What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary (The Vision) and find out more on Steam page.
Tom Clancy used to say that he loves research more than writing. Indeed, there is something deeply captivating in piecing together data, context, and meta-commentary to understand a topic. Development of Espiocracy is supported by an unhealthy amount of such work, including megabytes of excerpts found in online discussions on history, espionage, and games. If you posted clever takes on grand strategy games, there's non-zero chance that your comments are somewhere in my files, and perhaps even contributed to the reasoning behind the game, like this opinion:
"At its core, any grand strategy game is essentially a simulation of government, or perhaps business, operations. But pretty much all of them lack what even the smallest modern government offices have: robust reporting, metrics, tools the boss can use to get a quick and accurate view"
In a meta-meta-take, the player in Espiocracy is equipped with automatic research tools: dynamic reports. More than just a summary of data on the evolving game world, a report takes on some of the roles that would be traditionally implemented by popup events in the usual grand strategy games. In yet another iteration on gameplay in strategy games, reports will use extract and present data to systematically build the narrative, highlight interesting stories, and provide meaningful decisions - while remaining under full control of the player.
Opting in
Players can opt-in to receive reports on any selected entity:
Unlike classic pins (and other attention management tools in strategy games), this is not a feature designed solely as a UI shortcut for power users. Instead, players start by default with a set of starred entities and categories, such as their own country or domestic political changes. Gameplay and its pacing is designed for people who use reports from day zero to make sense of thousands of actors, constantly changing political situation, and many other revolving doors of the Cold War and beyond.
A report
After starring an entity, the game begins to provide regular reports following a simple self-referential trajectory: the first report is usually an introductory summary, and then subsequent reports regularly paint the landscape of changes (comparing changes between the last and current report). If the subject has an end, e.g. an election, there is also a final summary. Rough example:
This clear way of following events in the game is currently prepared for crowded parts of gameplay (such as the composition of actors) and significant historical processes (e.g. conflicts, decolonization, nuclear race). In the future, it can be elegantly expanded to other parts of the simulation, and modded to, say, highlight data judged as more relevant by players.
Reports, in addition to the pure descriptive role, can be also directly actionable - they can present checkboxes that will launch precise actions:
As a rule, these are not exclusive to reports (they are available in other parts of the UI) and instead play the role of guidance for beginners or shortcuts for more advanced players.
Onboarding, Assistance, Dynamics
Player starting a new campaign is welcomed by a few initial reports: on the state of the country, on the intelligence community, on imminent risks and opportunities. They usually contain recommendations that can delegate the staff to deal with not obvious mechanics which are already important in 1946 such as lobbying for improved border control or laundering illicit funds inherited after WW2. Moreover, additional guiding hand is planned in the form of assisting reports that regularly detect (and explain!) the most popular failures and recommend appropriate actions.
Reports are slightly gamified to diegetically separate them from pure UI tools. Every report requires a few days from one staff member (spending an operative in terms of game economy), which means that very small intelligence communities can naturally afford fewer reports than larger ones. On the opposite side to this cost, I'm also experimenting with report-exclusive gains such as increasing tactical intelligence or identifying new opportunities, consistent with the analytic work of staff behind the reports.
Last and least, all reports are stored in the archive where you can trace back events of previous conflicts or even use them to get up to speed when loading up a save after a break.
Final Remarks
The next dev diary, "Events", will be posted on May 12th.
If you're not already wishlisting Espiocracy, consider doing it
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1670650/Espiocracy/
There is also a small community around Espiocracy:
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"Chairborne Division" - nickname for Research and Analysis branch in OSS