forms of "wonk" cards come in. One is deploying team members to bolster your campaign, and the other is tricks. So, attack ads are a great example of that. You might set up robo-callers to ring people up with a disparaging message about another candidate. There are all these ways to undermine the other candidates, while you're remaining virtuous and nice, or at least pretending to.
Advertisement
American politics is simultaneously some of the most fascinating politics in the world and also some of the scariest. And you're right—Obama is called left-wing in the States by the Republicans, but he strikes me as being roughly in the position of our Conservative Party. So if he's America's idea of a left-wing candidate, it makes their right-wing candidates frighteningly right. For us, looking at some of what's said over there, it's like shooting fish in a barrel; and that's why we don't have every card finished for the game just yet. I know the sort of things I want in there, but there's so much going on over there now that we want to have space for new ideas. There's too much good stuff to ignore. We were joking about adding a card about your candidate going out and shooting people in the street. If your candidate is Trump, your popularity goes up, but for everyone else it goes down.
Advertisement
If people are backing what we're doing, we have to listen to their opinions. And if that's how you want to engage with this project, that's great. And the brilliant thing about having the people at Wonkette involved is that they really know stuff about US politics that we in the UK just don't get to see. Sometimes it's amazing, but that's how they do it. It's been key to have a range of opinions going into this, otherwise we could end up with this distant view of what we think is happening, without any real on-the-ground feeling of it. Also, the people at Wonkette are a lot funnier than I am. I'm confident as a game designer, but I'm terrible as a comedian.
Yes, absolutely, people will have the ability to upgrade their tier. I know what it's like when you get a new game, and there's this massive pile of instructions, and it's really off-putting. Some people are happy with that, but we didn't want a game that overwhelmed people. So the lower-tier game is the basic version, which is easier to play, and those who pay more get a version with more advanced modes. Another feature we're trying out, and this is for every level of backer, is that you'll get a video on how to play the game. I think, from playing a bunch of board games recently, that'll take out some of the hard work that goes into playing one for the first time. Sometimes game designers aren't the best people at actually explaining how to play their game, so we'll have this simple video, lasting a couple of minutes, and you can just launch in and start enjoying it.Clearly this is meant to be a fun game—you wouldn't have Lovecraftian beings in the mix if it wasn't. But you obviously want players to learn a little about the political machine too, right?
I'd like for people who play this to come away with a greater understanding about politics than they had when they started. For me, that'd be a double win: They've had fun, and they understand some important things about the world. Because even though this is all happening over there, and we don't get a vote, it does impact us. Whoever gets this job for real has some massive global issues to address, like the state of wars going on and climate change. At the moment, it seems to me that most candidates are just seeing who can shout the loudest, and that really doesn't make me feel confident in their leadership.But then, who would have thought that Jeremy Corbyn would have won the Labour leadership? That flummoxed everyone here in the UK, and now there's a media narrative struggling to frame Corbyn within it. He was the outsider, and he won, and that shows us that there are people who do not feel represented by the comfortable political class, and exactly the same thing is happening in the States, be it Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump. Both of them are tapping into dissatisfaction, and as much as it's easy for people in the political mainstream to poke fun at the edges of it, the real message is that you do need to listen to these people. And there's a message to the people too, which is that they need to understand these political systems. And that's partly what this game is about.You can find out more about Elections of US America Election: The Card Game at its Kickstarter page, or visit Auorch Digital at its company website.Follow Mike Diver on Twitter.