The Political Machine 2024 News

We're thrilled to announce our release day livestream event for our latest political strategy game, The Political Machine 2024. Get a look at the game's exciting features, including the much-anticipated primaries, debates, and political action cards. Whether you're a seasoned strategist or new to the political arena, this livestream is the perfect opportunity to see what awaits you in the race for the White House.

[h2]When Is It?[/h2]
May 2, 2024, at 1PM ET.

[h2]What to Expect?[/h2]
Our team will walk you through the game, showcasing the new features and improvements we've made based on your feedback. You'll get an insider's look at how to run a successful campaign, from winning the primaries to dominating the presidential debates.

[h2]Where?[/h2]
Right here on our Steam page.

We can't wait to share The Political Machine 2024 with you and hear what you think. So, set a reminder, prepare your questions, and join us for an unforgettable journey into the heart of American politics. See you there!

The past couple weeks we’ve been talking through the major features introduced for The Political Machine 2024. With all the new major features covered, we wanted to now highlight an important part of the process in developing this series every 4 years, issue updates!

First we figure out nationally what are the generalized current top issues as a basis of understanding. We do this by looking at a good number of national research polls and news outlets across the political spectrum.

Next, we break down a generalized top issue into relevant topics. For example, one of the top issues for the 2024 election is about Economy. As much as we can make an issue about the direct thing, it is very much nuanced and can be broken down into more issues. For example Economy as a wider topic can be broken down into “Addressing Inflation”, “Higher Minimum Wage”, “Individual Tax Cuts”, and more.

Then we apply importance and positions of these issues to states to give each state a more unique identity. Based on the breaking down of the bigger issue subject, we refine it by looking at local news sources and state government webpages.

For example, we take a general issue like the Environment and we apply certain broken down topics more meaningfully. For example, states like Florida and Hawaii will care more about Disaster Preparedness because of the higher frequency of natural disasters.



Meanwhile, Maryland and other northeastern coastal states with less extreme weather events would care more about Marine Environmental Protection.



And since California are leading in ESG legislation early this year, that topic as well as Green Jobs are a more prominent as a response.



Finally we extensively review the issue updates by running it through internally and with our playtest team. Once the play testers on all sides of the political spectrum sign off and a general consensus is reached, we know our work is complete.

Don’t most people in the country care about the same things? That is true, but if we did that without regionally differing and breaking down the subjects of major top issues, the states would all have the same issue topic strategy. That being said, there will be issues that show up in most states as we have to be sure our polling makes sense and is representative of each of the top general issues.


The reason why we set apart states with different but similar topics is so that way players are incentivized to talk about more issues during their Primaries or presidential campaign in terms of gameplay. It also sets more room for players to personalize their stances for custom candidates.



One of the great things about The Political Machine 2024 is that you can talk and raise awareness on any issue you choose and see how the affects the rest of the country. By talking on issues in states, you raise your issue score, which is important to the factor of boosting polling.

We’d like to say thanks to those who have given feedback thus far for us to improve this game and we encourage everyone to keep sending in their suggestions!

Please look forward to the full release of The Political Machine 2024 on May 2, 2024!

In The Political Machine 2024, we wanted to make a feature to focus on one of the highlights of the presidential election cycle, debates!

Presidential debates are televised events where candidates vying for the presidency discuss their stance on policies and engage in discourse. The selection of states for debates typically considers factors such as their political importance, demographics, and geographic spread to ensure broad representation and impact.

I am playing as Marianne Williamson vs Vivek Ramaswamy, as it’s fun to see what alternative scenarios can play out. In Political Machine 2024, we decide a state debate location based on what is highly contested polling wise. The debate happens in the middle of the game. In this playthrough, Texas was the most contested state. Even if this is Marianne’s home state, it is still a Republican-leaning state meaning the topics with strong Republican stances are more likely to show up.





Knowing with the Debate will happen in Texas, my goal is not to win over Ramaswamy as that’s too uphill of a battle knowing Williamson’s negative stances on Republican-favored issues. Rather, we want to be sure that Ramaswamy doesn’t swing the state by dominating the debate.

First I make sure I do research on the state to figure what are the top state issues in Texas that could potentially be discussed and make sure I jot down where Williamson aligns and respond correctly to not deter my own voters.


Looking quickly at the top 5 issues currently, there’s only one that I see that Williamson have any chance at seeing discussed that favor Marianne is about Higher Minimum wage. The rest of the issues I see are Natural Gas and Oil, Job Outsourcing, topics on border protection, and Classroom Transparency. Since it’s a Republican favored state, I definitely see other Republican issues being pressed more. And so the debate begins…



The debate has picked me to go first with the first topic being about classroom transparency. Knowing that the position of the Democrat part in Texas opposes it, I also select an opposition answer to align for a slight boost. This is to bait Ramaswamy to attack the position so he can get into the lead. Whoever leads in the debate will have to respond first.







Since he attacked, now I can play attack on Ramaswamy’s positions without having to worry about making personal stances against Republican-favored issues. By just attacking his support for the next 4 issues [Job Outsourcing, Border Protection, School Choice, and Second Amendment Protections], I was able to attack him constantly. Notice the bars at the bottom.





And with the final result, Ramaswamy’s initial dominant performance has been curbed to just a small positive gain. Meanwhile, Williamson can walk away nicely with a neutral ending, knowing that she won’t be able to lose support. This results in Texas being maintained as a battleground state that can still be a tossup during election night.


With your help, we are getting good feedback to improving debates and hope to improve other elements of The Political Machine 2024! Please look forward to more updates and improvements soon!

In The Political Machine 2024, we wanted to challenge ourselves by including a new game mode outside of Presidential by introducing Primaries! The United States primaries are a series of state-level elections held by political parties to select candidates for the general election. It may not get as much attention as the general election, but is a significant part to shaping how the general election looks like. Especially with how the 2024 primaries season is shaping up today, we wanted to give players a chance to play out alternative primaries scenarios.

In initial design, we wanted to see how we could make primaries play out in game-wise. What we saw immediately is that the different flow of our priority that candidates take in primaries added interesting gameplay.





For example, in my playthrough of Republican primaries, I wanted to explore a playthrough with the 4 runners that were in the race. Here I started as Nikki Haley and selected Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Doug Burgum as my opponents.

The first 3 states that resolve in U.S. primaries are Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada. Right before I even made my first move as Haley, I already see Ramaswamy and Burgum making buildings and speeches in Iowa while DeSantis starts setting up in Nevada. Seeing them setup on both of those states, I decided that Haley should start setting up for New Hampshire since it hasn’t been touched yet. I put down a couple ads supporting Second Amendment Protections before flying down to Iowa to get a speech in about supporting Agricultural support to stay in the race of the first resolved primary.


I then make a rush to stay ahead in Iowa while setting up Texas with a Fundraiser building to make sure I can keep running my ads on both Iowa and New Hampshire. Couple turns later, looks like Iowa is resolving in 3 more turns. I need to keep focus to be sure I stay in the lead to win the state!


I managed to solidify my lead in Iowa right before it resolved by making a few more speeches and placing a Spin Doctor card to increase my issue score.





Winning the Iowa caucus spread enthusiasm for Haley across the country. With the ads I put in New Hampshire at the first turn, it’s bearing its fruit as now a chunk of the north east region is for Haley now!



What we liked about implementing Primaries is that states that often did not get emphasized as much in Presidential Mode now do because of the inherent order of them in Primaries. The game mode also does a great job in reflect how much a primary can lead to snowball effect even upon winning just the first caucus alone. That being said, it’s not over until it’s over - Ramaswamy, DeSantis, and Burgum can still be in the race if they take Nevada which I didn’t put any focus on.

That being said, the path to improving Primaries in our game isn’t over either. With your help, we are getting good feedback to improving the mode and hope to improve other elements of The Political Machine 2024! Please look forward to more content updates and improvements soon!

There’s a lot of overhaul and attention that we wanted to give to this iteration of The Political Machine series. From updating the art to modernizing issues, we’ve also made it a goal to innovate what we could do with the mechanics of game to keep things fresh and interesting. This brings us to one of the new systems we’ve introduced: the Political Action Card system or PACs for short!

Why did we name them PACs? If the abbreviation looks familiar, it’s because it is - PACs in terms of the US general election are called Political Action Committees. Overall, they play a significant role in the U.S. electoral process by mobilizing financial resources and amplifying the voices of various interest groups, shaping the political landscape and impacting policy decisions.

During the initial design documentation and discussion of the game, we figured out the “PAC” pun and applied it to Political Action Cards and Political Capital. Especially with the dev team’s enjoyment of other card games, we were excited to figure out a way we could iterate on systems like operatives and ideologies and combine them into a unique game design mechanic our players can enjoy.
We first started introducing a set of common cards to revive the functionality of previous iterations of operatives and reintroduce systems like endorsements:

For example, in my playthrough as Trump against Biden, I wanted to win Michigan, so I made sure to play an Intimidator card so my Biden’s building giving adjacent enthusiasm from Ohio gets cancelled out on and added an ad on top of that to ensure I’m gaining more than my opponent per turn.


Doing so I managed to flip the state back to neutral polling in a shorter time.


Finally we wanted to have cards that could modify your effectiveness in state actions as well as introduce card stealing, and raise issue importance. With this basis we started to create decks based on the ideologies and started to make unique cards that set them apart thematically based on what the ideology stands for:

For example, in my playthrough as Biden against Trump, I saw Trump play his America First Rally Arizona, which if it triggers will let Trump talk on issues he has a high score in, increasing his chances to win.


Luckily I had a Maverick Reformer in my hand that gets rid of all effects from a target state. Once I played it in Arizona, I had a sigh of relief.


A con of this new system is that the player no longer has the convenience of being able to get rid of in-state effects buy just buying a Fixer - it’s by chance that you’re able to have at least one removal-type card in your hand. However the pro in turn it gives the players more interesting decision making - if I have a removal card in my hand, do I spend the one card that erases that effect, or do I save it for something more drastic? I know that an America First Rally is a more expensive card, so do I go all in with my own effects while my opponent doesn’t have political capital to counter me?

With the playtest now out, we are looking to improve the system and with your help by giving feedback. For those who have played and have done so already, we want to say thanks - know that we are heavily considering your feedback in our improvement process. Please look forward to the ability to view your deck in detail as well as content updates for new cards and decks to play with in future updates!