Plenty of games, especially strategy and simulator games, have game mechanics related to politics or economics. From Recettear’s “Capitalism Ho!” to Hearts of Iron 4’s focus trees, political descriptions can be added to flavor game mechanics, and because different game devs have endless variation in personal worldviews, these additions can be absurdly bad at times. Even if the mechanic itself is good, it can have dunk-worthy labelling. Post the worst that you can think of, even if they come from an otherwise great game.

I’ll start: In Civilization VI, different government types you choose have different slots for policy cards, which let you select political policy bonuses for your civilization. In the modern age, two of the government types you can choose are “Democracy” and “Communism”. Already this is liberal drivel conflating Communism with non-democracy and “authoritarianism”. But the policy slots for these governments are even dumber, as Democracy gets more “diplomatic” and “economic” policies, and Communism gets more “millitary” policies. Famously, America and the west (clearly what Democracy is inspired by) never destabilized the world with arms manufactoring and invasions, I guess.

  • keepcarrot [she/her]
    ·
    14 hours ago

    If my car disappeared when I wasn't using it... In workers and resources I wind up having a few cars here and there, but my parking lots are tiny and infrequent. In Tropico I just forget about them until the Capitalists ask for them.

    I think a lot of brainworms in HoI4 comes in the little niche fascist nation mechanics, which I avoid playing so I'm not familiar with them. It does wind up sorta justifying Stalin's "paranoia" though by having a Trotskyist (I think) rebellion if you don't engage with it. I think conceptually I prefer HoI3's more fluid mechanics (rather than HoI4's event based ones), but they are less accessible and do come with a lot of assumptions about ideology and production baked in.

    • barrbaric [he/him]
      ·
      12 hours ago

      HOI4 literally added a "Stalin's Paranoia-ometer" in one of the most recent DLCs lol.

      • keepcarrot [she/her]
        ·
        11 hours ago

        Yeah, and it justifies the paranoia because if you don't, trotskyists show up