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Political Arena Kickstarter & Pre-Order Store

Created by Eliot Nelson

Pre-order Political Arena here (and don't forget to check out some of our sweet, sweet merchandise). Merchandise will ship by early next year while Political Arena's Early Access will begin next fall.

Latest Updates from Our Project:

Political Arena March Update
14 days ago – Fri, Mar 15, 2024 at 10:20:37 AM

Hello, Political Arena backers!

First, a bit of housekeeping: going forward, we’ll be migrating these emails from Kickstarter to a new email platform. There are a few reasons behind this: 

We want to email more frequently and we’ll be able to do so when we’re not dealing with Kickstarter’s email UI (or lack thereof).

We’ll be able to embed a wider array of content (yes we have gifs and videos for you).

We can’t unsubscribe Kickstarters backers from this list (those handful of you who’ve asked to be unsubscribed will not be migrated to the new list). 

Second, we’re now on Bluesky! Come say hi

Housekeeping over! 

As ever, we’re short on free time as we focus most of our efforts on getting Political Arena out ASAP. However we’re now hosting a weekly, hour-long Political Arena Q&A and discussion on our Discord to keep folks abreast of development updates and answer for the 5,000th time if players will be able to invade Canada (answer: not yet). These Q&As will be held every Friday at 7:30 pm ET / 4:30 pm PT.  We had a lot of fun at the inaugural chat last week, and we’re excited to see our vibrant Discord community grow.  

Before I sign off, I wanted to share some work-in-progress screens. Political Arena is an engine-heavy game, with most of our development work focused on the underlying AI and simulation. As Political Arena has evolved in development, we’ve had to revisit some of our original UI designs to better reflect the increasing richness and depth of its gameplay (and because we thought things could look nicer). 

Until next time, stay safe out there, and we hope to see you at the Discord Q&A!

-Eliot


 

Political Arena August Update!
7 months ago – Sun, Aug 20, 2023 at 05:41:32 PM

Hello Backers!

First, an apology. We’ve been lousy about our Kickstarter updates. We’re a small team and our chief goal is to get you Political Arena ASAP so you start enjoying this game. The long hours are paying off:  I’m excited to announce that we’re beginning beta testing!

OK, really, it's the "Political Arena for our Beta Testers Act"

In a matter of days we’ll be sharing the first preview of Political Arena with our several hundred beta testers. It’ll be a brief preview, as our goal is to get some initial feedback on the game’s scope, tone and direction and to better organize our feature roadmap.

We took a real body blow last year when two developers left our production partner for new opportunities. However we reorganized and are making better time than ever. We’re even growing: We recently welcomed Danny Aguilar, a talented UI/UX artist and designer, to the Political Arena team. Danny is tasked with making Political Arena real and fun. You could say he’s, well … you could say he’s putting the, um … sauce back in sausage making?

…sorry.

A look at our new vote window (spoiler: not everyone in the game will be named Megan Connor)

As always, I want to encourage you to join our Discord. Kickstarter updates require more forethought and planning, and therefore cannot be as frequent while we are in go-go-go development mode. But Discord is casual enough to allow me to pop in and chat about Political Arena’s development and what my dog is up to. With a robust community of over 500 members, our Discord server is a great place to learn more about the game and chat politics.

Until next time!

-Eliot

March Update: Beltway Vibe Setting
about 1 year ago – Thu, Mar 09, 2023 at 01:36:26 PM

Much of the attention Political Arena has received has centered on its mechanics -- You'll pass bills! You'll master campaign strategy! You'll have your career torpedoed by a misguided graduate school paper on colonialism! That's all fine and good, but mechanics are nothing if your game doesn't strike the right tone, mood and ... well ... vibe. After all, we can tell you that your bill is being held up by an aging lawmaker who thinks fiberoptics is a dietary supplement that promotes regularity and wards off cataracts -- but how do we make you feel it? Making sure Political Arena's graphics, sound, music, events and backstories are just so is central to its immersiveness. Below are some of the backstories we've been generating (along with our work-in-progress character creator) to hone Political Arena's vibe and build out its universe.

Forgotten Vice President

No one is quite sure if Bob is talking to a BRIC foreign minister, touring a factory while looking stupid in a hard hat, or attending the funeral of a former one-term senator and U.S. trade representative. Two different White House chiefs of staff have toyed with naming Bob the state of the union’s designated survivor. It is rumored that the speed at which Bob fell into irrelevance following Inauguration Day is being used as a unit of measurement by CERN to clock certain subatomic processes.

Alarming Republican House Backbencher Overshadowed By Other, Even More Alarming Republican Backbenchers

Has introduced no fewer than five bills calling for the Commerce Department to be audited for ISIS infiltration. Regularly appears on a podcast best known for linking feminism to colony collapse disorder and being sponsored by a brand of caulk that “opposes PC culture.” Doesn’t bring her husband around much as he is too busy stockpiling oil drums of dehydrated soup in their basement in preparation for the pending grid collapse.

Think Tank Executive Director

Spent this week appearing on 23 panels and overseeing publication of a report on local solutions to the nation’s 21st century infrastructure challenges. Fourteen people will read this report … six if you don’t count her subordinates. A widely respected D.C. figure who has, nevertheless, run through 15 deputies in the last five years.

Palatable-To-Big-Business Democratic House Member

Overcompensates for his HBS MBA and decade of consulting work helping healthcare companies reduce headcount by overusing the word, “folks.” Is very sorry to be running late to this town hall, but his flight from a private equity-sponsored panel on whether AI can replace school crossing guards was delayed. Did you know that data center construction is fueling job growth in his district?

Middling Republican Lobbyist

Introduces clients to the same five former colleagues from the Ways and Means Committee. Proudly reports to stakeholders that previous groundwork has contributed to passage of a crucial bill … one that was going to be put to a vote and passed, anyway. Ghost wrote three “Dear Colleague” letters this year. Has five lunch meetings a day in three different restaurants. Banks half a million annually doing this. 

Decreasingly Relevant Right-of-Center Washington Socialite

Once Washington's leading facilitator of mimosa brunches attended by trickle down economics fanboys. This doyenne of Northwest D.C.’s respectable Republicans has seen her clout reduce in recent years as the GOP has traded tits small government, hawkish foreign policy ethos for a policy platform focused mostly on disgruntled nihilism. Her best columnist friends are increasingly relegated to being prestige hires at fledgling online publications – a pity since it was in her living room where they brainstormed the idea for at least one American military misadventure abroad.

Politically Invincible DA Definitely About To Primary Your Ass

First in her family to attend college, AND has a ready-for-TV labradoodle named Constitution? Dammit. Can someone even edit the Harvard Law Review while deployed as an Army helicopter pilot? Oh, God, did anyone see that 30-second spot of her in hunting camo, dressing a deer and discussing the need to undo the Dobbs decision? Nuts, I had no idea that so many of the party’s finance committee members were in the same pickleball league … and how did she join it? Will someone PLEASE try to get our DCCC contact on the line? Why isn’t she responding?

2023 Update!
about 1 year ago – Wed, Feb 01, 2023 at 02:42:42 PM

Hello! We know, we know: it’s been a minute. Not to worry, we’re getting quite a bit done!! If you’re here for pictures and not words, here’s a bunch of new Political Arena content

We’re working on our events and news system

We’re gamifying legislation drafting

We’re working on tracking legislation

We’re doing some (weird) sound engineering

We’re building out our AI engine.

We hit some standard game development bumps in the road last year, reassessed, reorganized and we’re going to be better long term for it. What we paid for in a delayed release, we’re going to make up for down the line with better content and faster releases. That said, we know it stinks to have to wait for something you’re so excited about and we truly, truly appreciate your patience.

Really, we’re incredibly bummed we can’t let you live out all of your WILDEST Kevin McCarthy fantasies right now, but we are so jazzed by all the progress we’re making, including the ability to make an adjunct professor of English the junior senator from whichever state you so please (seriously, we're really pleased with how our character creator is coming):


More soon!


-Eliot

Release Date News & An Extra Gift To Our Backers
over 1 year ago – Sat, Oct 08, 2022 at 12:13:55 AM

We’re building Political Arena for two reasons:


  1. We’ve wanted to play an immersive, on-the-ground political sim for years, but there isn’t one. Woe betide anyone in the market for West Wing 2K20.
  2. It will equip players with a more effective understanding of how our country is run and how to fix it. Our country – in case you haven’t noticed – is a wee bit on fire and could use some help.

We want this game to kickass. It will be kickass, but it takes time if we’re going to do it well.

This brings us to the unfortunate bit: we are delaying the release of Political Arena until we are satisfied that our first Early Access release is an incredibly fun, engrossing and immersive first step. We’re not putting a date on the release, because we don’t want to rush ourselves into a bad product or crunch any of our developers to death.

Let’s not sugarcoat it: in our ongoing attempt to not biff the content (and our mental health), we ended up biffing the timing. To help take the sting off, we're going to offer all of our Kickstarter backers the game's first mechanic DLC for free.

Bringing politics into gaming in a substantial way is a life’s work for us, so you best believe we’re in this for the long haul. Imagine if Political Arena existed 30 years ago. Where would we be if millions (hell, even a couple of hundred) of players cultivated a more intuitive understanding of politics and brought it to bear to combat the bad guys? This thought alone gets us out of bed every morning.

We could have phoned in a bunch of things to speed up our release, but that’s not how we’re doing this. To illustrate that point, let’s look at some — well – illustrations. In our last update, we showed off some early politician renderings. We want players to be able to create (and square off against) a wide range of people, both for reasons of accuracy and representation. Below you can see our initial politician creator engine hard at work:

It’s much more complicated than it looks. Having this “paper doll” system requires us to calibrate all the different features against one another, and some are easier than others. We’ve had more meetings than I care to mention where it was a professional necessity to work through the mechanics of putting a hijab on a Carl Levin lookalike. And all this still just represents a fraction of the game’s hairstyles, eyes, noses, skin tones and so forth – to say nothing of the clothes, accessories and bodies. We could have greatly reduced the politician designer’s depth, but politics is literally about representation, and this is just one of many areas where we can’t cut corners.

We’ve got our work cut out for us, whether it’s calibrating how many election cycles pass before the average House member runs for higher office, the distribution of seniority when the game auto-populates the Senate (now there’s a phrase), tweaking how specific demographic groups respond to tax cuts, fine tuning the intricacies of intra-party squabbling or getting octogenarian senators’ jowls right. Oh lord, the jowls.

We’ll get there, jowls and all. Thank you for your patience.