Mr. President: The American Presidency 2000-2020 is a game about being POTUS. And it’s unique. Most American politics games, both digital and tabletop, are about elections and campaigning; in this game, you’ve already won the election and must now govern. Likewise, most games in which you get to lead America focus on a narrow slice of that leadership. Not in Mr. President. You’ve got to take on the entire presidential portfolio: running the war on terror, dealing with domestic crises, managing your Cabinet, working with US allies and rivals, passing your domestic agenda through Congress, confirming Supreme Court justices if a seat comes open, and every other responsibility that comes with sitting in the Oval Office.
The game is an adaptation of the tabletop version, the result of a 9-year design and research process. It has a vast amount of content, ensuring tons of replayability - hundreds of crises and events, dozens of actions for the player to choose from, and subsystems capturing the whole range of presidential opportunities and challenges. Players can opt for the sandbox scenario, which puts them at the start of a 4-year term that encompasses a general variety of trends and events of the early 21st century. Or, if a player wants to see if he or she can do better than an actual president, there’s a scenario for each presidential term. Want to see if you can navigate the financial crisis, pass health care reform, and contain Iran better than President Obama did? Do you think you can deal with 9/11 better than President Bush did, perhaps even also achieving Bush’s objective of Social Security reform? Mr. President lets you take your shot.
The tabletop version is a monster game; one of the most common player comments about it is “I would love to buy and play this game, but I don’t have the table space” or “I can’t leave a game like this set up for days and days.” Another common comment is “I spend a lot of time finding the right tables to roll on and the right rules to apply.” Exia’s adaptation will remove all of that player pain and present players with a tightened but entirely faithful Mr. President experience. (Images represent prototypes and work in progress - not the final experience!)
But we know there are pitfalls with translating a game like Mr. President to the PC screen. Part of what’s compelling about Mr. President, and other open-ended sandbox simulation style games, is that by reading the rules and pushing the counters, the player gains a deeper understanding of the choices the game offers and how to play towards and around them. A system that automates everything and simply presents the player with results fails in two ways: it denies the player a moment to imagine what’s happening, and it forgoes an opportunity to understand what impacted the chance of success. Exia has an experienced game dev team. We will not fall into these traps.
Like any game about politics and governing, Mr. President expresses a particular creative vision. It portrays the American presidency as a great institution and America as a force for good in the world - but whose potential is strongest when people of different parties and views come together, and when America works well with its allies. Like any creative vision, people will disagree - but in today’s political atmosphere, many players may find Mr. President to be a breath of fresh air.