2016 is coming up and the elections already look like it will be one of the most interesting in a long time, especially after the clown show that was the 2016 elections. Hillary will be the obvious nominee for the Democrats while the Republican field looks like it will be an all out fight to the death. With such an exciting election ahead, I started thinking about the Political Machine games and how they will portray this election. I know nobody posts or reads here anymore but regardless, here is my wish list for Political Machine 2016:
Primaries. With the upcoming election inevitably having such an interesting primary, it seems insane not to include it in the next title. It doesn't need to get super complex with the invisible primaries, campaigning for the straw polls, and whatnot. It can just be the actual primary race and allow you to pick, say, four people running against each other for their party's nomination. You should also be able to see how the other party is doing during their primary. Once it finishes, you should be allowed to continue on to the general elections with all the money and publicity you have built up during the primaries in a grand campaign.
Debates. We already have the television interviews in the single player so why not have the debates? It could be a similar system of questions to the Campaign Trail game (
http://www.americanhistoryusa.com/campaign-trail/) with your answers affecting your national ratings so you can't just say what the one state you are campaigning in wants to hear. Perhaps there can be a debating trait for candidates that determines how positively the debates affect them (so a person with high debating skills will take less of a hit if they do poorly and will get more of a boost if they do well). It would also make the running mate actually important since he will also have to debate and affect your rankings.
Third party candidates. Now, I don't think you should be able to play as any of these guys since they're so unimportant (Except for when you play as American Independent or Reform in the 1968 and 1992 scenarios but we'll get to that later). However, there probably should be a NPC third party guys campaigning in the background that can snatch critical votes for your party if you don't pander enough to your own party. If you play as Jeb Bush and go too moderate, the Constitution candidate may end up getting a huge amount of the votes from the Republican base who feel like their voices are being ignored. In a grand campaign, a primary challenger may even choose to run as a third party against you if you don't appeal to their faction but that might be too complicated. I would say that the third party candidates in the game should be the Green Party which can steal votes from the Democrats, and the Constitution and the Libertarian Party which can eat votes from the Republicans.
Sugar daddies. These are sort of like endorsements except they give you money instead of voter support. Depending on what issues you are strong on, sugar daddies can give you massive financial backing. They will give either massive single, one time donations or smaller donations throughout the race. They can be based on real people but given a silly fake name. Here's some examples of sugar daddies:
For Democrats
Democrats
- Hillary Clinton
- Bernie Sanders
- Joe Biden
- Elizabeth Warren
- Mario Cuomo
- Martin O'Malley
- Jim Webb
- Brian Schweitzer
- Julian Castro
- Jerry Brown
- Ed Rendell
- Al Franken
- Michelle Obama
- George Clooney
Anyway, nobody may read this but I had a lot of fun making it. Hope to see some discussion on what you guys would like to see in Political Machine 2016.
