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Have You Played... Democratic Socialism Simulator?

NATIONALISE GOOGLE

In Democratic Socialism Simulator, a turtle will pop up and ask what you want to do about the housing crisis. Fox News will slander you, and the New Pork Times will demand your comment on "the blackface incident". You're the newly elected president of American, see, and it's your job to bring about socialism. Clock's ticking.

It plays a lot like Reigns, in that you're confronted with a Tinder like interface and have to make binary decisions about how to run the country. In my game I nationalised Google. Then the rest of the world told me they weren't wild about America essentially owning the internet, and so I agreed to INTERnationalise Google. I think people liked that.

It's a little game that's good at representing a lot. You've got to bear the interests of specific voters in mind, and be sure to keep winning elections so you can keep enacting progressive policies. You've gotta comprise. I wound up gritting my teeth and attributing "the blackface incident" to "different times", knowing my base would still support me and that I needed to swing some extra voters if I wanted to keep control of Congress beyond the midterms.

It certainly simplifies. Enacting socialism wound up being pretty easy, with structural change that I suspect would take decades passing here in virtual months - though I did have to forsake the environment. I think that might have been part of the point.

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Matt Cox avatar
Matt Cox: Once the leader of Rock Paper Shotgun's Youth Contingent, Matt is an expert in multiplayer games, deckbuilders and battle royales. He occasionally pops back into the Treehouse to write some news for us from time to time, but he mostly spends his days teaching small children how to speak different languages in warmer climates.
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