Hi all! Today's dev log is all about the media system, one of the more complex and dynamic systems I've built (and still building) for The Electorate.
As we all know, the media has a major impact on election cycles. The first competitive US election was in 1796 between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. One of the key features of that race was the use of newspaper outlets to smear or promote each candidate. Back then, the only way to really learn about a candidate was through the papers, so control over the media was essential. That brutal campaign was eventually won by Adams, but it gave a gloomy foreshadowing of just how nasty American elections would get in the future.
In The Electorate, I’ve tried to model the media landscape in the US as best I can for now. This is a system that you could spend an endless amount of hours building on, but I think this is a good start for inclusion in the game’s 1.0 version. Let’s get into it.
Media Outlets
There are six outlets in the game currently. Three traditional newspapers and three TV stations that also have newspaper outlets. Each one has a political bias that maps to the same 1-9 ideology scale used throughout the rest of the game, with 1 being far left and 9 being far right. Outlets have preset bias categories, like left-leaning, centrist, or right-leaning, but the actual number on the scale randomizes each game. A right-leaning outlet will always fall somewhere between 6-9, but where exactly changes every time you play.
Outlets also come with their own levels of influence and viewership. Any outlet clearing 5,000,000 monthly viewers carries significant Influence, and stories they publish will have a more dramatic impact on your Media Spin than a smaller outlet covering the same story. It’s up to you to actively court and work with these media outlets to keep stories in check. Of course, this is independent media, so that won’t always work, but it’s good to at least try.
Your relationship with each outlet isn't entirely on you, though. Your Communications Director and Press Secretary both play a role in how outlets perceive your campaign. Having the right people in those seats can ensure you're always building your relationships without direct interaction every turn. However, it adds to the importance of having the right staffers in place.
Journalists and Editors
Each outlet has an editor-in-chief and a staff of journalists. At the start of your campaign, outlets assign correspondents to each campaign. Your correspondent is your primary point of contact with that outlet, and the one you'll interact with most throughout the campaign.
On the other hand, getting access to an editor is difficult by design. They're not going to take your call just because you ask nicely. Ideology alignment helps, but even then, editors are meant to be hard to reach and harder to influence. Think of them as the ceiling of what's possible with any given outlet. Editors who are in your sphere and like you though are much more likely to pass on stories that might damage your reputation. But, their personality also might cancel that out.
I’m still building out personalities, but journalists and editors each have their own personalities. The general idea is that personality determines how willing someone is to work with you, whether they're inclined to chase big stories, or whether they're more measured and unlikely to make dramatic moves. The combination of your correspondent's personality and their editors creates outcomes that can genuinely surprise you, in both directions.
A hostile outlet with a laid-back correspondent might not cause you nearly as much trouble as you'd expect. But a friendly outlet with an aggressive correspondent and an editor who loves a big story can be just as dangerous. If a negative story about your campaign is worth covering, some journalists are simply going to cover it. A good relationship doesn't buy you protection, depending on the person.
Working the Press
As I mentioned earlier, you can directly work with media outlets. You'll have a set of actions available to you for the price of Stamina, including actions like sitting down for an interview, a phone call, inviting a journalist to a campaign event, leaking information about an opponent, and risky options like bribes (very, very risky, but might be worth it when you’re losing an election badly).
Media outlets and the game’s event system (something I haven’t covered yet in a dev log but will soon enough) are tied together. There are multiple event types, and media outlets determine all news events, but news events are also tied to your actions and the AI, which means it's fully dynamic.
What's Next
I didn’t have the UI close enough to finished to show off this time, but those screenshots will come sooner than later.
As always, thanks for the support. And of course, join the Discord and wishlist the game on Steam if you haven't already!