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) and find out more on Steam page.

Today, we'll dive into gameplay - in the form an AAR, after action report - of the nation chosen by votes on the Espiocracy discord server (invite link at the end).





Welcome to Hanoi, the capital of Democratic Republic of Vietnam. It's March 6th, 1946.

We are playing as the PTBQ - Military Intelligence Department within Vietnam People's Army. Years of French repressions, followed by harsh Japanese occupation, and short cooperation with American OSS, honed our intelligence community into decently sized and skilled force, ranked 28th in the world.



Initial state must be sufficient for now. In a small ravaged country, we won't be able to embark on significant recruitment campaigns. Any arrests (or worse) will be painful - and as a largely unrecognized country, we don't have diplomatic immunity to protect our officers!



This is our homeland:



Between Japanese withdrawal and return of French colonial forces, we were able to forge fragile independence, unified under the authority of Ho Chi Minh. Internally, the landscape is characteristic for new nations with guerrilla warfare and military uprising DNA: strong guerrillas-turned-politicians, famous military leader, still important guerrilla organization, and population with fairly significant influence (due to recent mass participation in warfare). Internationally, we are aligned with the communist bloc but that doesn't mean much in 1946. The USSR licks its wounds, neighboring China is buried in bloody civil war, and colonialist empires from the capitalist bloc have far too large armies to have them sit idly in Europe. Ho Chi Minh, aware of the danger, currently negotiates terms of independence in Paris. He will return either with nothing (and French invasion) or with partial loss of independence. The latter scenario, however, seems incompatible with honest belief in communism of almost all our significant actors. We can see relevant examples inside the colony that we recently separated from.



No recent activity inside Indochina is no coincidence. French administration and military controls public life, keeps actors and their influence low, with the only slightly influential actors sourcing their influence either from religion (Cao Dai and Hoa Hao), from organized crime (Binh Xuyen), or from Paris (the rest). Our entry point will be 6 million of Vietnamese waiting for liberation - but they have to wait until we solidify our existence in the north. To achieve that, we have to aim straight at France.

Naturally, it won't be easy.



Intelligence operations on this hostile ground are not possible at the moment. We lack infrastructure, local intelligence, funds, resources. Speaking of which, let's quickly review current (current for this AAR and for this game build) state of main resources visible in the top bar, which evolved since it was described in previous dev diaries.



From left to right, the player deals in:

• Intelligence Assets - small regional infrastructure established autonomously by officers, used mostly in operations
  
• Official Budget - monthly subsidies from the government, spent on legal and not-completely-secret activities, such as stations or most operations
  
• Black Budget - governmental account with money that can be transferred to other organizations
  
• Illicit Budget - acquired through various illegal means, used for bribes, extremely secret, or quasi-legal activities (and can be laundered back into official budget)
  
• Various small discrete resources, here it is 1 political connection that can be used in domestic lobbying or managing fallout from failed operations
  

In addition to resources, main parameters - measures of success - also evolved.



From left to right:

• Strategic Intelligence - quantified value derived from collected intelligence materials, relevant to national interests (our main national interest is very simple: "survival of the nation"), with higher value directly contributing to governmental decisions (their choice and success) and to State Power Index (we're currently sitting at 12.4 which is 32nd SPI in the world)
  
• Trust and Need - two critical angles through which the government views our intelligence community, affect anything from budget, operations, purges, recommendations, all the way to background control of government members (!)
  
• Threat - incurred globally and regionally during espionage activities and decreasing over time, higher regional threat makes it more difficult to operate in the region, while higher global threat may lead to purges in the intelligence agency, interest from global press, and even terrorist attacks aimed directly at our officers
  

There are many more small resources and parameters affecting intelligence activities (for instance: relative currency strength), which will remain for you to explore further.

Back to France, one useful angle could be pushing the country over to communist bloc in the incoming elections. The name: Maurice Thorez.



Operations, as previously mentioned, are not yet possible here. We need an anchor in Europe. Due to local destruction and ongoing governmental issues, the Netherlands seems to struggle with establishing proper security services. In terms of counterintelligence environment, it's a sandbox - we can do anything we want and it will be cheap, at least right now. We send Le Dang Dung's section there.



Meanwhile, an interesting target arose in the region.



Thailand, currently, wants to keep neutral status quo. With their complex recent history, which includes Japanese-supported invasion of Indochina, population larger than Indochina, and relatively large army, they could be a very useful ally in the inevitably incoming war for survival. Hence, we send our most skilled operatives - Ho Trong Ba's section - to establish an intelligence station in Bangkok and then scramble to exploit local political environment.

A month later, we spring into action.



In the meantime, Soviet troops declare the end of occupation zone in the northern half of Korean peninsula. This is a good opportunity to seek cooperation with fellow communist intelligence agency.



It seems that the Chinese communist forces are making progress as well - approaching critical cities, controlling larger area, expanding to Manchuria. They are too far away from our border to establish direct connection on land, to provide them support or to receive support from them. Let's hope that they will close in sooner than later.

Coup operation is in progress, which is a good opportunity to take a look at refreshed operational mechanics.



An intelligence operation now is more direct race in time between attacking and defending intelligence agency (green and red pie above). Attacking player, through operatives preparing the ground and implementing simulated steps, enables better possible outcome over time (stars and "possible" label above). However, in parallel, counterintelligence service works towards achieving chosen goal against this operation (anywhere from observing to... murdering officers). Once minimal positive outcome is possible, a player can order execution of the final step of the operation (top left button). Obviously, rushing minimal outcome isn't really useful, and there are large gains with every better outcome. Many operations become micro-wars of nerves.

In this case, Thai counterintelligence was more aggressive and faster. It isn't surprising, given the grave nature of the operation, and our haste in launching it before settling properly in Thailand. A few officers from the section were arrested, relations with Thailand damaged, and now we have to negotiate way out for our valuable officers...

...and then it gets worse. We were trying to stage a coup while another plot was already in progress, executed by Seni Pramoj.



And it's disastrous news for us. Instead of turning Thailand from neutral to more supportive, we missed a plot of an anti-communist leader!



Due quickly incurred losses in Thailand, our chances of acting against him are negative. Thailand, for now, won't be useful and we will have to apply pressure through other tools to at least stop them from allying with France against communist Vietnam.

Perhaps the European angle fares better.



Indeed, station in Amsterdam continues work in the region, preparing the ground for French operations. However, it is slower than expected and we are still far from successfully approaching Maurice Thorez. Having learned from mistakes in Thailand, we shouldn't rush into this direction. After all, we are relatively safe in the Netherlands even in the case of hot war.

Returning to the homeland and preparation before the war, we'll transfer black budget to Viet Minh. After the collapse of Thai direction and slower progress in Europe, this is the best choice as we approach 1947.



In September, we can define state budget, together with other members of the government. Naturally, professionalization of the army from guerrilla to conventional force should be the priority.



On the front of spies and intelligence, our operatives recruited four agents.



One of them, agent Giap near Vietnamese politician Truong Chinh, is ready for specialized training. Since we are well aligned with Chinh and we don't need special roles inside the country (these are implemented by domestic sections), we'll just direct Giap to advance the career ladder, in anticipation of future service.

In terms of intelligence, stations, exchange with North Korean RB, various operations brought useful results but not critical for current situation.



As the year ends, we receive report about evolution of influential actors in relevant places.



And then, after a few months of further operations, expansion, and preparations...



We will continue this save in the next dev diary.



See you on December 6th!

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:

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) and find out more on Steam page.

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Many topics near the Cold War and espionage deserve a full separate game. Espiocracy, out of sheer necessity, has to narrow down such topics into a single main angle. That was the case for conventional wars (angle: special forces), diplomacy (international structures), or science and technology (paradigms). Propaganda is another such large topic.

The main angle of propaganda in Espiocracy? Controlling the narrative.

[h2]Views, Causes, Major Events[/h2]

As you can recall from the earliest dev diaries, views (eg. pro-Soviet sentiment or fear of nuclear war) form the backbone of human psychology in the game, giving people memory, motivation, alignment, and so on. In the most naive approach to propaganda, you can just select any view in the game, and then task your assets with promoting or undermining it.

This method, however, merely addresses a view as a black box. It is used in the game as a secondary cheap tool (chosen perhaps by smaller intelligence agencies). Actual impactful propaganda begins a little bit further: with manipulation of the inner workings of views.

Views in the game connect causes with effects - for instance, Germany unleashed WW2 which led to widespread anti-German sentiment at the beginning of the game in 1946. Many other major events before and during the game can create and/or modify views.

Naturally, this doesn't happen instantly, and instead, such events need time to propagate through media, become topics of debates, or reach books and movies. Main propaganda tools in Espiocracy focus on this twilight zone. Players can modify the "how" of the view-making and view-modifying process - they can control the narrative.

[h2]The Narrative[/h2]

When a major event happens in the game (invasion, terrorist attack, political change, international crisis, large accident, and so on), players begin a battle over controlling the narrative around this event.

In simplest terms, "control" is a set of 0-100 parameters, one global, and a few for participating/relevant/superpower nations. Details, such as the initial level of control, are highly dependent on the event and its details. For instance, the story of the Sputnik launch starts as fully controlled by the USSR, and the only thing that the American player can do is slightly subtract Soviet control domestically - whereas the assassination of JFK is more or less carte blanche in terms of control, difficult to take over, prone to be never fully controlled by any party, and then be lost to dozens of conspiracy theories (not only from players but also from other actors in the game).

Between the onset of the event and highly variable moment of people moving on (which, again, depends on many details, other events, and even forms of media), players vie for control by:

• Using geographically and culturally positioned radio stations, newspapers, bribed journalists, partially controlled actors, spies, front organizations, and anything else that can potentially influence the masses
  
• Acquiring related intelligence, documents, recordings, witness reports
  
• Leaking chosen parts to the press, surfacing the event to the government, and further, modifying details
  
• Enforcing censorship (including jamming stations), diverting the attention by popularizing another significant event, supplying strong rebuttals
  
• Preparing forgeries, false flags, accusations, convincing lies
  
• Directly attacking other parties trying to manipulate the event
  

Once one of the players controls the majority (51+) of the narrative, they can launch propaganda campaigns that exploit the story, modify its perception, and accomplish various small feats along the way.

[h2]Campaigns[/h2]

A propaganda campaign in the game is a kind of intelligence operation that uses propaganda assets (mentioned above, radio stations, and others) to primarily either amplify or suppress the controlled event.

While the main goal is usually obvious (eg. Soviets suppressing the Chernobyl disaster or Americans amplifying Khrushchev's "secret speech"), details and consequences - defined by available assets as well as direct configuration of the campaign plan - forge campaigns into unique adventures that:

• Shift new views in terms of direction (eg. revert pro-X to anti-X), subject (eg. assign blame/merit to another entity), emotional load (eg. from anti-X to hatred of X), and spread
  
• Ignite reactions from actors and nations, eg. smear campaign causing targeted political leader to resign
  
• Lead to new events, eg. Red Scare
  
• Use white / grey / black propaganda methods, utilize totalitarian / free environment, use assets from publishing houses to smuggled samizdat machines
  
• Choose between resonating with one or another set of nations, for instance appealing to Latin American nations while repelling African nations
  
• Associate concept A with B, eg. NATO with Nazis (a common theme in Soviet propaganda)
  
• Have various trade-offs, for instance between simplicity and spread, between costs and vulnerability to counter-propaganda, between exposing own propaganda assets and strength of the campaign, between domestic effect and abroad, and so on
  
• Affect control over this event and potentially over other events
  

Such campaigns, launched to manipulate fresh controlled events, form the majority of propaganda machine in the game - but there are more variants of them and adjacent details.

[h2]Variants and Corollaries[/h2]

Some major events are active for a long time (for instance: wars). In these cases, the battle for control over the event is also a long-term affair where it can frequently change hands, influenced by the evolution of the event, campaigns, and so on.

Manufactured or even false flag events can also become a basis for propaganda. Their main downside, naturally, is the cost of preparing them and much higher vulnerability to counter-propaganda.

Speaking of which, following standard mechanics of intelligence operations, players can launch counterintelligence (in this case: counter-propaganda) operations upon detecting foreign campaigns reaching their soil. Usually, it takes very much a counterintelligence form, with arrests of relevant journalists, infiltrating outlets suspected of being under foreign control or surveilling participating actors to identify their handlers.

In addition to working fresh major events, there are two more special types of campaigns. Future events, such as an invasion of another country, can be preceded by a campaign that engineers consent. Past events, for instance, a past alliance with a universally hated nation, can be modified by campaigns that rewrite history both domestically and abroad.

Outside of controlling the narrative, nations have a set of psychological parameters modifiable through player actions. Some of them were mentioned before (eg. diplomatic weight), others are experimental (eg. atomic ambition), while some are largely integrated with the propaganda tools described above. One parameter from the last category is soft power, developed by international contributions (sometimes unusual, for instance in real history North Korea acquired soft power in Africa by sending... mass gymnastics instructors - an action also available in the game), which then supports battle for control and subsequent campaigns.

[h2]Final Remarks[/h2]

The next dev diary will be posted on September 6th!

---

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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"Anyone can believe a convincing lie; we’ve all fallen for a few. But the blatant lie does some useful things. It reveals the skeptics, or at least the skeptics who open their mouths. It forces the supporters deeper into the web of lies. They have to accept this, knowing it is a lie, and dig themselves deeper. It’s brainwashing, making them choose to accept the propaganda rather than the evidence before them" - author and year unknown

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) and find out more on Steam page.

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There are two layers of diplomacy in Espiocracy: between countries and between intelligence agencies.

Nominal diplomacy has been described in DD#51 and you may remember it as an intricate hierarchy of mostly formal structures. Summits, treaties, policies, doctrines. Secondary diplomacy between players - between intelligence agencies and communities - is nothing like that!

[h2]Implicit Messages[/h2]

Instead, the game assumes "actions over words" as the central idea behind contacts between Stasi, MI6, and others. When KGB tried to insult and threaten CIA officers in Moscow, they didn't send strongly worded letters - they beat them up in the dark alleys and smeared their cars with feaces. In Espiocracy terms, KGB sent an implicit message to the CIA.

Many actions in the game send such messages. Usually, they are more subtle, happen along the way, and depend on the results. For instance, an attempt to intercept an intelligence operation can send one of four possible implicit messages:



A message may also be non-deterministic or even detrimental to the sender. British intelligence community in WW2 famously cracked the Enigma code but no less effort was put in efficiently using gained intelligence in a way that does not reveal that Enigma has been broken. The game implements this fascinating psychological conundrum partially also through implicit messages.



In one more psychologically inspired implementation, some actions may send a few potential implicit messages, out of which the receiving player chooses one of them - essentially, the player is interpreting the action.



And this is where we arrive at the receiving side. What such a message actually changes in game mechanics?

A message mainly expands agency of the receiving player. It is always associated with a set of new available decisions. When KGB foils too many British agents and MI5 finally deciphers it as a penetration of the network, the British player now has critical new knowledge that opens new reactions:


(Funky paper scrap UI is obviously work in progress.)

Sets of reactions depend on some details (situational, level of tradecraft, levels of capabilities) but they are generally known by all players, easily inspectable through tooltips, and in that way they slightly gamify mind reading, with an espionage twist. Through actions and attached messages, you can force the hand of another player, broadcast your intentions, bluff in ten different ways, gain or lose trust, begin further contacts, and so on.

[h2]More Direct Interactions[/h2]

While implicit messages can always be sent, more advanced forms of contact are tied to two bilateral parameters which are calculated from background situation (such as relations between countries) and further modified by players (including implicit messages).

• Mistrust - Always positive value, increased by players through anything from chaotic operations to defectors, lowered by various gestures of goodwill. Defines degree of general contacts, between third-party mediators (very high mistrust) to borrowing/lending operatives (very low mistrust).
  
• Communication Channels - Developed by players during any interactions (including hostile ones) and structures (eg. an intelligence station in another player's country), lost over time through lack of interactions. Defines quality and theoretical availability of contacts, which may in some (usually very tense) situations transcend any level of mistrust.
  

These two contribute to the plethora of inter-player actions. In addition to a few hinted at above, they include spy swaps, defusing espionage scandals, increasing embassy staff quotas, exchanging intelligence, informal non-interference deals, joint operations, training and know-how transfer, larger alliances such as Five Eyes, and so on. (The list still evolves but it is mostly situational so obvious enough, as far as diplomatic options in strategy games go, that it was initially described in the 8th dev diary.)

[h2]Black Market[/h2]

Last and probably least, the game tries to further expand interactions between players by enabling covert trading through third-party (underworld) entities. In one of the previous AARs, the existence of black market has been hinted at. Here's how it looks currently:



In short, intelligence can be sold on the regional black market to another player - both sides do not know their identities and the transaction has therefore an indirect unpredictable cost of handing over intelligence to another player in the game (eg. trading a secret of domestic politician allows someone else to blackmail said politician). Details are subject to further evolution, probably towards the participation of private entities (history is full of available inspirations: paper mills, private eyes, journalists, info brokers, hacked databases etc).

[h2]Behind The Scenes[/h2]

► Yes, the game has a button for roughing up CIA officers in Moscow (and any other officers in any other city)


► True BTS: "It's year YYYY, I'm A in B, what do I do?" is usually the first question I ask during game development, followed up by finding answers as close to real life as possible (eg. for A = Allen Dulles and B = CIA there's full autobiography available). Implicit messages are one of many direct results of such an approach. Sometimes mechanics ultimately evolve far from original answers, usually to follow better gameplay, but their historical roots still usually enrich mechanics. For instance, CIA obviously did not sell intelligence to other agencies on any kind of black market but... they did buy a lot of materials from, what they called in the 50s, "intelligence peddlers" and "paper mills" which in turn partially acquired and smuggled materials from intelligence officers behind the Iron Curtain. This contributed to the "through underworld" part of the black market in the game.

[h2]Final Remarks[/h2]

The next dev diary will be posted on August 2nd!

---

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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"In subsequent negotiations, SIS proposed a mass PNGing [persona non grata-ing, expelling] of Soviet intelligence personnel in the UK. (...) We cannot consider any such proposal because of the obvious and certain retaliatory steps which will be taken by Soviet authorities" - CIA report in 1962, edited for clarity

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) and find out more on Steam page.

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A game featuring true espionage has to feature true information - existing, propagating, interacting in the game world. How can we achieve this?

In a topical and historical parallel (many of which permeate development of Espiocracy), Claude Shannon offerred an answer in 1948:



Here, he brilliantly focused on the objective flow of information, detaching information from the meaning or the form. Whether you are sending Shakespeare or insults, whether you are telegraphing them or sending them on Discord, this information can be always quantified into bits (nowadays usually represented as 0s and 1s) and then approached from the universal perspective of encoding trasmitters, noise-introducing channels, and decoding receivers.

The game implements information and therefore intelligence in similar way:



Let's explore this system, with plethora of examples from the perspective of Cuba in the game.

[h2]Information in the Game World[/h2]

At the most basic level, many entities in the game have secret states (such as a terminal disease) and execute secret actions (such as preparing a terrorist attack). These, when significant enough, become information in the intelligence mechanics, which is then conveyed (encoded) in various materials.

A few cases for a good start:

• When Castro decides to deploy troops in Angola, this information is materialized in the game through military plans, military communication, and change of behavior of military forces in Cuba
  
• Construction of nuclear power plant in Juragua is visible from the ground, air, and space, and therefore can be materialized by witnesses or devices with cameras
  
• After arrival of Mig-21 jets in Cuba, every deployment and flight conveys this information (until it is well known that Cuba procured Mig-21s)
  

As examples above suggest, materials have different forms, which directly affect how materials can be collected (collection is professional term for acquisition of intelligence).

Physical materials are intuitive: documents, photos, recordings, devices, weapons, fingerprints, presence on the ground, and so on. They can be observed and inspected, some of them also copied, or just stolen.

Mental materials rely on human memory about information or about other materials. They have much higher noise and are forgotten over time but they can reach anywhere, including most critical information. Collection usually relies on conversations, briefings, and interrogations.

Ephemeral materials require immediate collection - eavesdropping on a conversation, intercepting chatter in military communication, observing an action, and so on. People who were a part of such event are also secondary collectors, usually by remembering the event.

Two first categories remain in the world (physically or in minds) and can further propagate through documents, conversations, phone calls, and even rumors (commonly overheard by operatives from intelligence stations). What an intelligence agency does with rumors?

[h2]Deriving Intelligence[/h2]

Once materials are collected, the player is aware of the kind and to what extent a material may potentially contribute. Potentially - because it is extracted through analysis that depends on:

• Parameters of the material (such as signal-to-noise ratio, eg. very high in a single photo vs very low in thousands of hours of phone call recordings),
  
• Skills of analysts from responsible section,
  
• Access to specific facilities (eg. DNA forensics),
  
• Agency-wide levels of specialization (in politics, military, digital devices, and so on)
  

In especially pressing cases, a player may cooperate with more advanced player to extract more information, at the unusual cost of potentially revealing source of the material and details of own operational methods.

Once extracted, information may still remain at potential stage - usually, single material provides only fractional intelligence. To arrive at actual intelligence, operatives usually have to acquire and analyze more materials. For instance, Cuban intelligence agency may first get a hint of incoming guerrilla invasion through rumors overheard by a station in Washington. Then, operatives in investigative way can explore this lead further by wiretapping potentially relevant actors, recruiting spies among Cuban dissidents, conducting risky overflights over places with potential training camps, and so on. This allows the player to further define the details of the invasion, such as date and place, that allow military to successfully and quickly repel it.

[h2]Intelligence[/h2]

Every intelligence agency around the world has its own definition of "intelligence", often complicated by local language. Espiocracy avoids this futile task and instead implements Wittgensteinian approach: intelligence is defined by examples, context, and actual use.

Derived intelligence is used either at national or at operational level. National intelligence contributes to country's international position, available actions, and sometimes even survival. It ranges anywhere from ordinary industrial espionage (eg. trade secrets) all the way to grave revelations (eg. real nuclear position of an adversary).

Operational intelligence, does not interest the government but it is very useful for the player, directly expanding number of available actions. Primarily, it clusters around vulnerabilities and secrets which can be found near all actors in the world.

Derived and even used intelligence remains in the world and has life after life:

• Many pieces of existing intelligence with enough tradecraft may lead to new intelligence in the process of inference,
  
• Operatives remember intelligence that they derived - which then can be extracted from them in interrogation... or they may reveal it after defection,
  
• Actors remember intelligence that was distributed to them - so when we steal nuclear blueprints and pass to inventor-actor who has a butler-spy, retelling or even copies of said blueprints may reach the agency that handles that spy!
  
• Intelligence may be sold to other players (again, with inherent risk of revealing own methods, much lower than in materials but still present),
  
• Leaked to press, revealed after years in a book,
  
• And of course it will be also uncovered to the player in the game over screen
  

[h2]Behind The Scenes[/h2]

► UX for intelligence is not satisfactory yet. Quick sneak peek at work in progress:


► What about false intelligence? Good question! There are a few ongoing experiments, credibility assigned to materials or ability to manufacture false materials (eg. spreading false rumors, sending a walk-in to adversary's embassy with forged documents, producing misleading military chatter...) but they require special care with more iterations to extract the best possible gameplay.

► While it may seem unusual (or even worrying) that a game with espionage in name still substantially changes espionage mechanics after 3 years of development, this is how innovation is made. For a telling case, see "Shadows of Doubt" - a game nominated in Steam Awards for most innovative gameplay in 2023, which was in development since 2015 and made major pivot in core gameplay in 2018. Returning to Espiocracy, the best parts of current gameplay were more or less not possible to be invented three years ago - instead, they required three years of implementing, playtesting, and iterating. You can trace trace this journey in dev diaries, with "Strategic Materials" (DD#11) in 2021 as the first solid stab at discrete intelligence materials, then "Secrets and Opportunities" (DD#23) in 2022 as a implementation of more materials that grew to contribute a lot of fun to gameplay, then "Espionage Gameplay" (DD#47) in 2023 as a wider attempt at unifying and expading these, and now we are here in 2024 with true information.

► Speaking of iterations, I'll drop a screenshot of current mechanics around spies without any explanation:

[h2]Final Remarks[/h2]

The next dev diary will be posted on July 5th!

---

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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"I think that the public reaction, as I judge it, has not been one of shock or horror; it has been much more along the lines of - the intelligence services carry out intelligence work, good" - David Cameron about Edward Snowden

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) and find out more on Steam page.

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Who is the player in a game? Who you are?

(Linguistic disclaimer: this dev diary usually replaces "player" with "you". Apologies to readers who detest "you" form)

Video games of old didn't ask this question. You're firing at asteroids, who cares. Then, as games became deeper, a slice of this depth came from trying to think who is the player - with the exception of many strategy games. In most of them, you're a god, a spirit, a Rube Goldberg machine, just play the game.

Espiocracy, as stated in the very first diary, completely rejects vague-player approach typical for strategy games. The game is rooted in finding, defining, and constantly using the answer to "who is the player". Playing not "as nebulous France" and instead "as defined organization(s) in France" is the secret sauce to making the best possible game out of the Cold War (and beyond), in my opinion, backed first by a few prototypes and now by three years of development.

However, it may be more profound than just nailing the setting. Across many forms of art and entertainment, you can observe historical progress from ">you< doesn't matter" to "actually >you< is very important". Whether it's the development of perspective in painting or the evolution of narration in literature, asking "who are you" and thinking deeply about answers (even if there is no good answer) enriches not only the piece but sometimes even the entire form of human expression.

This dev diary will continue our journey through the alleys of "Who Is The Player" town. Its topic has been chosen in a poll by people who want to read even more about it on top of three full diaries ([1], [2], [3], and many more partially touching it). Perhaps it's not a mere interest in the main idea behind the game but more of a testament to the yearning for answers, new angles, and wider progress of this form of entertainment.

[h2]Intelligence Community[/h2]

Much like other grand strategy games, you begin a new campaign in Espiocracy by choosing your nation.



You are inherently tied to a nation - and most interesting areas of the game, such as nuclear brinkmanship, rely on the power of a state - but you're not a nation.

To be technically precise, you are playing as an intelligence community. You can customize it just after choosing the nation.


(Similar screenshot appeared in previous agency-related diaries, it's posted in current form here for clarity.)

"Intelligence community" encompasses all organizations and individuals tasked with espionage. Out of practical logic and pure necessity (eg. current American intelligence consists of 18 organizations!), the game joins and abstracts away many of them to form two layers of player persona: community-wide (this section) and agency-wide (next section).

On the level of the entire intelligence community, you command budget (more details in later section), important parameters (such as trust and need), and wide forms of progression (primarily capabilities and intelligence programs).



[h2]Actors[/h2]

In terms of actual objects in the game world...



...an intelligence community is just a "mental concept" - an idea, incapable of acting in the world (!). It has to be embodied by active entities on the ground: intelligence agencies, implemented as actors, existing between other actors in the game.



All your actions are carried out by a particular agency and often by a specific section inside such agency.

(Lack of player-controlled agencies means that no actions are possible! This nominally leads to a game over screen. However, all game-over conditions can be turned off, and in this case player spends a short period actor-less, and therefore without ability to act, until new actor(s) are established by the government.)

For many playable nations, both "you play as an intelligence community" and "you play as an intelligence agency" are true - when the community consists of a single agency. This is usually the case for two extremes, either very small communities (such as a department in police forces) or very large communities (usually monolith ministry).

In many other cases, you control up to 3 actor-agencies. If you recall old DD#8, the game at the time had community-wide models - that is no longer the case and now it's flexibly agency-based. An agency is defined by:

• Responsibilities. Any of these in any agency: domestic / foreign / civilian / military / signals intelligence. Among many influences (more on that below), most importantly it affects operations as battles. Attacking vs defending sides are not defined by communities (not American vs Soviet player) but by agencies. If you, as an American player, target the Soviet government, it will be CIA vs KGB operation, but if you target Soviet military installations, it will be CIA vs GRU - and in the late game, if you try to hack Russian networks, it may be NSA vs GRU (if Russian player made GRU responsible for signals).
  
• Organizational form. An agency can be: independent / ministry / military / police / foreign / religious / secret organization. Every form differs in costs, incentives, legal boundaries, and possible actions (details evolve during playtesting). Their availability is defined externally and may be a goal in itself, for instance players in occupied countries usually start with pretty limited "foreign" organizations (eg. Arisue Unit in Japan 1946), try to advance independence of the country and progress to more influential & independent forms (eg. PSIA in Japan 1952, a ministry organization in terms of game mechanics). On the other end of the spectrum, after a significant loss of trust and need your community may be forced to be reformed, and resulting agencies may have a less optimal form (eg. in Austria, after independent BVT failed to prevent the terrorist attack in 2020, it was replaced by a ministerial DSN).
  

The choice between one or more intelligence agencies is a strategic decision, a'la building wide or tall: spreading or stacking responsibilities, diversifying forms or focusing strongly on one organizational form, higher peaks or a higher average of certain traits. In addition, since agencies are full actors in the game world, the number of agencies significantly affects direct player-vs-player operations. 3 agencies mean 3x different targets - on one hand, more targets for the attacker, and more places to defend for the defender; on the other hand, a breach in one agency usually does not spill over to other agencies, and the attacker has to expend more resources to attack more than one agency. If the second hand is more appealing, it's no coincidence. As mentioned above, both in the real world and in the game, a single agency is either very small or very large, with everyone in the middle preferring multiple agencies.

[h2]Example: Two Germanies[/h2]

For any new intelligence community in the game, you can use "Historical" or "Popular" preset:



"Historical" proposes historically accurate community and agencies as of March 1946, while "Popular" gives you well-known agencies of the Cold War. Both options have their place beyond simple personal preference - in some countries, historical agencies were very interesting in 1946 (such as Arisue Unit in Japan), while in other countries they were more confusing and less exciting (eg. historically, in 1946 instead of CIA vs KGB there was CIG vs MGB). Beyond simple numbers, these two also define many other initial conditions. Both sides of the Elbe River provide a good example of differences between playable intelligence communities (IC):

• West Germany, Historical IC: Gehlen Org. A small unit of (mostly) Nazi veterans funded by the USA. High experience, tradecraft, capabilities in areas such as military, access to already existing intelligence structures - but also initial low trust, reliance on another country, many internal secrets, and low morale.
  
• West Germany, Popular IC: BFV and BND. Respectively, independent domestic and foreign intelligence agencies. Larger, with a government-supported budget, partially cleaner slate, lower various skill-adjacent parameters, and much higher vulnerability to eastern infiltration attempts.
  
• East Germany, Historical IC: Volkspolizei. Intelligence section in police forces. Mostly controlled and financed by the USSR. Many sections with low skills and almost no ability to conduct espionage abroad.
  
• East Germany, Popular IC: Stasi and HVA. Two ministry organizations (in the real world HVA was under Stasi but the game currently separates them to better simulate their historical activity), respectively domestic and foreign responsibilities. The former with many averagely skilled sections and almost unlimited legal powers, and the latter highly skilled. Both deeply infiltrated but no longer funded by MGB/KGB.
  

[h2]Deeper Funding[/h2]

Speaking of financial gameplay, let's take a quick look at its current iteration at the end of the dev diary.



Multiple contributors described in DD#32 were proved to subtract more than add to the game. Instead, now the player can:

• Receive monthly and yearly transfers from the government based on State Power Index x trust and need (if the community is funded by the government)
  
• Find customers (intelligence term), governmental or otherwise, who subsidize certain activities and buy intelligence
  
• Develop less-official sources of income, anywhere from extortion (a story as old as any intelligence agency, especially in autocratic countries) to middleman cut (eg. CIA received 5% of the Marshall Plan funds)
  

These feed into three main accounts:



From left to right (first value is the number of available sections): official (spent on anything roughly legal), transferable (can be moved to another entity, usually used to fund various actors), and illicit (spending without oversight, not available for official expenses such as hiring).

[h2]Behind The Scenes[/h2]

► Some strategy games introduce obvious and very intuitive embodiment of the player as a single individual - a leader, a manager, a king, a director - in the game world. There is no director in Espiocracy. The idea was considered seriously and even partially prototyped but it failed (as I like to say, it subtracted more than added). In small part, this can be attributed to the ephemerality of a director of the entire intelligence community - many countries don't have one, and those which do, usually assign very limited powers to such a person. In larger part, implementing a director (even of an intelligence agency instead of a community) anywhere near the real world (as is the ambition of the game in all mechanics) is surprisingly mundane, administrative, and political. For instance, George Bush senior was the director of CIA, in between working in a US-Chinese office and in a Houston bank... And in the largest part, it failed because it can be implemented only in two equally bad ways. Either as a very weak flavor/vanity player persona (and then we're just wasting an opportunity to associate the player with something strong in the game world) or as an illogically influential player persona in the world of Cold War intelligence agencies (and then we're lowering immersion, which is the opposite of what we primarily aim for with good player embodiment). There is a middle ground for some places for some time (eg. Markus Wolf) but it's too finicky / local / short-lived to meaningfully chase in this game.

► This diary does not mention domestic conflicts between agencies (eg. CIA vs FBI) because they do not exist in the game. While it is a frequently requested feature, I see it as a slippery slope into a bureaucracy simulator - and a world map would be pretty bad interface for bickering between Langley and Washington, they are just a few pixels apart! On a more serious note, it is one of the few rare cases where implementing realism / historical accuracy is in conflict with the player as an intelligence community. If you control both CIA and FBI, a turf war between them is just an exercise in anti-player frustration. There's only a tiny single "red tape parameter", with very limited influence on the game (higher value primarily leads to slightly longer actions, eg. it takes more time to establish an intelligence station) - which I introduced on purpose to avoid implementing domestic inter-agency conflicts and instead distill any such cravings into a little silly number.

► "Customers (...) who (...) buy intelligence" - yes, it's a new thing, intelligence mechanics at the heart of the game received new layers of depth and this will be probably the topic of the next dev diary.

[h2]Final Remarks[/h2]

The next dev diary will be posted on June 7th!

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

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"This country wants no Gestapo, under any guise or for any reason" - Harry Truman in 1946