Democracy (game)

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Democracy is a game that was developed by Positech Games in 2005. The player plays as if he/she is the president or prime minister of a democratic government. The player has the ability to choose from one of twelve nations, including Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Poland, Sweden, Japan, Russia, Italy, Spain, Australia, Canada, and the United States (mods have added others like Portugal and even the EU).

Further on in the game, the player must win the support of various factions which make up the electorate, including religious, patriots, parents, capitalists, socialists, liberals, conservatives and many others, and thus win the ensuing elections that take place. The player introduces policies and uses sliders to change the amount of government funding or level of a tax. Of course, because each individual person belongs to several factions (e.g: a poor, socialist, environmentalist who is a parent), it is practically impossible to control all the voters. Before each general election, two promises are made by the player to the electorate (e.g: reduce unemployment by 10%). If the player has not kept these promises by the next election, the people become annoyed and cynacism increases. If the leader gains a more sizeable majority after a general election, they are able to carry out more political changes per turn and vice versa.

The player must also try to balance the budget and pay off the country's debts without losing votes and causing tax evasion due to very high taxes.

There are also many events, dilemmas and situations in the game which the player must deal with. An example of an event might be the curing of a disease, a dilemma may be who to appoint as a senior judge and a situation may be high levels of pollution. An event happens, sometimes due to policies but the player doesn't take part, he/she just enjoys or suffers from it. A dilemma is an important decision which must be resolved for the turn to be ended and situations are ongoing conditions which must be dealt with or helped and enjoyed.

Democracy is an unusually successful 'indie' game, in that it has sold well despite being made by just one individual as opposed to a large team. The game was given the 2005 'Simulation Game of the Year' award by GameTunnel.^[1]

The games designer has described the code behind the game as being based on a neural network. This has allowed the game to be very easily modded, and most of the 'game logic' in it is openly editable in simple text 'csv' files, allowing players to change the way the core mechanics of the game operate.