A House Divided

The politics

You play one politician in a world of hundreds. In the United States the ladder runs from the State House and State Senate through the governorship and Congress to the presidency. Seven other countries have their own ladders: the United Kingdom, Germany, Ireland, Japan, China, Nigeria, and Brazil, each with its real legislature and its real path to the top job.

Getting there is the game. You fundraise, poll, campaign region by region, survive your primary, and defend the seat once you hold it. Right now the world is running about 2,500 elections at once.

The economy

Politics is half the game. The other half is a working economy that players run: corporations with real balance sheets, commodity markets, government bonds, currencies, and central banks that set actual policy. Found a company and take it public, corner an extraction market, or trade the currency of a country whose government you distrust. Money made here funds campaigns there.

A world with a memory

The current world has simulated over a thousand consecutive turns. Parties rise and split, newspapers report what players actually did, and the political map you inherit was drawn by the people who played before you. Alongside the players, more than a thousand simulated politicians hold the offices nobody has claimed yet.