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.
To paraphrase Fightclub, we meet at a very strange time in world history. This developer diary yearns for "a work of fiction" disclaimer. For all escapism offered by the Cold War, current threats undoubtedly taint the design of Espiocracy and will shape your reception of the game. It is certainly a work of its time.
Stuart Brown eloquently argues in a fantastic essay that video games as a whole are a work of the Cold War times - "an unintended harvest, a nuclear fruit". From the development of game theory, wider rollout of military wargaming, all the way to the progress in computing, simulations, or networks, the work on weapons of mass destruction was always uncomfortably close to gaming.
It is striking, then, that no video game explores nuclear brinkmanship in depth. A few existing attempts either hand the player a nuclear bomb as an inconsequential eraser tool or reduce sabre rattling into a simple board-game-like race with a doomsday clock. During the period of extensive research & prototyping, I almost fell into the same pit, likely for the same reasons as previous developers. When you peer behind the curtain of global fears and look at scientific details, calculations, tests, and usefulness, you can almost feel... disappointment!
Actually deployed warheads had considerably lower yields than weapons from movies and books, simulated damage and casualties were not far from WW2 strategic bombing, radiation is Pandora's box of popular incorrect assumptions, and nuclear winter has a shaky basis. Modern historians even argue that the incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki played merely minor role in the Japanese surrender. Academic books are full of similar findings that downplay nuclear weapons. Their implementation at face value inevitably has to trivialize (already virtual!) nuclear bombs - and what's the point of brinkmanship if you're not afraid of the brink?
Espiocracy has ambition to be the first game that renders the highest kind of justice to nuclear brinkmanship. We follow the words of Janne M. Korhonen: atom bombs are fundamentally psychological weapons. The game will focus less on the scientific modeling of explosions, and more on the exploration of human psychology confronted by constant existential threat. This is, after all, a work of fiction.
Psychological Conflict
We start our tour de force of design with Herman Kahn. In the 1960s he published the famous escalation ladder:
Yes, it's rather unrealistic but the entire long paper features many bright observations. The game builds on them and the ladder itself to create an intelligible backbone of otherwise immensely complex psychological conflict:
Every country in the game world has at least two positions (!) on the ladder. There is a real position, usually known to the leader(s) responsible for nuclear weapons in the country, and then there is externally perceived (probable) position, known to other leaders, actors, and entire populations, set by the combination of threats, statements, credibility, evidence, including also actions of other players. In rare cases, other nations may be privy to the third, secret perception that follows special insight or agreements.
Following Kahn's ladder, steps are not meant to be followed one by one, and instead, merely present possible options of escalation or de-escalation from the current position. Steps are by design very different, some acting as one-time events (a threat is forgotten if not repeated after some time) whereas others serve as default fallback points (past tense and infinitives, eg. after a nuclear test a country returns to expanding stockpile). Admittedly, a ladder is not the best analogy (but it sounds nice and has historical weight). A better analogy can be found near poker chips - as a player, you can bet any amount equal to or higher than bets of other players, you can refuse to bet, you may be forced to bet blindly, and over time you may acquire more chips and therefore be able to place higher bets. Most importantly, during the cycles of bidding you build mental models of other players, and get to know their modus operandi, level of aggression, acceptable risks, limits, bluffs, and mistakes.
Directly understood nuclear brinkmanship happens between real and perceived positions. Play truthfully to establish credibility. Use credibility to bluff. Downplay escalation to surprise the opponent. Decipher the real positions of other players. Beat the drums of war by exaggerating the perceived position of the enemy.
Real Proliferation and Preparation
Distance between positions on the ladder is limited by logical constraints. It's impossible to wage nuclear threats without any real work on the nuclear arsenal - or to threaten with global thermonuclear war with a stockpile of five warheads. Beyond constraints, a larger distance is harder to establish and defend. Completely noncredible threats at best may be ignored and at worst laughed off, leading to the demise of a warmonger's political career.
The real position remains the bedrock of nuclear brinkmanship.
The economy here is clear, brutal, and realistic. Advancing real nuclear posture is always costly, it requires much more effort than advancing perceived posture. Real progress relies on expenditure combined with previously introduced mechanics and corresponding modes of interaction:
- National interests and views motivate the country and actors to pursue a particular level of preparation (also in the context of other countries, especially when countering main opponents)
- Scientific and technological progress is achieved in Big Science projects supported by local influential actors, including the important role of global progression from clunky atom bombs ("WW2 with nukes") to MIRVs (full mutually assured destruction)
- Uranium is procured as one of the strategic materials, with the optional role of other materials such as stolen nuclear blueprints
- Governments assign funds for further expansion of stockpile and strategic delivery systems, decide about deployments and escalation/de-escalation in general
In addition to developing nuclear capabilities, nations can influence the real nuclear posture of other nations - with the prime example of non-proliferation efforts (treaties, inspections, anti-nuclear social movements, or even sabotage - historically Eisenhower considered sabotaging the French nuclear program). Indirectly, it also takes the form of (generally) nonescalatory preparation of warning systems, blast shelters, civil defense, and nuclear-proofing state institutions. On the other side of the spectrum, nuclear-capable nations can weigh in for their allies (eg. USA considering tactical nuclear bombing in Indochina to rescue encircled French units) or even be asked for nuclear assistance (eg. Mao asking Khrushchev to provide atom bombs for the invasion of Taiwan).
Perception of Nuclear Posture
The most straightforward case of perception aligned with reality is simple only in theory. Change of posture has to be officially communicated which often sparks the reaction of the population (eg. protests), actors (eg. strong opposing voices), and nations (eg. escalation in response to escalation).
In the short term, it may be easier to downplay own nuclear position. Lack of any public communication and counterintelligence protection may be enough for some time but later will require special actions, costs, and possibly shortening the distance between real and perceived posture. The most famous nuclear scare of the Cold War - the Cuban Missile Crisis - falls exactly into this bracket. Soviet Union covertly deployed missiles near the USA with the intent to later present this as fait accompli (keeping perceived position far from real posture for some time). However, American intelligence community discovered the deployment, politicians contacted the Soviet side who denied the change in posture, services gathered more evidence, government debated on the response, and then in alignment with the conventional and nuclear-adjacent response, President Kennedy communicated the discovery of deception in dramatic televised speech. The crisis was resolved when the American side agreed to scale back nuclear deployment from Turkey and Italy - a move which, curiously enough, was also secret. Both the origin and course of this crisis will be emergently simulated in the game.
Classic brinkmanship of the Cold War usually relied on the opposite approach - rhetorical escalation beyond real assumed position. Up to 1962, virtually all presidents of the two superpowers employed these threats regularly with mixed results. From Truman exaggerating nuclear stockpile in talks with the not-yet-nuclear USSR to Khrushchev bluffing to strike the West over Berlin blockade, threats were met with individually different responses, and this is also the approach taken by the game - in addition to player's input, actors themselves will decide about the response to escalatory rhetoric. It's also worth mentioning that various moves and accidents can also escalate the tension without direct intent of any of the sides, with the primary example of the IRL events from the year 1983 (Operation RYAN, shoot down of a Korean airliner, ordinary NATO exercise, Petrov accident, misunderstood speeches, diseases of elderly Soviet leaders - truly explosive combination).
Third-party interference can take an unusual shape in the area of perception. It's no coincidence that acquisition or even sheer attempt to acquire nuclear weapons is regarded as an escalation - manufacturing evidence of such a position can be a firm casus belli. On the other side of the aisle, society also contributes to the perception: books and movies can popularize a particular country as a nuclear villain, widespread drills and shelters can instill in the population a perception of higher threat than real. In very rare but possible cases, society can even enter a state of mass panic and riots after perceiving particularly severe escalation - that was for instance the fear that caused the British government to block TV broadcasts of "The War Game" (1966).
Globally, the highest escalatory position reached by any country ever sets the bar for nuclear taboo. Breaking it usually leads, on the one hand, to international outcry and possibly even coalitions formed against the first mover. On the other hand, the world gets accustomed to this new level and others may be tempted to follow the steps if the original party maintained the stance and/or was not severely punished.
Nuclear Blasts
Bulk of psychology aside, nuclear weapons in Espiocracy are a real existential danger to all entities in the game world. Nukes should and will supply players with a sense of paranoia, up to the point of losing the game in the case of the death of all intelligence operatives. In addition to nuclear brinkmanship, you can turn on a realistic game rule that enables nuclear accidents akin to Stanislav Petrov case from 1983, ready to derail the game on every single tick of full MAD readiness.
Preparation for nuclear war features a special on-map mechanic: you are responsible for nuclear plans. This includes the choice of precise escalatory step (from demonstration strike to global strikes), timing, warheads, targets, and their saturation. For a bleak flavor, other actors will sometimes weigh-in to amend the plans - as in the case of Kennedy who removed Warsaw from the list of cities to nuke out of private sympathy.
This is also a good moment to explore - in brief - strategic weapon types and delivery systems. Their details are covered by the scientific-technological mechanics but from the perspective of player agency, the game simulates large changes that may be not obvious to the modern audience. In the early decades of the Cold War, bombs are delivered only (and then still primarily) by bombers which take hours to scramble and then hours to arrive at the target, taking high losses on the way. Nuclear plans of the first decades called even for a few weeks of rolling nuclear bombings, a type of war never really depicted in any popular media. After the first 15-25 years, this evolves into a more familiar form of nuclear warfare employed by ballistic missiles. Severe mutually assured destruction arrives relatively late, initially with submarine-based missiles (which are universally hard to disable before the retaliatory strike, unless they are tailed underwater) and fully with MIRVs (multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles which feature multiple warheads per missile launched into space).
Tactical weapons, understood as weapons used to win battles instead of crippling entire countries, can be produced in mass numbers and can densely saturate deployed military forces, as was the historic case for Europe. Their use, however... is tricky. From the military perspective, it's not an eraser tool - real plans called for insane density of usage (eg. 136 tactical nukes on 100 km front in the 1977 plan) to achieve measurable results. In the spirit of alternate history, the player will be able to pull this off but the main intended role of tactical weapons in the game is centered around a flavorful menagerie of weapon types: nuclear mines, torpedoes, anti-aircraft rockets, or even Davy Crocketts!
Once the escalation reaches the highest levels and the world veers into launching nuclear strikes, the game takes a no-nonsense approach to the representation of the brief conflict, focusing on interesting points of historical divergence: actors taking direct responsibility for giving an order to strike, possible mutinies along the way, first strike wave and retaliatory second strike, along with the long-term spectre of eventual doomsday devices such as dead hand, dormant submarines, and stationary dirty bombs.
The adventure doesn't end here, at least not yet. Destruction takes various forms and affects all physical objects in the game, from infrastructure to people, through direct incineration in the blast, crumbling buildings, EMP (with different influence on older and more modern devices), flash burns, the spread of radioactive fallout, radiation sickness, entire states collapsing under the weight of casualties, nuclear-free continents preparing for nuclear winter...
Behind The Scenes
► The first dev diary clearly rejected doomsday clocks. Hopefully, you can now understand the reason - a single global counter would not only significantly limit psychological exploration of the subject, but it would also reduce the role of unreliable intelligence, local contexts, readiness as a tool of its own, and even rob willing players of the real feeling of paranoia due to accidents looming over the world regardless of DEFCON level.
► Among the most interesting-disappointing controversies, nuclear winters occupy the top place. It's a very hairy story about human minds (which will serve as a small inspiration for an event or two in the game). In short, the notion of nuclear winter originated in the 80s from very early and simple simulations of soot from burning cities, with results highly hinging on a few numerical constants. Scientists, riding the wave of the 1983 nuclear scare, huge movies such as "The Day After", and nuclear disarmament talks, saw this as an opportunity to pursue noble anti-nuclear activism and they more or less succeeded, with the help of celebrities such as Carl Sagan. The world indeed believed that the Earth will freeze to death due to soot blocking the sunlight. Later real-world events (such as burning oil wells during the Gulf War) and more precise modeling never fully confirmed these warnings. The latest, most advanced modeling attempts produce rather timid results - 100 cities destroyed by nuclear bombs would simply cancel global warming, lowering global temperature just by 1°C. Even an enormous exchange of 400 MT would cause a decrease in global average temperature by 8°C for a decade, after which temperatures would return to normal... Notably, just two months ago Nature published detailed study that essentially dropped the term "nuclear winter" and instead focused on global famine (which still did not reach some parts of the world, such as Australia, even in the worst case scenarios).
► Nuclear weapons sit at the very heart of the inspiration behind the development of Espiocracy. In addition to mentioned Nuclear Fruit by Ahoy, I always find plenty of interesting takes in Fail Safe from 1964 (IMO the best movie about and from the Cold War), an indie movie by Ben Marking, and obviously classic Dr. Strangelove, always present in subtitles of the diaries.
Final Remarks
Nuclear and adjacent UI is in the middle of reworks, hence no screenshots.
Next up, we'll continue the topic of weapons of mass destruction: Biological and Chemical Weapons in two weeks.
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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"Cold War kids were hard to kill
Under their desks in an air raid drill"
Billy Joel