Today:
- Started Move, Barnstorm, Policy Speech, Issue Knowledge, and Debate Prep. functionality.
Today:
- Changed crusader flags
- Added Leader Activities button to Main Screen
- Added Endorsers button to Main Screen
- Started to implement functionality for Leader Activities buttons
I’m experimenting with doing daily designer updates, so will probably be posting these for at least a bit.
PM4E Australia 2010 is now close to playable. The internal version has the Australia 2007 scenario ported from PM4E Australia 2007 and running.
Today:
- Energy Points now displayed on Main Screen and Player Info Screen
- Leader name and location now displayed on Main Screen
- Leader flags displayed on Main Map
- Draft of how Leader activities interface works and functionality
We are now working on Prime Minister Forever – Australia 2010, to be released late summer or early fall of 2010. We will be releasing details in the weeks to come.
The Australian election will probably occur in 2010, but it depends on the politics in Australia, and in particular on Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s calculations as to when would be best (for the Labor party) to have an election.
To sign up for notification of news on the game, go here.
Note: you can now pre-order Prime Minister Forever – Australia 2010 here.
For the current Prime Minister Forever – Australia 2007, go here.
The Senate 2010 scenario is now in Congress Forever 2010, our election game. Congress Forever is now a simulation for both the U.S. House and the Senate.
Congress Forever contains all 435 seats for the 2010 House, and now all 36 seats for the 2010 Senate, including Charlie Crist’s independent bid in Florida.
Will Rand Paul win in Kentucky? Will Harry Reid be deposed in Nevada? Will the Republicans gain a majority, or the Democrats gain a super-majority? You can experiment with all the possibilities in the game.
Check if out here.
Crumby & Co., the office politics game, is now free.
For 1-4 players, work your way up the office ladder. The game is about cooperation and hard work, or back-stabbing and Machiavellian office politics … You get to decide. Fun for the whole office.
Crumby & Co. is a cross between Monopoly and Scruples, where you navigate the office waters by collecting projects and gaining points for promotion. Collect underlings, steal opponent players’ projects, shred files, and much, much more.
Here is a screenshot where the player Brad has just been promoted up the office chain:
It even includes a special Boss Key for emergencies.
You can download it here.
Crumby & Co. runs on Windows 98, Me, xp, Vista, or 7.
Have fun!
“Meanwhile many cities in [North Rhine-Westphalia] are on the brink of bankruptcy.”
from here.
What’s odd is how many forms of government lean forward financially like this.
A responsible individual or business will save x% of his income (say, 10%), to generate investment income and also to draw on in case something disrupts his revenue stream.
(Democratic?) governments as a rule seem to be the antithesis of this.
That is, not for that reason. My guess is that most people vote because they think that by voting they will make some difference to the outcome of the election. This is almost always false.
One person’s vote in a federal election will almost never change the outcome of who is elected for their seat (in Parliament in the U.K., or in Congress or in the Electoral College in U.S. federal elections). It doesn’t really matter how close the race is projected to be – the chances of one vote making the difference in your constituency are very small regardless. In order for one person’s vote to make a difference, the person who won would have to have won by 1 or 2 votes – this almost never happens.
So is Proportional Representation the answer to this particular problem? No. Proportional Representation is similar, because one person’s vote almost never makes a difference in terms of whether a party gets an extra seat or not at the federal level with some sort of proportional scheme. If you have 500 seats, say, and a purely proportional system, with 50,000,000 people voting (these numbers are similar to the German Bundestag, which uses a modified form of Proportional Representation), then to get a seat requires 100,000 votes. What are the chances your one vote would push your party over that line and into another seat? About 1 in 100,000, or a chance of 0.001%. I.e., statistically speaking it will not happen.
(For comparison, your chances of being killed by an asteroid impact are about 1 in 700,000. Campaigns urging people to vote by saying things like “Make your vote count!”, with the inference that one person’s vote will make a difference, would be like campaigns urging people to put large shields in place over their houses by saying things like “Make your home safe from asteroids!”)
Here are some reasons that might be good ones to vote: patriotic duty, want to tell friends who you voted for, want to encourage other people to vote (although this in turn might not be rational if you think you will therefore change the result of the election, unless lots of people’s votes depend on you voting, which is unlikely), possible fine if you don’t go to the polling booth (Australia), congruence of actions with political beliefs and ideals, … No need to delude ourselves about the power of one vote. One vote counts, but unfortunately only once, which almost never makes the difference in elections as large as federal ones.
Continuing on the theme discussed here, Robert Bennett, incumbent Senator from Utah, has lost in the Republican primary. He came not second but third.
Note: 36 Senate seats (out of 100) are up for election in November. Senators have a 6 year term, unlike Congressmen who have a 2 year term, so approx. 1/3 of the Senate seats are up for election every 2 years.
To better understand some of the possibilities for the new British Parliament’s dynamics and tensions going forward, if you’re familiar with Canadian politics here’s a rough analogy given the new seat totals in Britain:
Conservatives = Conservatives
Labour = Liberal
Liberal Democratic Party = New Democratic Party
Scottish, Welsh, and Irish nationalist parties = Bloc Québécois (the Québec nationalist party)
It’s not exact, but if you’re familiar with Canadian federal politics for the last 3 years, it might be of use in understanding what to expect in the U.K. for the next while.
To extend the analogy:
Gordon Brown (incumbent, unpopular Prime Minister leading exhausted party mired in financial scandal, used to be Chancellor of the Exchequer) = Paul Martin (incumbent, unpopular Prime Minister leading exhausted party mired in financial scandal, used to be Minister of Finance)
Tony Blair (long-running, very successful Prime Minister, who finally allows Gordon Brown to become Prime Minister) = Jean Chrétien (long-running, very successful Prime Minister, who finally allows Paul Martin to become Prime Minister)
David Cameron (transformed Conservative party and brought them back into power, albeit in a minority government) = Stephen Harper (transformed Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservative -> Conservative party and brought them back into power, albeit in a minority government)
Nick Clegg (charismatic, seemed on verge of electoral breakthrough in last election but First-Past-the-Post electoral system stops him) = Jack Layton (charismatic, seemed on verge of electoral breakthrough in last election but First-Past-the-Post electoral system stops him)
