The Game (2014)

The Game is a realpolitik boardgame where the players step into the role of the most influential people of the planet, the ones who control governments and nations. To win the player must avoid to identify himself with a faction such as North America, the Soviet Union or the Middle East. These factions should be "puppets" that the player must maneuver to get richer than other players.

During a play of The Game players manage governments, banks, religious congregation and mass-media, creating conflicts, speculations, war debts and political scandals. These events can decree the well-being or the failure of the world factions, provoking wars, truces and weapons trade. It doesn't matter if the factions controlled by the player prosper or suffer: the winner will be the player who benefits the more from the world situation: when you sell weapons you can win even losing the war.

Some notes regarding actual game mechanics, actions and win conditions.

There are six factions: Europe (black), USA (blue), Sovietic Area (red), Chinese Area (yellow), Arabian area (green) and Third World area (white). Players are not associated to factions but they control them. From this point of view the game paradigma remembers Imperial.

The game is played in turns. During each turn a player draw one card from the common deck, then can play one card from his hand. Other players could play also a card during current player's turn, but this is not mandatory and not often worthy. Part of the strategy relies on the decision about if, when and what to play during the turn of another player. Aside from the card, each money holds some money, which can be spend during the game and it's considered as victory points at the end of the game.

The deck contains 72 cards. 24 cards are named "Controls" and are permanent cards, i.e. they remain on the table after being played. The other 48 cards are temporary cards, i.e they are discarded after their effect took place. All cards are of four types: Military Control, Economic Control, Mass-Media Control and Religious Control. Since we have 6 factions and 4 type of control cards, this makes up the 24 control cards. The other 48 cards are also divided into these 4 categories (Military, Economic, Mass-Media and Religious) but, as stated above, they are temporary.

After playing a card, and carried on its effects (if not permanent) the current player can activate all his permanent cards. Each card allow differect actions.
A military control card allows to move military units on the map, triggering wars and occupations among the 6 factions. Economic control cards allow to directly attack another player (not a faction) by stealing his money. Mass-Media control cards allows to move tokens from any position, changing the "meaning" of the token. This is probably the most innovative game concept: by activate a Mass-Media control a player can take a token from a Military card (depicting a was loss) and move it to a Economic card (depicting a return of investment). By this mechanism the player can use the power of Mass-Media to change the way facts are explained to people, and then changing the way the history events affects social groups. Finally, Religious control allows to steal a control card from another player: this is probably the most powerful card, but it's not always easy to manage.

Player roll dice only when manipulating factions. Factions are not balanced, and this is the game's core logic. For instance, a player controlling blue Military Control (USA Military control), white Economic Control (Third World control) and red Mass-Media Control (Sovietic Mass-Media Control) could decide to trigger a war between USA and Sud Africa, being almost sure that USA military forces will win easily. This could create a debt to his white Economic control card, and then he could use his red Mass-Media control to move this tokens away from white Economic card to another card of his own. An historical lecture of these strategy could be read as follows: in the real history USA won a war against Sud Africa, but russian Mass-Media managed to tell another version of facts, and this could produce a money income for the player controlling russians Mass-Media enterprises.

Playing The Game should give players the same feeling you can get by movies as "Wag the Dog" (1997) or from the historical events as the attack to the World Trade Center (2001). Players should manipulate factions, sometime carrying them to financial crises, war or destruction, in order to enrich themself (and not the faction). The game ends when a player reaches the victory condition or the deck runs out of cards. At the end of the game the richest player is the winner.