The Politics of Appeasement

Time for another fascinating BoRT topic!

Turning Over a New Leaf: February's BoRT invites you take a game design suggested by another blogger in last month's Round Table and build upon it. You should ignore the literary source of the original design, but attempt to communicate the same themes and/or convey the same mood as the original game. This means you can alter the game genre, change the setting, and add new layers to the game mechanics. This is not an opportunity to critique a previous design, but to honor it by striving to reach the same goals, while adding your own personal touch.


The Source

Last month's post that I'm choosing to work with is Chris at ihobo's entry on Pride and Prejudice. You really should take a look at it before continuing - after all, that's the point of this month's topic!

What I really like about the design of the game is the simplicity of the mechanic: A engages politely, B engages rudely. This allows for a lot of fun in anticipation. You know you want to engage rudely, say, but you're excited to see exactly what form that rude interaction will take. Will it be a barb-tongued statement? I disrespectful hand-gesture? I've always enjoyed this element of thematic dialogue trees where the general tone of your options is presented but the specifics aren't revealed until after you make your choice (a la Indigo Prophecy or Mass Effect).

So much for the mechanics, what about the theme of the game? While Chris isn't specific as to the theme it seems that the game is more of a sandbox for exploring various interactions with people in high Victorian society. At the end of the day the point is in the interactions themselves and playing it might give you the feeling, qua the novel, that there really is no ultimate point, that the rules of etiquette and games of intrigue played by the characters are just shallow ends in themselves. It's enjoyable, yes, but serves no purpose beyond its own enjoyment (despite what purpose the characters may think it serves).

What kind of game could I design with the same mechanics and theme? Call me a bitter cynic - I am, depending on which philosopher I last read - but one thing enters my mind when I think about people engaging in varying polite/rude interactions and taking themselves all too seriously when at the end of the day none of it really matters. Politics.


The Thought

Ian Bogost's phrase "procedural rhetoric" is foremost in my mind with this project. You can read a great hashing out of the concept here but in short the idea is that the way a game's mechanics are designed and how we ultimately master them to drive the game forward tells a story in itself, often a very loaded story. Much of the recent dialogue about Far Cry 2, for example, concerns the idea that its mechanics portray imply that seemingly meaningless violence is the only solution to even fairly mundane problems. As a developer one has to be very aware the story the mechanics of the game tells, not leaving such things up to mere chance. Not that you can't portray this underlying mechanics-driven story any way you want, you just need own it and be aware of shaping it (hence the rhetoric).

With that in mind I figure that a game about politics developed by a political cynic like myself would have to very much express through its game play the utter futility and meaninglessness of it all. (Perhaps that's a gross exaggeration but hey it'll be a Wii game so it has to be grossly exaggerated and not taken seriously anyhow! Oh, did I mention I'm a Nintendo cynic as well?) The game would follow you as a newly elected Congressman embarking upon your brief two-year term with the only directly expressed goal being re-election. In fact this should be so explicitly stated so early in the game that it makes the player question the entire logic: "You've just been elected to US Congress, now what are you going to do?" "Get re-elected!"

That's the general theme and the mechanics enhance this by pretty much giving you little control other choosing which members of congress to talk to and whether you want to act politely or rudely towards them, or in the parlance of the game, appease or displease them. You're trying to get re-elected, but in the context of the game the interests of your constituents are irrelevant to you. Building relationships and coalitions with with senior Congressmen is what will get you re-elected, not trying to gauge what your constituents want. Of course building bridges with some Representatives invariably burns bridges with others. . .


The Game

The Politics of Appeasement begins with a brief cut scene which shows your Mii avatar (in a nice suit of course) barely winning the race for Representative of your district. The incumbent which you have defeated congratulates you and offers you the following piece of advice: "Make sure you meet the right people and ignore all the rest. Otherwise you'll end up like me." It's never made quite clear what state, let alone district, you are representing.

After the intro you are given control of your Mii using the same point-and-click interface found in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (the Mansfield Engine). Your new secretary is showing you around your office in Washington and explaining the control scheme: generally A interacts with objects and people positively, B interacts with them negatively. Instead of politeness and rudeness, however, your interactions are meant to appease or displease and to this end only really have an affect when others are around. You are promptly introduced to the congenial Representative from a neighboring district and instructed to appease her. Pointing your Wiimote at her and pressing A brings up a short quip congratulating her on winning re-election and making a passing remark about the clear-headedness of her constituents. This invokes the appearance of a Sims-style happy face above her head and an increase in her attitude towards you (detailed below). Interacting with A on objects in the room causes somewhat obvious but awkward interactions with things that would appeal to the Representative: pointing out a recent photograph of you with a well-liked Senator, making her aware of congenial literature on your bookshelf.

After his departure your secretary announces the visit of another Representative, one which she clearly indicates as your rival, a man a bit disgruntled by your predecessor's defeat. Before the meeting you are given instructions to use B to interact with him in a displeasing way. Doing so presents dialogue that is very cleverly dismissive in a way that seems cordial but contains undertones of hostility and the corresponding angry/unhappy face above your rival's head. Similarly you may interact with the objects in your office in a manner that promulgates displeasure: putting your feet up on the desk or straightening pictures (an indication that you aren't playing full attention to the Representative).

After this intro you are left on your own to peruse the Congressional directory and make a few calls to fellow Representatives. Much like the Sims you can chose to simply talk or invite them to to an event (mostly fundraisers) for more detailed interactions, all of which involve use of the appeasement/displeasement mechanic. On any given weekday (when Congress is in session) you may only make a set number of calls (say 5), attend 1 fundraiser/function, and, if available, cast a vote on a Bill (more below). Each Friday new poll numbers are released indicating where you stand with your constituency. It must be noted that in addition to there not being any direct line of connection between you and those you represent (indeed, the player has no idea who they are!) these poll numbers are the only visible indication that they exist, though it provides the one structured goal of the game.

In addition to it not being clear exactly where you are from nor who you are representing it's also never made explicit what political party you align with or what your campaign platform was. These details seem extraneous to game play - you re-election depends upon the relationships you make with other Representatives (and maybe the occasional Senator) rather than on pushing a specific agenda. With that in mind you proceed making calls and visits to other political figures. At any point you can press 1 to call up a window showing your relationship to other Representatives (for simplicity's sake the number is limited to 50 or so rather than the full 435) and a handful of Senators. Below each face/name is a scale from -10 to +10 (replacing the Notoriety meter from Jane Austen). A good number of Representatives are neutral with you from the outset, though you can get a sense of who may be a member of your or the opposing party by noting trends in positive and negative associations.

By selecting a specific Representative you can pull up more details about them including humanizing touches like their personal likes and dislikes as well as their political leanings (bills they've recently authored or voted for/against, more on that below). Most importantly you can see a graph tracking the changes in their relationship to you. By comparing days when a particular Representative's attitude for you shifted to your interactions with them or others you start to get a sense of who likes whom and who you may need to appease or displease to influence more powerful figures that you may not be able to directly interact with (depending on the specific Representative and their attitude towards you they may not take your calls).

The core mechanic of the game is a complex logic puzzle that represents a system of relationships. The design needs to be such that feedback is obvious yet the underlying threads are obfuscated enough that the player needs to put in work to discover them. For this reason there may not always be an immediate cause/effect relationship between my actions and the attitudes of others. For those directly involved yes, it should be immediate, but for others it may take a day or two for word to spread and attitudes to change. Ultimately, of course, even the logic of these connections is tied into the weekly poll numbers in a somewhat more inscrutable way. Figuring out having who on your side makes for good numbers and in turn figuring out who to go through to appease those people is where the real strategy comes in. Then again there's no need to appease everybody or even anybody. I hear tell sometimes being a maverick can pay off...

Now this is a game about politics so eventually we will need to actually do what the legeslative branch is supposed to do, namely craft and pass new bills into law. As a first-term Representative you won't have the power to craft a new bill (there's always the second-term sequel/expansion for that) but you may occasionally be asked to sponsor one by a well-liked colleague. Sponsoring a bill has enormous consequences, and the biggest shifts in others' attitudes toward you comes from agreeing or refusing sponsorship. Voting, which happens more often than sponsoring, also affects attitudes greater than individual interactions do.

As for the bills themselves it's important that they not engage the player's personal political leanings. In the spirit of the game these bills avoid anything resembling a hot-button issue and instead are light-hearted and comical as well as mundane. One bill might mandate that all federally funded schools use green chairs in their classroom. Another may levy a tax on people who keep walruses as pets. Again it should be unclear what, if any, interest the player's constituency has on these bills, though conversations occurring before the bill is put to a vote will indicate where particular Representatives stand on the issue. Also you vote yay or nay on the bills from your desk at the end of the work day - it becomes obvious by its omission that at no time do you actually sit in Congress and debate politics or cast your vote.


A Second Term?

Well that's it. Reading it over this definitely represents a very narrow and cynical view of politics but I suppose that's the point! At the end of the day, if done correctly, the game should leave the player feeling a certain sense of exhilaration and fun at the politicking yet be consciously aware that they're not really doing anything in the interest of public-service. Playing the game is an end in itself. If it's a means to anything it's merely a means to re-election. Why be re-elected? That's obvious: so you can continue to play the game!