The Political Machine 2024 simulates the race for the White House | review

The Political Machine 2024 is the latest political strategy game out from Stardock Entertainment for anyone who wants to see how the U.S. presidential election is going to turn out this year.

Americans are disturbed by politics and many would rather avoid it. But it is rather unavoidable and many of these same Americans intend to vote in the upcoming election. And that tells you about the mixed feeling people will have about playing game about politics.

I played The Political Machine 2020 and I enjoyed revisiting the remake of the game for this new political season. I played a couple of rounds of the presidential campaign strategy simulation game on Steam, first as Joe Biden and then as Donald Trump. I played on normal difficulty both times.

This game reminds me of my civic duty and the fun I had playing the old Parker Brothers board game Landslide from 1971. I first learned about presidential politics in that game, and you can do the same with your family with this title, either in a single-player game or in multiplayer. And this new game gives me an excuse to talk about one of my favorite side hobbies: politics.

This version of The Political Machine is a remake of the previous titles (The Political Machine of 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2016), and as usual it is ripped from the headlines, with this year’s Biden-Trump battle. It also has the presidential primaries race as well where you can see what it’s like to play as other candidates who actually ran against Biden and Trump. The primary part is new in this version, and it could fulfill the intellectual curiosity of those who want to replay the game; but we all know it’s a Biden-Trump thing this year.

There’s also a new multiplayer mode as well as presidential debates that can sway the voters in a particular state as well as across the whole country. In multiplayer, multiplayers can run against each other in the primaries.

The last time around, I played as Elizabeth Warren squaring off against Donald Trump. I found it hard to get Warren to win, which is a pretty good semblance of reality. This time, it was easier for Biden to win and hard for Trump to win. But it was pretty close in both of the races that I played.

The game allows players to step into the shoes of presidential candidates, including Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Nikki Haley, Bill Clinton and countless other candidates from history, or create their own. In my campaigns, I chose Andrew Yang as Biden’s running mate because he was “hyper,” meaning he had a lot of stamina to do lots of campaign events — while paired with the “tired” Biden, who has been nicknamed “sleepy Joe” by Trump in real life. I couldn’t tell what Yang accomplished for me, but he was definitely busy operating as an AI campaigner zipping around the country.

When I ran as Trump, I picked Ron Desantis from Florida as my running mate — also for the same reason that he was classified as “hyper.” It was laughable that Desantis was “loathed” by the press and this was his major drawback as a candidate.

Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock Entertainment, says that the game has proven to be an accurate representation of players’ political leanings. And he says previous versions of the game have accurately predicted the outcome of past elections, such as the fact that Ohio would be the key state in 2004 and Trump’s victory in 2016.

As usual, you can’t go to every state for a lengthy time, and so you have to focus on the ones with a lot of electoral votes. But the reality of the red and blue states affects your choices. There’s no point for Trump to try to win California, but he can go there to raise a lot of campaign funds. Trump can raise a lot of money in California, New York, Texas and Florida, while Biden does well in California and New York.

In both campaigns, I chose not to go to states like Alaska, Montana or Rhode Island at all. After all, there are only 21 weeks in the campaign. The battleground states include Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. But there are also a lot of votes up for grabs in North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and Georgia.

When I was playing as Trump, there was one thing that “crooked Joe” did against me that really took me out of the game. He saved up his political capital and used it on a Hail Mary play: getting a corrupt prosecutor to bring charges against Trump, freezing his campaign for a solid two weeks. I’m convinced this is what cost Trump the whole election. It made me consider my worst move was not using the “misinformation” card that Trump carried — which cost the most political capital.

The new presidential debate feature is perhaps the most interesting part of the game. You have to “game” the debate by figuring out the kind of answer the crowd wants to hear. If you give the right answer — either opposing or favoring an issue and doing it mildly or strongly — then you win the favor of the crowd and win the debate. If you win the debate, you get a national boost. In the case of running as Biden, I won the debate because Trump flubbed an answer. And while running as Trump, I barely beat out the AI and won the debate.

The candidates can do damage using political capital, either by playing dirty tricks, fixing problems or winning popular votes by taking stances on issues or getting the support of political groups like industrial workers.

In the campaigns, it’s normal to run out of money spending money on campaign HQs and ads. You can also spend on upgrading your headquarters in a state to boost your grassroots efforts. But you can spend political capital raising money in the states you visit, or just raise a ton by flying to your big states and raising a big chunk of money whenever you need it.

The user interface is still good. When you hover over the map, you see the electoral votes for a given state, like 29 for Florida, and you can see what percentage of the state’s voters side with Biden, how many side with Trump, and those who are undecided. You need 270 votes to win the election.

You start the game with $3 million in your war chest (such numbers are highly unrealistic), and you can move around the states and raise money, spend it on ads, make a speech, and perhaps use your accumulated political capital on a move to get support or to launch a dirty trick. It would perhaps be much more informative if the real amounts of money and the sources of that money were better identified. But this is a game, not a real simulation.

Still, this version of the game feels better than the last one. Its graphics seem more inviting, and you can tell in real time what’s happening in the key battleground states. When the race becomes a tossup in any given state, the color turns pink. That’s when you know you have to do something in that state or lose it. The problem is you can’t be in every state. In that way, it’s a bit unrealistic in that it doesn’t take into account the power of news and social media.

It’s still a nice fantasy that has the look of a board game but has some of the sophistication of a simulation. It makes you think about what it takes to win the presidency. You have to strategize and identify what will really move the needle on the election in just the right states at the right time before you opponent can push back and undo the work you’ve done.

There are some good teaching moments, but there still isn’t anything as realistic as real life. Who would have thought that Biden would be Israel-Hamas war? Or that Trump would have to spend so much time in court defending himself in multiple legal proceedings?

If it gets you to care more about the election — and understand how close the political battle will be — or motivate you to read more about politics, I think it would be well worth the $20. Maybe it’s better to spend your money wising up than it is to donate to your politician. And as I noted last time, this still whets my appetite for a more sophisticated and realistic simulation.