In The Political Machine we are creating a PC strategy game in which players run for President. But no game would be complete without your candidate having to go on TV and answer "tough" questions. Not only do these questions make the player have to answer real world questions, but they help make players understand why politicians "spin" the truth.

We've put together two editors that we use internally to build these TV interviews. The first one is called the Issue Editor. In it, we create political issues "Abortion", "Crime", "Healthcare", "The war on terror". Then we set whether Democrats, Independents, or Republicans are in favor of a given issue (a positive value) or against it (a negative value). The higher the number, the more strongly they feel about it.

Since it's a game, we focus purely on the two major political parties.

Here's an example (click to enlarge):

So first we come up with an interview (in this example it's a parody of "Nightline" called "NightTime" -- all our parodies are designed to be respectful, they're not charactertures). Then we come up with questions that they might ask.

From there, the player has a list of answers they can choose from.

We try to provide answers that are reasonable. However, we also provide unreasonable (funny) answers too. They don't have to use them. We also have answers that are based on the candidate's intelligence, charisma, etc. Players designing candidates have to pick and choose amongst the traits they want. If someone makes their candidate an idiot, they'll only have idiotic responses available to them to choose from.

Once the player chooses an answer, we then affect how their answer will affect their candidate's rating and that of those watching. Most of the time, we don't have answers affect the people's opinions. But very intelligent candidates are more likely to get responses that persuade the public. Most of the time they are just building their own positions up. When you start the game, you start out at 0 on all the issues (neutral). Your answers on the issues will help build up who you are.

So if you are against universal health care, for instance, you'll get negative points (negative just means you're against it). 

Here's a vastly over simplified example:

Let's say you're a Republican and you are very against universal health care. Let's say your position comes out to be a -5.

Then let's say Republicans are -10 on the issue of universal health care. Independents are 0 (neutral) and Democrats are +10 (in favor).

So you would score: -5 * -10 = 50 points with Republicans (two negatives makes a positive in multiplication).

On the other hand, if your opponent was wishy washy on the issue and only got 30 points with Democrats, the net result would be that you would win a higher percentage of the Republican vote than your opponent would get of Democrats.  However, it's not quite that simple because different states have different percentages of Republicans and Democrats. Getting 70% of Republicans to vote for you in New York may not be enough to win against a Democrat who got 50% of Democrats. And on most issues, Independents are truly neutral. They lean slightly one way or the other. Not much but enough to tip the scales.

The hard part for us is coming up with good responses for all sides. So we'll be posting questions to YOU, readers of PoliticalMachine.com / JoeUser.com and see what pithy answers you come up with.