Social Democracy: Petrograd 1917 by Autumn Chen
Playtime: 58 minutes
This made me want to talk about:
-
this has very similar game mechanics and topics to the first game, Social Democracy (SD1), right down to the cheery old-school soundtrack, although we’re now simulating the political parties in 1917 Russia instead of 1928 Germany
-
the central mechanics (selecting cards to take actions, responding to choices presented by the game based on the progress of in-game time) make it easy to pick up this game in the sense of “know where to click enough to finish the game.” But both are quite “heavy” in the sense that how the game’s rules interact with each other and victory conditions is opaque—it takes significant time to understand how your choices are affecting all of the stats and it therefore takes significant play time to develop a successful strategy. Note that there are multiples tabs of info on the left sidebar that you can keep track of
-
in contrast to SD1, where I had the immediate reaction of “oh, we’re supposed to try to stop the rise of the Nazi party,” I felt a bit more uncertainty in settling on objectives here. I think I maybe had the vague idea that it would be good to try to avert the Red Terror and the Holodmor, if we got that far. I went and skimmed some wikipedia articles, and the game covers a [mild spoilers about where the game ends in time] pretty limited run of time from March to November of 2017, where in real life tsar Nicholas II abdicated, leading to a period of government by a provisional government, and running until in November the bolsheviks dissolved the constituent assembly after losing an election. You can play three political parties initially, but not the bolsheviks, which also implies that the goal is to prevent their rise to power. (And I didn’t play enough to unlock playing the bolsheviks, but I note that somewhat contrary to the in-game explanation there is some condition beyond “completing” the game as another faction).
-
Ultimately the game came in a bit heavier than I really felt called to unravel, but I could see this being catnip for someone enjoying teasing out all of the tacit linkages.
My one fervent wish:
I would love some more unpacking of the assumptions behind this simulation. (And I think this is exactly the same thing I thought about SD1, so at least I’m consistent.)
I think it’s fascinating how these types of simulations make very strong assertions about the nature of reality in the guise of fiction. I.e., when you play a boardgame like Terraforming Mars, and the game tells you “if you have built the card Research Outposts, every card you play costs one less,” this is an entirely fictional fact and it wouldn’t make sense to wonder if it corresponded accurately to something in the real world. When Social Democracy tells me supporting striking workers in their demands has increased monthly inflation from 5.8% to 6%, this makes me very curious to what extent this reflects things that would be true in our world
(Or another example, a big part of the game is modeling how policies would affect support for each political party—the United States recently completed a contentious election, and you can very much start a fight in a lot of places with “well if [candidate x] had supported [policy y] it would have [result z]"–these are not assertions that everyone agrees about.)
I realize this is firmly outside the scope, but I would love say a citation-heavy essay by a historically-minded person about which choices in this game they thought there was the most scope for agreement / disagreement about.
Notable line:
Overall, a complex political simulator of the beginning of the Russian Civil War, with a lot to unpack
Gameplay tips / typos
I think you are supposed to be able to look at advisor actions, decide not to take one, and go back to the main page without expending an action, but this only worked sometimes (other times going back to the main page would advance time, skipping my action).