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.
Jules Verne in "From the Earth to the Moon" describes how three people conquered the Moon by launching themselves from a cannon. Curiously enough, the French novel has been translated into English with large changes, entire passages rewritten, and "boring parts" removed. Verne complained that this barbarism painted him as a writer of fiction for children, despite his serious approach to the matter.
We could argue that the topic itself - space flights - already pushed him into the shelf of simple amusement. First a dream, later a reality, space was at best an entertainment and at worst, for some, fringe activity that distracts people from important Earthly issues. This attitude was captured perfectly at the peak of the Cold War by Sister Mary Jucunda in an accusatory letter sent to NASA:
"How could you suggest spending billions of dollars on such a project at a time when so many children were starving on Earth?"
Director of science at NASA responded in widely popularized "Why Explore Space?" which can be distilled to the following line:
"I believe that this project, in the long run, will contribute more to the solution of these grave problems we are facing here on Earth than many other potential projects of help"
The letter printed in Marshall Space Flight Center journal.
Ironically, just around this exchange, the budget of NASA was dramatically slashed by billions of dollars, lunar program Apollo came to a halt, and the project mentioned here (manned landing on Mars) is currently scheduled for 2033, sixty-six years after the letters. In the meanwhile, World Food Conferences, UN FAO, The Hunger Project, and others started to spend billions of dollars on the issue of starvation.
Regardless of whether Sister Jucunda was morally right, she correctly predicted the future, grasping the age-old collective thinking. Following the words of Joseph Conrad, Espiocracy will "attempt to render the highest kind of justice to the visible universe" by featuring the space race not as just as a few checkboxes to tick, but as a conflict between nations, peoples, and lines of thinking.
The Value of Space
On the national stage of the Cold War, countries pursued space conquest to prove their ideological and economic superiority over competitors. There are no gamified prestige points - the main reward lies in spreading the ideology, as was the historical case of the Soviet-American race. In gameplay terms, it creates very concrete motivation for participation in the space race, where achieving one of the firsts (satellite, man in space, man on the Moon, and so on) achieves more than any propaganda campaign could ever do, and provides heaps of material for actual propaganda activities, such as the USSR parading Gagarin around the world (except for the USA which deliberately barred Yuri from entering).
Soviet cosmonauts in a TV studio, 1963. Attribution: RIA Novosti archive, image #879591 / Khalip / CC-BY-SA 3.0.
Pursuing a space program after the initial push can still yield limited political gains. The first satellite in South America or the second in Africa can move regional imagination. Fulfilled promise of sending a man into space, even if it's the tenth nation to do so in the world, can significantly influence incoming elections. At the same time, these projects have to be weighed against real and imagined opportunity costs - in some countries, spending money on space initiatives can backfire.
Beyond pure politics, the space race expands player's agency, provides more options, opportunities, and tools. It is no coincidence that "Why Explore Space?" focused on space-borne inventions broadening the toolset used in programs attempting to solve the issue of poverty.
Agency expansion
Continuing political options, a successful space program in the game opens avenues of cooperation with other countries: sending their satellites and astronauts to bolster relations, establishing joint programs, providing valuable data from Earth-facing satellites, and so on.
At the same time, space is an important step forward for many technologies of the era such as TV, radio communication, and positioning systems. Most importantly from our perspective, it hands the player a new important tool - spy satellites! Real-world history counts at least 18 satellites launched by the CIA over two years (1959-60) despite fledgling space engineering. They truly were at a forefront of technological espionage.
KH-4B Corona, satellite produced and operated by CIA between 1967 and 1972.
In the game, satellites directly collect a wealth of intelligence:
- Precise mapping
- Early warning of a nuclear strike, monitoring of nuclear tests
- Military units and bases, including missiles
- Activity of strategic factories
- Deployed air-defense measures
- Interception of communication
At the moment, direct interaction of the player with the manned space program is limited to a healthy dose of events and some juicy event chains (including one with a spy sent into space). In the future, they may be a scene for espionage operations - on a space station or a Moonbase, closer to Bond movies than the history. Speaking of which...
Plausible Points of Divergence
The space race is a great place to ask a few interesting "what if" questions in Espiocracy.
Stemming from the plethora of mechanics explored in the previous dev diary, pace and participants will largely depend on actors (including Operation Paperclip) and paradigms (mainly around missiles and electronics). The progress relied on many tests and disasters, represented here to punctuate the race with unpredictability. Some of them will have international consequences, providing additional challenges during the campaign - such as the case of Kosmos 954, a Soviet satellite with a nuclear reactor onboard, which disintegrated over Canada. Other failures, paradoxically, will open up new opportunities - for instance, the CIA planned to blame the jamming of Cuban revolutionaries for (unrealized) death of the first American astronaut (with a bit of imagination, space-based casus belli right there!).
Transcript: Newspaper header with a photo of Soviet nuclear-powered Kosmos spy satellite and title: "Could spread destruction, radioactivity if it hits a populated area. Soviet satellite out of control." Note, this is about Kosmos 1402, a few years later after Kosmos 954.
One particularly significant "what if" is the eventual militarization of space. Contrary to almost all the science-fiction, humankind did not export warfare into space, and we know only of a single space-borne weapon test (R-23 autocannon attached to Salyut 3 in 1975). However, players should be able to take a different path in Espiocracy. Instead of signing peaceful Outer Space Treaty in 1967, the limited development of space-to-space weapons is a somewhat neglected yet plausible alternate history. This can further escalate beyond space-faring nations if the weapons in space - nuclear bombs, god rods, Strategic Defense Initiative - start facing Earth.
God rods, kinetic weapons capable of destroying nuclear bunkers.
Second important "what if" comes back to the introduction. What if we did not stop on Apollo 17? The world of Moon bases, landings on Mars, and spaceships orbiting Venus was in the early stages of the space race presumed to happen. By capturing the tension between people with a desire and disregard for space conquest, Espiocracy will also feature the world in which the first group leads superpowers away from The Hunger Project, to continue the exploration of space.
Early proposal of Soviet lunar base found by wonderful Anatoly Zak, a legend in space history circles: http://www.russianspaceweb.com/lunar_base.html
Smaller "what if" is also dedicated to the commercialization and internationalization. The space industry is currently worth 420 billion dollars, ten times more than the movie industry which is rather generously represented in the game (directors, actors, Hollywood as a special sector). Espiocracy will simulate that what-if with space-focused companies, famous engineers, initiatives such as the European Space Agency, and cooperation leading to the International Space Station - all of which could take different paths, creating a slightly different world in every campaign, opening strategic opportunities such as SpaceX reaching for space in player's country.
Final Remarks
Sorry for the lack of screenshots, the game undergoes important changes. The next dev diary should make up for it - we will talk about the new iteration of Contacts & Targets on May 27th.
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:
"Oh Little Sputnik, flying high / With made-in Moscow beep / You tell the world it’s a Commie sky / And Uncle Sam’s asleep" - G. Mennen Williams, Governor of Michigan