9 thoughts on “And now for something completely gratuitous”

  2. I once played an interesting game called Political Simulator (I think that is what it was called). You could choose any country in the world and act as their president/prime minister.

    I was only “successful” as president of the United States. I won about 70% of the vote during my reelection and had about an 80 approval rating going into the election. However, three months after the election I was forced out of office.

    In my first term, I heavily invested in infrastructure–roads, rail, etc. The economy boomed. I was even able to get Congress to remove term limits for the president. With a soaring economy, I passed about every progressive measure you could think of. Then I was reelected.

    In my second term, I had passed about every law the game allowed me to pass. So by default, I couldn’t really do much of anything. My popularity lowered because I wasn’t making any headlines. I decided to force one more bill just to keep people appeased, so I tried to pass a national law banning the death penalty. The entire former Confederacy marched on Washington. While this happened, Mexico and Cuba declared war on the US! I never learned how to move military units in the game so my navy sunk in the Gulf of Mexico and Cuba captured most of Florida. Later the environmentalists and teachers protested because I wasn’t doing enough for them either. My approval rating went from 80 to 5 in three months. Most of my cabinet resigned. Then the people forced me out of office.

    The game is fun, but obviously flawed.

    I also tried as president of Somalia, which was using almost all its money on bodyguards for the president. I cut funding to bodyguards by half and was murdered within a week.

  3. @Jonathan
    Are you talking about geo-political simulator? They made 3 of those and are making a 4th. It does have some bugs that I hope they fix in the next one. The company is eversim. I was playing as Russia and had a 5% surplus. The economy was booming and I had 60% of the world’s GDP. I also was able to get parliament to make it so they did not have any power(I gave them +6 years in office in the reform :P) But, the environmentalists got mad because I used oil and natural gas to get the economy booming. They protested and kicked me out of office.

  4. @jesse

    Yeah, that’s the game. I never tried being Russia. The environmentalists in that game must be on steroids. They always throw out whomever is in power.

    One flaw in the game is that it behaves like it is living in the pre-1945 era of conquest and annexation. Israel would conquer most of the Middle East. Alliances didn’t work. Israel invaded counties unilaterally and without any sort of Arab alliance against them.

  5. @Jonathan
    Ya, that is a problem. And yes, environmentalists are way to op in the gam. They need to fix those aspects of the game.

  6. I forgot to mention that another reason my approval rating dropped in my second term was that I admitted Puerto Rico as a 51st state. The game focuses a lot on average income, standard of living, etc. So adding a state that was almost 3rd world in comparison to the rest of the US, dropped the country statistically in whatever demographics the game takes into account. So it led to protests.

  7. @Jonathan
    lol. Ya, in the game, people protest so many things. You have to be carful what you do. It does focus a lot on purchasing power, living conditions, and income equality.

  8. Yeah, I think the protests should have been turned way down. The game was fun to play despite being drastically unrealistic. Although, it did get me thinking that massively improving the infrastructure would lead to a strong economy. I put money and emphasis on improving roads, nationwide rail systems, etc, to make them better than Europe and Asia’s infrastructure. I think its the one thing from this game that would translate into real life and boost the economy and create jobs. I had basically no unemployment. I also put money into jobs for seniors.

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