Espiocracy News

What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary (The Vision) or find out more on Steam page.

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Hi Folks!

The struggle between ideologies was central to World War II, Cold War, and War on Terrorism. It will also be the pivotal part of Espiocracy.

Paraphrasing Richard Feynmann, in order to model an ideology from scratch, the game first invents the universe. Historical events before 1946 and events happening during player's campaign - from military invasions to bestselling books - have not only physical consequences, but are also met with mental reaction of populations and individual actors. This reaction is represented by a view: mix of opinion, worldview, and belief.

Views build ideologies. But it doesn't end there, as some views can become more than tenets of ideologies: they represent collective memory, cultural transmission, long-held grievances, exceptionalism, discrimination, myths, conspiracy theories, and everything in between.

Transcript: Events influence population and non state-actors by changing views held by the people. Acquired views, in turn, affect decisions which lead to further events.

In this system, views essentially tie causes with effects. They provide reasons behind decisions made by actors and reactions to consequences of these decisions. Moreover, views affect other views both in evolution over time and in specific decisions, creating symphony of history played by an orchestra of views. And you modify the ensemble in the middle of performance (by assassinating the violinist and blackmailing the pianist).

[h2]Example Views[/h2]

Technically, a view in the game is mental state towards a subject. States can be as simple as "pro-" or as multilayered as "resentment". Subjects touch everything that exists or can be done in the game world.

There was a single very prominent view which dominated political decisions and lives of populations during the Cold War:

Transcript: Fear of nuclear war. Recent influences: +3.04 New Yorker report, +0.22 collective memory. Main cause: Hiroshima bombings (1945). Influence on other subjects: -0.6 war, +0.1 religion, +0.7 military. Direct effects: preparing for nuclear war, decision paralysis.

Its prevalence has been recently increased by famous John Hersey's report about irradiated victims of atomic bombs. The view has strong connections to other views: holders want to avoid the war but at the same time they support expansion of defensive military capabilities. Directly in decision making, as we would expect from fear, sometimes it motivates preparation and sometimes it delays engagement. Will Soviet leader dive head-first into Korean War, given his fear of nuclear conflict? Are people going to elect a warmongering candidate, when their children are raised on "Duck and Cover"? How decades of life in fear will affect a generation that no longer remembers the hell of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Views are usually local - their causes can be similarly intimate. German populations begin with:

Transcript: Guilt after the war. Recent influences: +0.10 collective memory. Main cause: Holocaust (1942-1945). Connections: -0.8 violence, -0.6 military, -0.5 war, -0.2 nation. Direct effects: willing to make reparations, avoiding aggressive decisions.

This view, recognized by Carl Jung as Kollektivschuld, is not without controversies, but there is no hidden bias - the game is clear about assumptions being made. Pacifying effect of guilt after the war is strong. It may loom over local population and politicians for decades, maybe even continue into the 21st century. Is it possible to push population holding this view into a war? Can patriotic views survive the stigma? Are foreign powers going to use and abuse this view against the national interest?

Transcript: "Diese Schandtaten: Eure Schuld!" - "These atrocities: your fault!". Campaign of US War Department.

[h2]Example Ideology[/h2]

Ideologies in Espiocracy will be represented by hierarchical lists of views with common maintainers and sources (causes).

Transcript: Government ideology - stalinist communism. Views: cult of Joseph Stalin, pro-authoritarian, focus on industry, blaming landowners, pro-collectivist, solidarity with workers, solidarity with peasants, anti-capitalist, superiority of state planning, blaming bourgeois, expecting class conflict, anti-colonialist, socialism in one country. Sources: Capital by Marx (1867-1883), Lenin works (1893-1923), Stalin constitution (1936).
(Views can have special names. Here, "socialism in one country" is pro-isolationist view - not ideal but good enough as a model of influence on decisions.)

The list is not fixed: views and their order evolve over time. Changes (up to introduction of new sources) are made by maintainers - leaders, political parties, other actors - who also popularize the whole ideology and its constituent views. Popular support of the ideology depends on alignment between its views and population's views, which is recognized and utilized by political entities. This is two-way street: populations and ideologies influence themselves back and forth. On top of that, given special causes, some ideologies are directly supported or opposed (you can't have McCarthyism without anti-communist view!).

Ideologies here are understood as political ideologies, which usually guide actions of a political party, movement, or even guerilla group:

Transcript: Other political ideologies. Social democracy (45%, SPD). Christian democracy (23%, CDU). Nazi fascism (20%, illegal). Liberal democracy (11%, LDP).

Ideologies are fairly granular. It's not enough to have communism or even Soviet communism - stalinist variant is the level that Espiocracy aims for, allowing modelling of stalinism pushed into eastern and southern Europe, later takeover by revisionists, and Sino-Soviet divide with famous "70% right, 30% wrong". This is heavily utilized by the simulation: ideologies are split like religious heresies, general ideologies are used as a foundation for more detailed systems, some actors can create new political approaches.

International spreading of ideologies is as central to the game as has been to the Cold War. Alignments between ideologies control diplomacy. Friendly relations are natural for countries believing in similar views - and vice versa, hostilities can be fueled solely by ideological antagonisms. The map is painted with ideologies. Their promotion, installation or even imposing is one of the main ways to win the game.

[h2]Interacting with Views & Ideologies[/h2]

An intelligence agency is ideally suited for the interaction with views and ideologies. By targeting actors and launching propaganda campaigns, you will:

• Influence elections
  
• Ignite and accelerate social conflicts
  
• Instigate strikes, insurgencies, civil wars
  
• Mold existing ideologies
  
• Eliminate ideologies (legally or even entirely, do you remember how stalinism withered away?)
  
• Change views of individual actors
  
• Manufacture views and ideologies
  
• Counter foreign propaganda campaigns
  
• Deal with views held by your operatives
  

[h2]Final Remarks[/h2]

Screenshots are obviously very early work in progress. Many topics touched today will be expanded in further dev diaries. At the end of the day, dev diary is meant to be just a short introduction - there's much more to the implementation of views and ideologies in Espiocracy (for instance, subjects are organized by word2vec-inspired system), which I hope you'll test with your own hands!

The next dev diary - "Populations" - will be posted on August 20th.

If you're not already wishlisting Espiocracy, consider doing it:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1670650/Espiocracy/

There is also a small community around Espiocracy:


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"We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of" - Edward Bernays

Hello Everyone!

What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of the upcoming strategy game Espiocracy. You can catch up with the first dev diary (The Vision) or find out more about the game on Steam page.

1946 is the starting year in Espiocracy. Second World War just ended and relations between two superpowers - USSR and USA - are deterioriating.

Transcription: From June 1945 to June 1946, the world has seen atomic bombings, Truman hostility towards USSR, Kennan's long telegram, Churchill iron curtain speech, capture of Alan Nunn May, elections won by communists in Czechoslovakia, and constitutional referendum won by democrats in Italy.

After defeat of the great enemy, the fate of former alliance is already decided. However, many events that led to the Cold War in the shape as we know it are still bound to happen, as the start of the Cold War is usually situated closer to 1947. This early day-one interaction is crucial element of fun in Espiocracy - imagine changing the outcome of Czechoslovak elections or Italian referendum, and turning around further history in the corresponding regions.

[h2]Simulation[/h2]

1946 is also the foundation of Espiocracy's simulation design. Most of the processes critical for the Cold War were already set in motion. Moreover, many alternative history approaches were well represented by the proximity of WW2.

The game will simulate the following historical processes, starting from 01.01.1946:

• Occupation
  
• Civil wars
  
• Trials and hunts
  
• Government form changes
  
• New countries, separations and unifications
  
• Large population migrations
  
• Nuclear research, leading to bombs and power plants
  
• Missile development and further space race
  
• Technological progress

Most of them will receive dedicated dev diaries. Needless to say, all of them will be under player's influence.

[h2]Berlin Station[/h2]

There's one fascinating historical source from 1946, which sits right at the foundation of Espiocracy. It's 90-pages-long CIA report from early activities of an intelligence station in Berlin, with its author managing the station exactly since January 1946.

Berlin was a special place in the Cold War, often called the capital of spies. Its early days were even more special, due to destruction after the war, relatively unconstrained movement, and conflict between communist and liberal political parties. In this environment, covert operations should be pretty exciting - and they were! Just look at this passage about... American sabotage of Soviet uranium deposits:

Transcript: There was certain gratification in being able to pinpoint a target anywhere in the Russian Zone, and dispatch an agent to cover it almost at a moment's notice. Perhaps the classic operation of this type was the surveillance of a large cache of uranium salts at Ludwigslust, which we carried out for the Manhattan Engineering District. We could put a man into the warehouse almost at will, and from afar we watched with satisfaction the elimination of the dangerous salts by their use in tanning white leather.

Or this striking fragment about spy networks in East Germany:

Transcript: The ultimate moral, and it is a painful one, seems to be that any successful productive operation must eventually be paid for by an even greater outlay of effort in disposal and liquidation. For that reason, perhaps the most important outside development of 1947 affecting FR operations was the organization of the disposal unit at Heidelberg. Their responsibility is a heavy one, for they have to suffer dismal headaches long after the shouting and the tumult have died away.

Screenshots above refer to the first part of the gameplay in Espiocracy - major operations. Ultimately, the station report focuses on the regular espionage, which is the second part of the gameplay (a.k.a. regular activities), for instance:

Transcript: First Frankfurt requested, and then Washinghton required, that we elevate military intelligence, especially Order of Battle of the Soviet armed forces, to the highest priority, at no matter what cost to our other operations. The effect on our positive operations was of course sweeping; in some respects it was disastrous.

Declassified numbers suggest scale of these activities. There were 27-40 employees, 200-500 intelligence reports monthly, up to 125 handled agents. In addition to spying on the Red Army, the station also infiltrated German police, Soviet press in Berlin, and local interior agency. Authors stated interesting reasons behind these actions - such as ensuring there is no revival of Nazi movement and confronting Soviet intelligence services which disguised their operatives as journalists.

Among other things, early acitivity of American Berlin station directly proves that there was a lot to do already in 1946 from the perspective of an intelligence agency preparing for the Cold War.

[h2]Final Remarks[/h2]

Currently, only a single starting point - 1946 - is planned for Espiocracy. The game will cover at least the whole Cold War (to 1990), but the overall goal is historical coverage up to the last year (2020).

Short anecdote at the end of the dev diary: one of the first fully-playable prototypes was set in modern 2021, but after upgrades with historical scenarios I discovered that intelligence mechanisms provide much more fun when set in the past. If you search deep enough in Google Play Store, you might even find this prototype :)

If you're not already wishlisting Espiocracy, consider doing it:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1670650/Espiocracy/

Also, small community around Espiocracy has been just launched:



The next dev diary - "Ideologies and Views" - will be posted on 6th of August.

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Photo credit: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-S74639 / CC-BY-SA 3.0

"Developing sphere of usefulness and prestige, while maintaining the passion for anonymity" - chief of CIA's Berlin station about his task

Hi Everyone!

Ever wanted to play grand strategy game designed for the Cold War? Do you fancy replaying nuclear brinkmanship, influencing the space race, spreading ideologies, and overthrowing governments? Well, I do and that's why we're here today! Espiocracy will be a game of all those things and many more.

Today is the first post introducing the game - a.k.a. developer diary - of a 20+ series planned before the release. Each will shed details about the gameplay, answer to why questions, and sometimes brag about deep mechanics ;)

[h2]The Vision - LARGE WHY[/h2]

We'll start with the most important question: who is the player?

Player persona in strategy games can be represented on a spectrum:

Transcript: from nations to characters

Cold War featured strong nations and strong characters. Both were subject to huge changes - the period has seen the establishment of over 75 new countries, a similar number of significant assassinations, and many more governments changed in elections. This leads to substantial game design issues:

• Playing as a nation: What about larger-than-life leaders? How can you override Stalin or Mao?
  
• Playing as a character: What happens when you are ousted? Is it a roguelike?
  
• Playing as a political party: What happens when you are not in power? Is it a political sim?

And these are only the first, most important questions coming to mind (you can read a bit longer explanation on the forum here). The main takeaway is that limiting the game to either side of the spectrum would spoil the fun.

I believe that the solution to this conundrum is different player persona - between a nation spirit and characters, more long-term focused, and ultimately larger in the Cold War environment.

Transcript: in the middle and above the spectrum

In Espiocracy, you'll be playing as a character-driven intelligence agency (or the intelligence community, depending on the country). You'll not only live through leader assassinations, elections, ideology changes - you will be the cause of these historical events. Although there will be no RPG-like player character (no director of an agency), every decision will be implemented by characters (operatives, agents, diplomats...) and will affect other characters, creating an intricate intersection of large scale geopolitics and personal life stories.

To make the game even more fun, your decision space will be larger than the popular image of espionage suggests. You'll be directly interacting with national decisions, in the bounds of immersion and historical accuracy - for instance, your country leader will ask you for advice about starting a war (IRL example: CIA advising Eisenhower on Suez Canal crisis) or in some situations, you'll be directly running diplomacy (IRL example: KGB in South America).

[h2]The Inspiration - small why[/h2]

Espiocracy is grounded in books. Its development is supported by constantly returning and referring to:

Transcript: Strategy by L. Freedman, Cambridge History of the Cold War, Espionage fiction by John le Carré, Polish Cold War counterintelligence books, Mitrokhin Archive

In addition, a more personal and multipolar approach to the Cold War is in small part inspired by the history of my family, influenced by tides of postwar expulsions, migrations, and coincidences. My grandparents were living hundreds of kilometers apart and met only because they were expelled to the same county, my wife's maternal grandparents met in Siberia prison camps and then escaped to the county to which her paternal grandparents migrated thousands kilometers from Kazakhstan, and we met because the collapse of the Soviet Block forced my family to move to a place just a few kilometers from my wife's family. Talk about destiny!

[h2]The Principles - how[/h2]

Three main principles define what Espiocracy will be about:

• Homage to the Cold War and espionage
  
• Focus on meaningful and strategic decisions
  
• Important role of immersion

Also, some things common for other strategy games will be avoided here:

• No doomsday clock
  
• No hidden biases or political agendas
  
• Not running away from controversial content (eg. the UK imprisoning gay people in the 1950s)
  
• Generally, no humor (the game will be on the slightly darker side of storytelling)
  
• No fancy graphics or beautiful music (sorry, all the work goes into gameplay)

[h2]Final remarks[/h2]

If you're not already wishlisting Espiocracy, consider doing it:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1670650/Espiocracy/

The next dev diary - "1946" - will be posted on 23rd of July.

PS. House rules of these dev diaries are: brevity, bullet points, and use of graphics over text. However, if you want to expand some topics, don't hesitate to chime in with a question or two :)
PS2. The wonderful photo of Cold War tech, visible at the top, was taken by John Smith.