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[Ooops]

Hello TIG people 

I have this game project I've thought about for a while now, and have just decided to give it a go. This is probably going to take some dedication, and what better way of motivating oneself than keeping a devlog?

So here it is, my one-page design document of CIA 2065. 

[start design document]

CIA 2065

One Sentence Summary

It is 2065 and you have just been appointed Director of the CIA.

One Paragraph Summary

It is 2065. The world has changed a lot in the last 50 years. Terrorism is as real a threat for the USA as it has ever been, but other hostile activities need to be contained, such as weapons of mass destruction and spying (including industrial espionage). The CIA has been somewhat slow to adapt to this shattering world. You have just been appointed Director of the Agency, and it is now your job to protect America from those threats. Your ultimate goal is to remain in office for as long as possible.

Tentative features list

• Turn-based strategy game: 1 turn = 1 month
• Face a variety of threats:
  
  • State(-sponsored) terrorism
  • Guerilla terrorism
  • Hostile government spying
  • Covert WMD programs
  • Industrial Espionage
• Do your best with a tight budget.
• Recruit and appoint employees such as covert operatives, analysts, technicians...
• Supervise covert operations
• Invest in spying technology.
• Navigate difficult political conditions: Do not displease the president.
• A dynamic, self-evolving world.
• Replayability: Each game will have a unique starting condition.

Expected Release date: 2013 S1, with limited alpha release in 2012 S2

[End Design Document]

I know it's ambitious, hopefully not too ambitious.    I have thought about many other features, but have decided against them, at least temporarily. There is certainly enough right now to fill the better part of a year.

I have already given a lot of thought to the game's mechanisms and general flow of play. Description of those mechanisms will come in future devlog entries. I think the biggest challenge is going to be balance, so I anticipate a lot of time and effort are going to be necessary between a working prototype of the general mechanisms and a 1.0 version.

If you've read this far, thank you 

[Ooops]

CIA 2065 vs CIA 2012 (part 1)

It may seem an unusual move to set a strategy game about the CIA 50 years from now. After all, players interested in such a political strategy game will likely be very interested in current world affairs, and probably less-so in science-fiction, however serious. There are however, several advantages to setting the game in the future, and I intend to expose them in this devlog (and the next).

Replayability

Having the game start in 2012 would severely hinder replayability. Sure, the CIA’s starting resources could be somewhat randomized, given the fact that few people know exactly the agency’s current assets, but if one wants to achieve the tiniest bit of realism, the challenges that will present themselves in the first year would be overly similar each playthough. With a starting date in 2065, the game can simulate some 50 years of world evolution starting from today’s actual situation. This simulation (including random elements) can produce a great variety of starting scenarios.

Political bias

No matter how hard one tries, making a game centered on the intelligence business is going to be politically biased. The designer’s partisan preferences, as well as his conceptions of justice, human rights, security and religion, to name only a few, will have an impact on the game. Moreover, the players of such kinds of games usually have strong political opinions, opinions which are as biased as the designer’s, often in a different direction. Therefore, there will likely be a serious gap between the game’s and the player’s philosophy. This can infuriate players, given how sensitive the topic is. Even worse, the result of a player’s actions may be different from his expectation, for purely subjective reasons, because they are ultimately determined by the designer, whose bias is different from the player’s.

By putting the game into 2065, some of those biases can be softened somewhat. In 2065, the issues related to justice, human rights and security will likely remain the same. This kind of bias will probably still permeate the game. However, there is little doubt that the ties between ideology or religion, on one side, and security issues, on the other side will be totally different. Chances are great, for example, that islamist terrorism will not still be considered the biggest threat to national security. Either Al Qaeda and the likes will have dwindled by then, or another worse threat will emerge. By allowing such threats to emerge in the scenario generation, neutrality can be improved. For example, most extreme forms of religion can generate terrorism. Or the biggest threat could be neo-communist fighting cells. Or white supremacist terrorists, or a pan-Latin America terrorist group, or eco-terrorists, you name it. Of course, this list itself reflects a bias.

In all honesty, it’s not so much the bias that will be contained by moving the game to 2065, but rather the controversy it can potentially generate.

(to be continued)

[Ooops]

CIA 2065 vs CIA 2012 (part 2)

Today, I continue discussing the merits of setting a CIA management game in the future.

Realism

Intelligence is probably one of the most fragmented branches of the US administration. There are officially 17 US agencies that are part of the so-called “Intelligence Community” (see http://www.intelligence.gov/about-the-intelligence-community/member-agencies/), and probably more that have marginal intelligence activities. Being realistic in that framework can quickly turn into a nightmare. Either you make compromises for the sake of gameplay, and people will angrily notice that you’ve put elements into the game that don’t actually belong to the CIA, or you stick 100% to reality and the game is more complex and less fun.

That’s where 2065 is so convenient. Ok, so to this feature could be fun but isn’t really something that happens within the CIA, but rather in some other agency? Never mind, you can always say the “Intelligence Community” has evolved in the last 50 years and easily provide some backstory to justify it. This is not some excuse to not do research on intelligence and the CIA (I have done a lot of those), but rather a convenient way to have a more cohesive gameplay, without being bothered by bureaucratic prerogatives. A more varied gameplay, as well, as one can devise a broader array of threats that the CIA will have to counter.

Interesting Research Tree

Needless to say, 2065 calls for some science-fictional spying technology. Science-fictional is not a synonym for zany or over-the-top, though. No teleportation, no laser swords, or the like, but exciting stuff nonetheless. I have to admit, however, that this is an aspect I haven’t developed much yet in my design. But this has the potential for some interesting gameplay and it is realistic as well: after all, one of the CIA’s four Directorates is the “Directorate of Science & Technology”.

[Manuel Magalhães]

This has the potential to be a really compelling game! Looking forward for it.

[Ooops]

Thanks   Let's try to reach some of that potential now

[Ooops]

Beginning with the end

Today, I want to develop the end of the game: how to win or lose?

There is no single point in the game where the player can say “I won”. Instead, the ultimate goal of the game is to stay in the Director’s chair for as long as possible. The player can define other goals for himself, such as “I want to foil all terror plots”, but the High Score will still be expressed in terms of how many months he remained Director.

A direct consequence of this is that there is a definite moment that corresponds to losing. In the current state of the game’s design, three ways of losing are envisioned:
•   You can get sacked by the president.
•   You can get killed in a terrorist attack
•   You can be a victim of blackmail/conspiracy and forced to resign.

I’m mostly going to develop the first possibility, as it should be by far the most frequent way of losing. Getting sacked happens for two reasons. The first one is that the president feels you have done a poor job: you’ve not kept him informed well enough, you haven’t been able to prevent an attack against US interests, you’ve failed to protect important information or you’ve acted behind his back and he found out.  Being sacked for displeasing the president can happen any time, but the risk is especially high after the election of a new president: you have to make a good first impression.

The other way of getting sacked happens when the president is reasonably pleased with your job, but feels like he has to get rid of you for political reasons. If the Agency is very unpopular with the general public (because of failures or because of its use of questionable methods), the president may see a benefit in getting rid of you. This too can happen anytime, but gets more likely the closer we are to election time, and the less confident the president is in his reelection (or the election of his party’s candidate if he has already served two terms).

You can also get killed by a terrorist attack if you’ve let a foreign terrorist threat grow out of control. If the foreign terrorist group has developed a strong capacity, it may attack US mainland. One target of choice could be the CIA headquarters. This event should be relatively rare.

Blackmail/conspiracy against you happens when an enemy nation has succeeded (despite the CIA’s efforts) in planting a great number of spies in the US and when it attempts to weaken the CIA by targeting its Director. Again, this should be a pretty rare event.

The previous paragraph may shock you: the CIA is not responsible for counterintelligence. Fighting against spies planted in the US is the job of other agencies, among which the FBI. Well, guess what? It has all changed between now and 2065. 

[Ooops]

I have decided to use SFML for the game and I've been testing the library during the last few days. I will probably resume updating the devlog tomorrow or the day after, with a description of the threats that the CIA will have to face in the game.

[Archibald]

Set the game in like 1970, cold war times. This way you still keep it realistic but avoid most of the controversy. Plus, that persiod was way more interesting in terms in espionage
As for future setting, that's definitely a bad idea for this type of game. Usually if you play such games you want to be emerged in the "real thing". If you set it in future it will be fantasy (in such case you would better redo it into MenInBlack).

[rek]

Set the game in like 1970, cold war times. This way you still keep it realistic but avoid most of the controversy. Plus, that persiod was way more interesting in terms in espionage
As for future setting, that's definitely a bad idea for this type of game. Usually if you play such games you want to be emerged in the "real thing". If you set it in future it will be fantasy (in such case you would better redo it into MenInBlack).

Ignore all of this.

The Cold War is hardly free of controversy and any revisionism applied to it would just make it worse. Stories set in the future are not "fantasy", nor is immersion impossible.

[Eigen]

I just wanted to say that's a neat idea for a game and something I'd very much like to play. Good luck with it

So, what exactly do you do in the game? Is it mostly textual or will there be some sort of a graphical simulation for covert operations? Or will this be a "secret agency tycoon" where stuff is very graphical but in a user interface sort of way?

All this reminded me of Sid Meier's "Covert Action", which surely you've played.