Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

Democracy 3 new update coming

cliffski

Soo…remember back in the early days when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I released a political strategy game called Democracy 3? I do. It was fab. And of course it still is. I’ve rel;eased 3 expansions for the game since its original release, and all have proved to be very popular. After that, I turned towards making Gratuitous Space Battles 2, which took FOREVER, and also worked with Tim from Twice Circled on shipping Big Pharma, a 3rd party title. What this means is that its been a long time since the core Democracy 3 game got any attention, despite being very popular.

dino

I’m working on a patch for Democracy 3 (Plus other stuff…to be revealed in a few months), to fix some issues that have come up, but mostly because revisiting the game with fresh eyes makes me spot a bunch of stuff where my older, wiser self goes ‘why the hell is that dialog so small?’ and ‘why don’t we just show the policies that affect intelligence reports here…?’ and similar stuff. This is not going to be a new expansion, or a sequel, just a patch, that fixes some stuff. I’ll also possibly attempt a little bit of re balancing, and add and tweak a few relationships and effects which should be there but are not.

The biggest change will be new achievements. Personally I love achievements, and I’m adding 12 brand spanking new ones with the upcoming patch. They include some arguably negative achievements, like creating an apathetic electorate and huge inequality. They should be fun things to shoot for :D.

ach

So why do this? I guess I have both business and personal reasons. Personally, I like my games to be as good as I can make them, and there were a few GUI things that bugged me about D3 on second look, so fixing it makes me ‘feel better’ about the game. I know some people enjoy the prototyping phase, but personally I love adding final polish to games, especially GUI-wise. I’ll feel prouder of the game when this patch ships in the next few weeks.

Secondly, as people start building ad-blocking into browsers (seriously…wtf?), and everyone starts happily using adblock, and as the whole system of being able to market games in 2015 collapses into a loud shouty smorgasbord of a million desperate game developers screaming to be heard at the same shows, desperate for coverage by the same youtubers, with price wars escalating to the extent that I’m amazed nobody is offering to pay me to own their games yet…Its pretty clear that one ‘marketing’ technique that still works, is just making a better game, a bigger game, a more feature-packed game, and one people market for you, because the word of mouth is so good.

In short, money (and time) spent on an update for Democracy 3, is kinda good PR. I’m still supporting it, its still getting better, surely thats a good thing. I guess we will find out soon :D

16 thoughts on Democracy 3 new update coming

  1. Considering I want to get patches, updates and expansions as soon as they are available, you’d advise me to buy the PC or iPad version of Democracy 3? Thanks in advance.

  3. Hi,

    Is there any chance that electoral mechanics will be overhauled and deepened with more electoral votation methods, more than two poliical parties, maybe even more than one legislative chamber?

    Thanks

  5. WHY DOESN’T ANYTHING REDUCE BRAIN DRAIN I mean man I am stoked to hear about this because TECHNOLOGY GRANTS? YOUNG ENTREPRENEUR SCHEME? wait a second I just I think this is a really special game in a genre that doesn’t get a lot of attention (if it even exists) so I just wanted to say thank SMALL BUSINESS GRANTS. ALSO HOW DOES TAX EVASION EVEN HAPPEN IF WE HAVE PUBLIC TAX RETU

    1. Tax evasion can still happen by people working cash-in hand rather than declaring all their income, even with public tax returns. You still rely on people being honest.

  6. Hi! I have played Democracy 3 fot about 10-20 hours (meaning I’ve spent some time in it, but I’m not a hardcore D3 player). I noticed that if you have a hige surplus of cash, you do not get any interest on it, however you do have to pay interest if you are in debt. It’s not huge, but I was wondering if it wilø be possible in the upcoming, or any later, patch that interest on held capital will be a source of income?

    1. Hello Cliffski! I love this game very much. Over a hundred hours of game play. When looking at the mods, I decided I thought I could learn how to as well. I learned and made 2 mods, one a policy and one a country. Since people liked them so much, I decided to get ambitious and thought about creating an entirely new way to play the game.

      The mod was going to be a Fallout mod taken place in the Capital Wasteland. You would be in control of the Brotherhood of Steel and try to form a successful government in the area, with the Citadel as your capital.

      The problem came when I couldn’t find any way to easily remove default policies, simulations, and situations. Without removing some of these default things, it would never look right, so I gave up on the project.

      I was wondering if you could add a way to modify/remove default policies, simulations, icons, situations, etc. in a mod (that can be reversed by turning the mod off) so that people can create really diverse and unique mods that would really enhance the game play. The modding community would love it and brand new content would bring new life to the game.

      There’s a multitude of things that’d I would love to have added into this update, but this one is the most important to me. Any response would be appreciated!

  7. Does this update apply to the iOS version of the game? Because right now there is lag that makes it unplayable on my iPad. And I’m not the only one with the issue. It appears almost everybody whose played this has the terrible lag that was brought on by your newest update on the App Store. I love this game and would buy all 3 expansion packs but until the lag gets fixed I’ve put a hold on buying anything new for Democracy 3. As I said, love the game and I hope this gets fixed

  8. I think that a mechanism should exist for the spending of political capital when allocating money towards policies. Small increases/decreases should cost less political capital than large scale overhauls. This would promote a more nuanced approach to creating great change over a longer period of time, or simply free up the user to create many small changes on one turn. What do you guys think of this?

  9. Glad to here you’ve got the new update coming out. I’m having a lot of fun with it I’ve Put out two mods for it recently Black Operations and States of Anarchy. The Modding community on steam is a really great environment too.

    If I can put in a request, I’d really like to be able to override Events and Dilemmas, So that the new ones can run in place of the default game versions.

    Thanks again for the game.

  10. Hi

    Would this include any fixes/improvements for the mac version?
    Hovering over a bubble to get the lines is terribly slow and makes it unplayable sadly :3

    Looking forward to the release (have been wanting to play this game for months)
    – Mac User

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