Seven Oaks Magazine.

This year’s U.S. presidential election was a huge disappointment to billions of people around the world. The fact that Bush wasn’t sent packing by America ’s voters brings up one of the main flaws in the U.S. electoral system -- there’s no reset button. Bush may be occupying the real White House for another four years, but he can still lose the election in the comfort of your own home, thanks to the PC game The Political Machine. Escape into the computer game world may seem like an attractive option for disgruntled Democrats but, after playing The Political Machine for a few rounds, I definitely recommend just moving to Canada instead.

The Political Machine wasn’t the first election game to come out this year – or first to be reviewed by Seven Oaks (President Forever, somewhere between Sorry and Monopoly) -- but it was clearly the most disappointing. With a big budget and a snazzy-looking box, the game should have been able to out-perform the small budget game President Forever, but in this case you just can’t judge a game by its box.

At first inspection, The Political Machine is nothing more than a graphically-enhanced, plagiarized version of President Forever. The two games have a remarkable number of similarities, even considering the identical subject matter. The main screen in both games is a red and blue colour coded map of the continental United States , with Alaska and Hawaii moved into more convenient places. Game play is also quite similar, with both games revolving around moving your candidates around the map giving speeches, holding fundraisers, and coordinating their advertising campaigns.

While the similarities are many, the two games have some remarkable differences, most of which detract significantly from The Political Machine. The biggest single flaw is that the population differences between the states are not properly dealt with. The game’s creators were apparently unaware that it would be more expensive to run a newspaper, radio, or TV add throughout all of California, than running an ad in a smaller state like Maryland. This oversight makes winning the big states far too cheap and the little states far too expensive, which produces the bizarre situation where it is more cost effective for the digital Kerry to go after Texas than New England. This allows you the chance to win the national election by simply carrying the eleven biggest states. In short, the game is even more irrational than the Electoral College system.

The game’s designers clearly decided to try and make their game more fun and less of a simulation, by including some quirky elements like the ability to hire cute-looking operatives and the chance to be interviewed on TV. The TV interviews seem like a very neat idea, allowing you to choose your response to some fairly reasonable questions, but they are quite repetitive with only around a twenty questions that you can be asked during a campaign. Twenty questions is enough for one or maybe two campaigns but if you play the game more than twice it becomes rather repetitive. A glaring policy error also comes up in the TV interviews when Kerry is asked what he will do about taxing the rich and his only “options” are to promise to lower taxes for the rich, or to lower taxes for the rich while cutting spending. These options are in stark contrast to Kerry’s actual statements favouring raising taxes for the rich. One would think that in a PC game you would be able to take on a position at least as progressive as a real Democratic candidate, and hopefully try out some more progressive positions.

A significant omission in The Political Machine is the lack of any third party or independent candidates. While Ralph Nader drew much less of the vote than he managed in 2000, it was still a necessity for Democrats to worry about losing votes to him. His absence from the game may seem fortunate for Kerry but it is in reality nothing more than lazy game design. Another case of laziness is clear in the poorly executed fantasy campaigns which allow you to put historical or potential candidates into the fray. The problem with this element is that regardless of who is contesting the election, the main issues are always the same, meaning that Abe Lincoln is put in the peculiar position of promoting the war in Iraq and having nothing to say about slavery.

Perhaps the boldest idea included in The Political Machine was the inclusion of an online multiplayer component. This was a bold move mostly for the very same reason that it was disappointing, in that if the game was a flop it would be made painfully clear by an empty online game forum. I had expected the online game to offer some very hostile Republican opponents, rather than the twenty-minute wait in complete loneliness that I experienced.

In the race for the title of the best electoral game, The Political Machine should take a page from John Kerry and concede defeat at the earliest possible opportunity.