{"id":15007,"date":"2024-07-02T10:38:02","date_gmt":"2024-07-02T08:38:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2024\/07\/02\/i-simulated-each-uk-partys-first-years-in-government-in-a-video-game-and-the-results-were-awful\/"},"modified":"2024-07-02T10:38:02","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T08:38:02","slug":"i-simulated-each-uk-partys-first-years-in-government-in-a-video-game-and-the-results-were-awful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2024\/07\/02\/i-simulated-each-uk-partys-first-years-in-government-in-a-video-game-and-the-results-were-awful\/","title":{"rendered":"I simulated each UK party\u2019s first years in government in a video game, and the results were awful"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the past week, I\u2019ve been feeding UK party manifestos into the politics management game Democracy 4, to simulate their results five years on \u2026 Are you ready to be dismayed?<\/p>\n

Whether they are called manifestos or contracts, the documents published by political parties ahead of an election are rather less substantial than their many pages would suggest. They are full of best-case scenarios, undetailed proposals and dubious costings, and it is hard to picture the impact each party would have on the UK if they followed through with their pitches. So I\u2019ve been feeding party literature into the political strategy video game Democracy 4, to see how these policies might play out. The results were \u2026 well, you\u2019ll see.<\/p>\n

Democracy 4 lets you play out your political fantasies (or nightmares) to see the impact of your choices and, ultimately, if you can get re-elected. Drawing from publicly available data, developer Positech Games has modelled various democratic nations, including the UK, with approximations of state and private institutions, government policies and taxes. Within this simulation live thousands of virtual voters. In the UK, most citizens count themselves as capitalists, but they may also be middle-income, wealthy or poor, farmers, commuters or self-employed. For each country, the makeup of the virtual citizenry differs: applying a CO2 emissions tax policy in the US, where many citizens care a lot about cars, will disappoint more voters than in Japan, where most people use public transport.<\/p>\n

Continue reading…<\/a>
\nFor the past week, I\u2019ve been feeding UK party manifestos into the politics management game Democracy 4, to simulate their results five years on \u2026 Are you ready to be dismayed?
\nWhether they are called manifestos or contracts, the documents published by political parties ahead of an election are rather less substantial than their many pages would suggest. They are full of best-case scenarios, undetailed proposals and dubious costings, and it is hard to picture the impact each party would have on the UK if they followed through with their pitches. So I\u2019ve been feeding party literature into the political strategy video game Democracy 4, to see how these policies might play out. The results were \u2026 well, you\u2019ll see.
\nDemocracy 4 lets you play out your political fantasies (or nightmares) to see the impact of your choices and, ultimately, if you can get re-elected. Drawing from publicly available data, developer Positech Games has modelled various democratic nations, including the UK, with approximations of state and private institutions, government policies and taxes. Within this simulation live thousands of virtual voters. In the UK, most citizens count themselves as capitalists, but they may also be middle-income, wealthy or poor, farmers, commuters or self-employed. For each country, the makeup of the virtual citizenry differs: applying a CO2 emissions tax policy in the US, where many citizens care a lot about cars, will disappoint more voters than in Japan, where most people use public transport. Continue reading…Technology | The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the past week, I\u2019ve been feeding UK party manifestos into the politics management game Democracy 4, to simulate their results five years on \u2026 Are you ready to be dismayed? Whether they are called manifestos or contracts, the documents published by political parties ahead of an election are rather less substantial than their many …<\/p>\n

I simulated each UK party\u2019s first years in government in a video game, and the results were awful<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":15008,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15007"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}