[BRIEF NOTE] Hidden Agenda
Aug. 29th, 2005 11:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldWhile I still keep a warm space in my heart for Spectrum Holobyte's 1991 simulation game Crisis in the Kremlin, I have to concede that certain elements of the simulator strike me as implausible. In Crisis in the Kremlin, you are given control over the Soviet state, along with your choice of three ideologies (Yeltsin's radicalism, Gorbachev's reformism, Ligachev's conservatism). It is quite possible to make some remarkable moves. For instance, if you choose to play a hard-liner, you can react to the events of 1989 in eastern Europe by ordering a massive Soviet invasion of the satellite states. What happens? You get a message on screen informing you that they fought you off and take a decided hit to your foreign reputation. You don't, say, end up triggering a general war with NATO and/or the People's Republic of China, or a military collapse at home. You can, if you run things into the ground badly enough, trigger a Ceaucescu-style revolution in Moscow, but how this would be possible escapes me.
At last weekend's CFTAG, M. mentioned the game Hidden Agenda as an example of a convincing simulator game, and went on to provide a link to download sites. Inspired by the Cold War in the Central America of the 1980s, Hidden Agenda gives a human player the chance to simulate three years in the life of the country of Chimerica, where a broad-based uprising has expelled the corrupt dictator. Picking from a variety of domestic and foreign policy options, you try to carefully negotiate a productive path for the country, something that hopefully doesn't include further mass violence.
So far, I keep getting overthrown by right-wing groups. An interesting review at the Marxist It's Right to Rebel! discussion board argues that the only way to win the game is to be a democratically-minded left-winger, at least more convincing than Nicaragua's Sandinistas. Whether this reflects an innate bias of of the game's programmers or a plausible reality in the Central American context remains open. I will say that most Central American regimes in the 1980s--of the left and of the right--were known for committing acts not easily distinguishable from genocide. Almost anything would have been better.
At last weekend's CFTAG, M. mentioned the game Hidden Agenda as an example of a convincing simulator game, and went on to provide a link to download sites. Inspired by the Cold War in the Central America of the 1980s, Hidden Agenda gives a human player the chance to simulate three years in the life of the country of Chimerica, where a broad-based uprising has expelled the corrupt dictator. Picking from a variety of domestic and foreign policy options, you try to carefully negotiate a productive path for the country, something that hopefully doesn't include further mass violence.
So far, I keep getting overthrown by right-wing groups. An interesting review at the Marxist It's Right to Rebel! discussion board argues that the only way to win the game is to be a democratically-minded left-winger, at least more convincing than Nicaragua's Sandinistas. Whether this reflects an innate bias of of the game's programmers or a plausible reality in the Central American context remains open. I will say that most Central American regimes in the 1980s--of the left and of the right--were known for committing acts not easily distinguishable from genocide. Almost anything would have been better.
