2017 and 2018

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Hi everyone,

2017

2017 was focused (unexpectedly) on Prime Minister Infinity – U.K. This was due to the snap election Theresa May (Prime Minister of the U.K.) called. A lot of the updates for PMI apply or will apply in the coming year to all the Infinity games (President Infinity, Congress Infinity, both Prime Minister Infinities).

Some of the major features added to the game engine in 2017 include a new negotiations system (including post-election negotiations), direct pop. vote, pop. vote viewing mode, starting in primaries mode as the nominee (for President Infinity, for independents or parties that don’t have primaries or conventions), speed increases, Editor expansions, automatic campaign import-export, significant updates to Election Night (including displaying gain-hold numbers), significant updates to the user-interface (including a new Relations Screen, Turn Screen, and updated Platform Screen including the distance metric, and constituency search capabilities on multiple screens). We also, of course, released an official U.K. 2017, revised 2015, and 2010.

A very big accomplishment for 2017 was one I wasn’t directly involved in – user-designed campaigns. The number of campaigns for President Infinity now dwarfs the number for President Forever 2008 (181 to 89). Prime Minister Infinity also saw a large increase in campaigns (now at 29, with 15 for the U.K.), and Congress Infinity has 20. The Historical Scenarios Commission (HSC) deserves particular mention – led by VCCzar, they now have campaigns for every U.S. Presidential campaign from 1788 to 2012. If you haven’t already, I recommend checking out campaigns.270soft.com (you can automatically import campaigns after downloading them to your computer with the latest President Infinity and Prime Minister Infinity releases).

2018

2018 will be focused on upcoming elections in the United States, at the federal and state levels. This means the direct pop. vote feature in President Infinity, focused on individual gubernatorial and senatoral campaigns, and updates to Congress Infinity bringing it in line with the latest game engine and 2018 campaigns. Favorability will be the number one major feature to be focused on for the game engine. The end of the year will probably see a return to focus on President Infinity’s 2020 Presidential campaign. None of these are promises, and timelines are subject to change, but those are the priorities as of now.

Thanks everyone for your feedback, for playing the games, and for designing campaigns!

24 thoughts on “2017 and 2018”

  1. Is Infinity different to Forever? The reason I ask is that I have a Prime Minister Forever for the UK but when I tried to download the one for the general election in June last year it didn’t like it.

  2. >Work on updating CI for the 2018 elections.

    With the current rate of Congressional retirements, I’m not so sure you can safely make a game right now ;P.

    But jokes aside, I hope this year will be good for the 270team.

  3. @Harry Hayfield,

    Prime Minister Forever and Prime Minister Infinity are two separate games. Forever for the U.K. was last updated for 2010.

  4. @Dylan S,

    Thanks for this! Yes, it’ll be a bit of time before the specifics of 2018 campaigns will start to be implemented.

  7. @Gusttav,

    The France 2017 campaign will benefit from work on direct pop. vote. I have the basics of a French campaign, but it will require work to be official. We shall see.

  10. @Scott,

    Are you referring to crash problems on the Mac version of PI? If so, I’ve been unable to recreate them on the latest internal version of PI. This version will be released fairly soon.

  11. Will France 2017 be a free campaign add-on to the next version of PI or will it be a separate program altogether?

  13. Anthony, you said you would be focusing on individual Gubenatorial, and Senatorial campaigns, would they be like another free election or would they be paid elections? Did you have any specific ones in mind?

  14. For Gubernatorial/Senatorial elections, Nationwide popular vote primaries and runoffs would be a great addition.

    Thanks

  15. I have PI v.2.4.9 and in a number of simulations have yet to be asked if my candidate wanted to do a particular interview like previous editions. Also, I have not seen individual states called during Election Night like before. Is this something on my end?

    PI is great stuff by the way. I truly appreciate the work that goes into this and the amazing product that PI is.

    Keep it up!

    Cheers!

  18. @Brian,

    Thanks for the feedback!

    To do interviews, you have to accept them on the Spin Screen (there will be a number indicating how many interview offers, click it, select relevant checkboxes).

  20. @Jacob re Gubernatorial, Senatoral campaigns,

    Haven’t decided on that yet. First focusing on CI for 2018.

  21. @anthony when can we expect it? I’d like to get started on my campaigns, also I think you should add all the elections the campaign committee on the form has done as official campaigns we have done every single year.

  22. The HSC elections are available at http://campaigns.270soft.com , and they look great! If they are added as official campaigns, they would probably be added one at a time, starting with the most recent, where each one would be reviewed and possibly edited. Right now I’m focusing on the game engine, but it’s something I want to look at seriously as 2020 gets closer.

  23. I love the games and look forward to all that is coming. I was really excited about the possibility of a Presidential simulation game. Was there not enough interest to go down that road? Again thank you for all your hard work and the great games.

  24. @Mike,

    I decided it would take too much time, and instead that incremental upgrades to President Infinity would be a better approach, and which may lead to features that include aspects of being President. That’s a long way off, though, if it happens.

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