Friday, October 05, 2007

Music and holidays

So I just got the practically finished music for Democracy 2 delivered. Pretty darn good. feels like movie music, like epic lord-of-the-rings meets the west wing style. Way better and much more appropriate than the very short music for the original game. It's going to give everything a far nicer, polished feel.
I've been doing a fair bit of balancing. the game can beat me now, often when I make the mistake of being too focused on just beating the budget deficit at the expense of actually having voters like me.
A big mistake you can make (which is new), is not defining your 'base' voters.
Every successful politician has his base. George Bush has his base, they are the Christian right. Clinton has his base, they are the left and liberals. Gordon brown has big business and trade unionists (clever double act). The conservatives have conservatives (typically), patriots and to some extent, the middle class.
The base are important in Democracy 2 because they make up your party membership. You have to get *some* people VERY happy, or they will not join the party. A small party means a low turnout at election time, and you can be 55/45 in the polls and lose badly if the other guys get their vote and you don't :D.

Anyway, I'm off on holiday to Venice for 5 days, by train no less. No airport queues or gestapo security idiots checking me for water bottles. Yee-hah.