Democracy 3: Review
I always like to play Democracy 3. It is a government simulation game based on the current situation of six countries: Canada, US, Britain, Germany, France, and Australia.
It is full of funny facts (e.g., maple syrup consumption rate In Canada) and interesting quotes (e.g., Karl Marx’s or Homer Simpsons).
Your power is mostly based on how much money invest in each sector (e.g., railroad subsidies to religious schools subsides). Every once a while, you have to approve or reject a policy: limit the tax collecting agencies or no. The national debt and over budget spending is a constant burden.
I especially like the way it shows the different political/social group opinion to you. As you may guess, it is almost impossible to make one group euphoric without other groups annoyed (i.e., capitalists/socialists, liberals/religious) and even some groups like middle class (25 to 55 years) or retires.
I always play very liberal/socialist group with some tendencies toward conservatives when it comes to public safety (e.g., high spending on the police force).
When I started to play the game, and I ended up (thanks to my policies) with massive debt, I lost my nerve! I played to win and selected more conservative/capitalist policies which I also ended up as the loser of the election!
Eventually, I remembered the method Francis Urquhart (BBC’s To Play the King) used: only make the 51% of people happy. It worked perfectly!
I wish they would use such software in secondary schools and universities more often.
However, I have some criticisms:
- As my brother-in-law told me, the credits to change policies and investments are not dependent on the amount of alteration. For example, it doesn’t matter how much you want to increase the health care subsidies (even 30% of your income increment).
- The difference between countries is not significant. It doesn’t matter if you play Germany or France. I wonder why they haven’t added Scandinavian countries.
- As my brother-in-law told me, you cannot see what your opponent does. They are apathetic and static and have no platform.
Don’t waste your time to select your favourite party, they don’t differ.
Post-script
New Statesman has an interesting article about UK election of 2015 and Democracy 3 game.
Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)