Why did you make it an intelligence game?

[ponpon]

Why did you decide to create an intelligence game rather than a comprehensive game when creating a Cold War grand strategy game?

[Rafal Grochala]

In comparison to other eras present in grand strategy games - roman, medieval, victorian, ww2 - cold war was not the best time in the history to be a leader of a nation. They had short political lifetime due to coups, proxy wars, assassinations, or just elections. More than a grand strategy, it would be a rougelite with game over after half an hour!

You cannot abstract it away, since it is the zeitgeist of the era. Playing cold war game should definitely give you ability to oust Brezhnev or manipulate American public opinion into choosing another candidate*.

This is actually argument number one against a GSG in this era (or number two, after "controversial content"), echoed in many discussions with "paradox bring us cold war game!". There are some possible workarounds (playing as a political party - but what after losing an election? - or continuing as the next leader - but how would you first play as Allende and then as Pinochet, Allende's deadly enemy?), but they ultimately harm both immersion and fun.

I believe that the proper solution is playing as something even larger and more resilient than leaders or political parties: an intelligence agency.

Think about KGB, where Beria was suspected of murdering Stalin, first directorate essentially run foreign diplomacy in third world countries, and the reign of USSR ended with actual internal coup executed by KGB chief. Think about Mossad and its role of Israel establishment, about virtually absolute immunity gained by GCHQ and MI5/MI6 after WW2, about Gehlen Organization in West Germany, or about Stasi in East Germany.

There are also a few other arguments supporting this game design decision. Espionage stories, especially from cold war, are rich and exciting, falling right into many-hours-many-events lap. Intelligence actions were politically and technologically as cutting edge as you can get in cold war and still preserve most of the critical grand-scale cold war decisions. Friction between individual people and macro operations gives nice game design possibilities in itself (think for instance about a system of hooks similar to CK3). There are also large differences between intelligence organizations in different countries, which both increases replayability and makes playing minor nations much more interesting than standard bipolar twilight-struggle-alike game. Finally, this decision nicely limits feature creep, simplifying the scope of production for me as a one-man-orchestra :)

* Don't take it literally. In real world, CIA and KGB informally agreed to not interfere with internal politics of the opposite country. Player will be obviously able to break it - with consequences - but majority of cold war operations focused on proxy countries.

[rjwmorrell]

Hello there. I stumbled on this game project the other day, and I was shocked. I had a similar game concept pop into my head over the summer, by coincidence, and had actually fleshed out a lot of similar details (including it being character driven) and even contacted a former CIA operative who is now a podcaster to see if they would be willing to consult.

Well, my coding and game design skills are nil, and the learning curve for something like this would be excessively long. So, I'd rather throw my ideas at you since you are already in development.

But this is very much what I was aiming for in a playable grand strategy spy game. Believe it or not, I looked at Out of the Park Baseball for some inspiration (i.e. rosters of agents, put into different roles based on their skills, development from recruitment up to station chief or higher, etc.) on how to structure the game mechanics, with a map based interface like Civ or EU4, and other Paradox games.

There would be things the player cannot influence very much, like the space race, or global terrorism events, etc. But the player would nonetheless operate their agency at their own risk. Want to make Canada's CSIS into a world class agency with a sabotage and assassination division? Sure, but if your government gets wind of unauthorized political killings, it would harm your reputation, possibly end your career, and embarass the peaceful Canadian government.

The start of the Cold War is a great starting point, because so many agencies were just figuring out their mandates, and growing their technology capabilities. It was also when actors like the People's Republic of China were just brand new, and starting to get involved in regional conflicts.

Other games have such simplified espionage mechanics, that it's laughable. In a grand strategy game like this, the player would have to solve problems like, how to get a paramilitary team into a hostile country to support a mission to retrieve an imprisoned agent or state secret. Have you developed sufficient forgery technology to create the fake passports and visas to move your team there? Does your agency have access to local resources for weaponry and vehicles? Do you have an Air America type front company to ship materials there? Mission planning could be a whole subsystem of the game, along with a technology development tree. Then there's the character development tree ... sure you can train an analyst to conduct open source and other security checks, and you would need this to screen your future recruits. But have you developed your undercover training program yet? Can you place deep cover sleeper agents and let them sit unused in a hostile country? Do you have sufficient access to resources to purchase/build safe houses in the right countries to support future missions?

So many possibilities. I can't wait to see how this develops, and offer my own ideas to see if they are viable for including them!

[Rafal Grochala]

Hi! Don't worry about the skills, the road can be more valuable than the goal - and more espionage games means more people interested in the genre, as the spy literature certainly shows.

I actually subscribe to the inspiration in sport managers too, they can be really engaging at the level of human management, so there's one more common point.

You raise right questions! Strategic espionage systems are virtually nonexistent (apart from "US vs Them" which had a load of its own flaws). Although I'm worried that you will be disappointed with Espiocracy, because at least some of the issues from your questions won't make it to the game. After iterations and prototypes I arrived at the observation that you can spoil the fun (sometimes by a lot) if the espionage part becomes too detailed and too realistic. Classic example is logistics - sure, there are players who enjoy this and there are even whole genres for them, but shipping materials here would be a niche in a niche in a niche. The same goes for detailed spy tech or precise planning. Initially I went all in with them, but the prototypes showed that they quickly start to feel like a work simulator instead of a game. I think it all pertains to the central question of what is fun and the usual answer is that interaction provides more fun than plans and preparations. There won't be shortage of the last two, but mostly in different dimensions: in the mind of a strategist, in meaningful decisions, and in predicting consequences of actions in the complex living world.

[Rafal Grochala]

Sorry, haven't seen the notification!

Originally posted by Archifenix:

Because you should be playing as the *nation* in question, not as a character. Chile's history did not end with Allende's death or Pinochet's resignation - that is obviously absurd - but rather continued on in spite of these events.

What does Allende's death even change then, if you're playing as the nation? In other grand strategy games where you play as the nation, Allende's death means simply that the bag of bonuses has changed to another bag of bonuses. That's the crux of this game design decision - to make leaders matter. Allende aside, I cannot imagine a Cold War game where Stalin or Kennedy - or their death! - don't matter, which is why I made out of it the very central issue of the design.

Originally posted by Archifenix:

You could take the path of other games in this era, or involving geopolitics: Historical events. Pinochet's rise was not a random event (...) Obviously it is impossible at this time to create a game that organically leads to such a scenario (...) More importantly, perhaps: *What is the player trying to do?*

You're describing something not that far from the system of actors in the game. And I don't believe it's impossible! :) Take a look: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1670650/view/4966897283051656392

Originally posted by Archifenix:

As for 'controversial content', there are already World War II era games - if those can get away with portraying such a conflict and politics, then surely the same can do done about the Cold War.

WW2 strategy games consciously avoid controversial content. For instance, in HOI4 you won't find strategic bombing, genocide, real oppression, refugees, POWs, and so on. I can't argue for this further though, because it's not my argument. Don't kill the messenger ;)

Originally posted by Archifenix:

Neither of those two things existed independently of the political context present at the time. Leaders, parties, political organizations, intelligence agencies, militaries, economic enterprises - all where operating within the context of a clash of ideologies, significantly blurring the lines of what is morally acceptable and not and at times even moving in seemingly contradictory directions due to events happening across the world.

Exactly, that's half of the fun in Espiocracy!

Originally posted by Archifenix:

*Why* are these organizations acting as they do? Surely they did not just woke up and decided upon an ideological course - rather, this is the result of years upon years of ideological indoctrination thrust upon them by their circumstances and actors. In other words: They act as they do because they are part of *the nations of the Cold War.*

Sure, the game reflects this process with pretty in-depth systems. For instance, views represent collective memory that pushes people to these and not other actions.

Originally posted by Archifenix:

Also nitpicking, but: Twilight Struggle is not really a game about the Cold War, it is a min-max board card game with a Cold War aesthetic. The difference is that it makes no effort to simulate the epoch, it is just you and opponent trying to win with no regard to the world at large.

C'mon, that's very pretentious take on a game that's based on the domino theory.

[Rafal Grochala]

Originally posted by Archifenix:

Because - being quite frank - most Grand Strategy games are way too abstract in the first place, regardless of the emphasis/de-emphasis on characters.

Are they? Which genre of strategy games has less abstract systems?

Originally posted by Archifenix:

since you are already playing as the DINA, the only thing that prevents it from being a game of nations is scope

Quite the opposite. As an intelligence agency/community, you play with completely different mechanics which won't make it to a game of nations: targets, contacts, interaction with the leader, personal espionage intrigue, existence and acquisition of strategic materials, engaging in sub-conventional conflicts, taking responsibility for recommendations, building an organization of characters, and so on. And obviously the most important thing that prevents it from being a game of nations is the focus on governments.

Originally posted by Archifenix:

The problem lies again in scope. Let us say you want to simulate the coup in, say, Guatemala. That was not just the USA funding insurgents or the military in Guatemala, there is a whole backdrop of economic inequality and ill-being that prompted the rise of Arbenz, and the subsequent coup carried out at the behest of the United Fruit Company due to fear of loss of profits - while the USA itself feared loss of international influence.

Yeah, I see no problem with simulating that.

Originally posted by Archifenix:

If I recall correctly Paradox did this because they had to contend with German/European laws back in their pre-Corporate years (...) So again I am not sure why that is an issue?

And you killed the messenger! ;)