Government simulation game

Diplomacy is a strategic board game created by Allan B. Calhamer in 1954 and released commercially in the United States in 1959. Its main distinctions from most board wargames are its negotiation phases and the absence of dice and other game elements that produce random effects. Set in Europe in the years leading to the Great War, Diplomacy is played by two to seven players, each controlling the armed forces of a major European power. Each player aims to move their few starting units and defeat those of others to win possession of a majority of strategic cities and provinces marked as "supply centers" on the map; these supply centers allow players who control them to produce more units. Following each round of player negotiations, each player can issue attack and support orders, which are then executed during the movement phase. A player takes control of a province when the number of provinces that are given orders to support the attacking province exceeds the number of provinces given orders to support the defending province.

Die Macher is a strategy board game published by Hans im Glück in 1986 that simulates a German general election.

George Walker Bush is an American retired politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he previously served as the 46th governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000.

A play-by-mail game is a game played through postal mail, email or other digital media. Correspondence chess and Go were among the first PBM games. Diplomacy has been played by mail since 1963, introducing a multi-player aspect to PBM games. Flying Buffalo Inc. pioneered the first commercially available PBM game in 1970. A small number of PBM companies followed in the 1970s, with an explosion of hundreds of startup PBM companies in the 1980s at the peak of PBM gaming popularity, many of them small hobby companies—more than 90 percent of which eventually folded. A number of independent PBM magazines also started in the 1980s, including The Nuts & Bolts of PBM, Gaming Universal, Paper Mayhem and Flagship. These magazines eventually went out of print, replaced in the 21st century by the online PBM journal Suspense and Decision.

Electronic mail is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic (digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant only physical mail. Email later became a ubiquitous communication medium, to the point that in current use, an email address is often treated as a basic and necessary part of many processes in business, commerce, government, education, entertainment, and other spheres of daily life in most countries.

The Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the Atari 8-bit family. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985 and was widely available in July. It was the first personal computer with a bitmapped color GUI, using a version of Digital Research's GEM from February 1985. The Atari 1040ST, released in 1986 with 1 MB of RAM, was the first home computer with a cost-per-kilobyte of less than US$1.

Balance of Power is a strategy video game of geopolitics during the Cold War, created by Chris Crawford and published in 1985 on the Macintosh by Mindscape, followed by ports to a variety of platforms over the next two years.

Christopher Crawford is an American video game designer and writer. Hired by Alan Kay to work at Atari, Inc., he wrote the computer wargame Eastern Front (1941) for the Atari 8-bit family which was sold through the Atari Program Exchange and later Atari's official product line. After leaving Atari, he wrote a string of games beginning with Balance of Power for Macintosh. Writing about the process of developing games, he became known among other creators in the nascent home computer game industry for his passionate advocacy of game design as an art form. He self-published The Journal of Computer Game Design and founded the Computer Game Developers Conference.

The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term cold war is used because there was no large-scale fighting directly between the two superpowers, but they each supported opposing sides in major regional conflicts known as proxy wars. The conflict was based around the ideological and geopolitical struggle for global influence by these two superpowers, following their temporary alliance and victory against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in 1945. Aside from the nuclear arsenal development and conventional military deployment, the struggle for dominance was expressed via indirect means such as psychological warfare, propaganda campaigns, espionage, far-reaching embargoes, rivalry at sports events, and technological competitions such as the Space Race.

Conflict: Middle East Political Simulator is a turn-based government simulation game designed by David J. Eastman and published by Virgin Mastertronic in 1990 for DOS, Atari ST and Amiga. The game is available for free download at abandonware sites.

Crisis in the Kremlin is a 1991 strategy video game with managerial aspects in which the player acts as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 to 2017. The player assumes the role of the reformist Mikhail Gorbachev, the nationalist Boris Yeltsin, or the hardliner Yegor Ligachyov. Actual jokes recorded by the KGB can be found in the gameplay, depicting the concerns of the Soviet people in a humorous light. The game was developed and released at a time when the Soviet Union was collapsing and breaking apart with the game's events making reference to that. Indeed, the Soviet Union dissolved in the same year as the game's release. A remake and spiritual successor of the game was published in 2017 on the game platform Steam.

Hidden Agenda is a 1988 strategy video game intended to simulate the conditions of a post-revolutionary Central American country. The player takes the part of the newly elected president of the fictional country of Chimerica, which has recently been liberated from the rule of the corrupt dictator Farsante and his ruling clique. It is considered a forerunner of the Games for Change movement, alongside other early Macintosh games including Chris Crawford's Balance of Power.

The prime minister of Israel is the head of government and chief executive of the State of Israel.

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev was a Soviet and Russian politician who served as the eighth and final leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to the country's dissolution in 1991. He served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 and additionally as head of state beginning in 1988, as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet from 1988 to 1989, Chairman of the Supreme Soviet from 1989 to 1990 and the only President of the Soviet Union from 1990 to 1991. Ideologically, Gorbachev initially adhered to Marxism–Leninism but moved towards social democracy by the early 1990s.

Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was a Soviet and Russian politician who served as the first president of the Russian Federation from 1991 to 1999. He was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1961 to 1990. He later stood as a political independent, during which time he was viewed as being ideologically aligned with liberalism and Russian nationalism.

Russian nationalism is a form of nationalism that promotes Russian cultural identity and unity. Russian nationalism first rose to prominence in the early 19th century, and from its origin in the Russian Empire, to its repression during early Bolshevik rule, and its revival in the Soviet Union, it was closely related to pan-Slavism.

Lincity is a free and open-source software construction and management simulation game, which puts the player in control of managing a city's socio-economy, similar in concept to SimCity. The player can develop a city by buying appropriate buildings, services and infrastructure. Its name is both a Linux reference and a play on the title of the original city-building game, SimCity, and it was released under the GNU General Public License v2.

A city-building game, or town-building game, is a genre of simulation video game where players act as the overall planner and leader of a city or town, looking down on it from above, and being responsible for its growth and management strategy. Players choose building placement and city management features such as salaries and work priorities, and the city develops accordingly.

Maxis is an American video game developer and a division of Electronic Arts (EA). The studio was founded in 1987 by Will Wright and Jeff Braun, and acquired by EA in 1997. Maxis is best known for its simulation games, including The Sims, Spore and SimCity.

4X is a subgenre of strategy-based computer and board games, and include both turn-based and real-time strategy titles. The gameplay involves building an empire. Emphasis is placed upon economic and technological development, as well as a range of military and non-military routes to supremacy.

Hearts of Iron is a grand strategy video game developed by Paradox Development Studio and published by Strategy First. Based on the Europa Engine, it was originally released in 2002 for Microsoft Windows. A Mac OS version was released by Virtual Programming the following year. In 2004, Atari, SA published Hearts of Iron: Platinum, an updated version that sought to improve several aspects of the game.

A partisan is a member of an irregular military force formed to oppose control of an area by a foreign power or by an army of occupation by some kind of insurgent activity.

The Revolutions of 1848, known in some countries as the Springtime of the Peoples or the Springtime of Nations, were a series of political upheavals throughout Europe starting in 1848. It remains the most widespread revolutionary wave in European history to date.

Balance of Power is a strategy video game of geopolitics during the Cold War, created by Chris Crawford and published in 1985 on the Macintosh by Mindscape, followed by ports to a variety of platforms over the next two years.

Bandit Kings of Ancient China, also known as Suikoden: Tenmei no Chikai in Japan, is a turn-based strategy video game developed and published by Koei, and released in 1989 for MSX, MS-DOS, Amiga, and Macintosh and in 1990 for the Nintendo Entertainment System. In 1996, Koei issued a remake for the Japanese Sega Saturn and PlayStation featuring vastly improved graphics and new arrangements of the original songs.

Conflict: Middle East Political Simulator is a turn-based government simulation game designed by David J. Eastman and published by Virgin Mastertronic in 1990 for DOS, Atari ST and Amiga. The game is available for free download at abandonware sites.

Crisis in the Kremlin is a 1991 strategy video game with managerial aspects in which the player acts as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 to 2017. The player assumes the role of the reformist Mikhail Gorbachev, the nationalist Boris Yeltsin, or the hardliner Yegor Ligachyov. Actual jokes recorded by the KGB can be found in the gameplay, depicting the concerns of the Soviet people in a humorous light. The game was developed and released at a time when the Soviet Union was collapsing and breaking apart with the game's events making reference to that. Indeed, the Soviet Union dissolved in the same year as the game's release. A remake and spiritual successor of the game was published in 2017 on the game platform Steam.

Crusader Kings is a grand strategy game developed by Paradox Development Studio and published by Paradox Interactive in April 2004. An expansion called Deus Vult was released in October 2007. A sequel using the newer Clausewitz Engine, Crusader Kings II, was released in February 2012, and another sequel, Crusader Kings III, was released on September 1, 2020.

CyberJudas is a presidential simulation video game for MS-DOS-compatible computers, and is the sequel to Shadow President. CyberJudas contains many of the same cyberpunk/dark science fiction elements of the original game, but adds themes of espionage and treason.

Destiny of an Emperor, known in Japan as Tenchi wo Kurau , is a strategy role-playing game by Capcom for the Nintendo Entertainment System based on the Tenchi wo Kurau manga by Hiroshi Motomiya. It was originally released in Japan in 1989, with an English language localization released for the North American market in 1990.

Democracy is a government simulation game that was first developed by Positech Games in 2005, with a sequel released in December 2007, a third game in 2013 and a fourth in 2022. The player plays as if they are the president or prime minister of a democratic government. The player must introduce and alter policies in seven areas – tax, economy, welfare, foreign policy, transport, law and order and public services. Each policy has an effect on the happiness of various voter groups, as well as affecting factors such as crime and air quality. The player has to deal with "situations", which are typically problems such as petrol protests or homelessness, and also has to make decisions on dilemmas that arise each turn.

eRepublik is a free-to-play, web browser-based massively multiplayer online game developed by Romanian studio eRepublik Labs which was launched outside of beta phase on 14 October 2008 and is accessible via the Internet. The game is set in a mirror world where players, referred to as citizens, join in local and national politics where they can help formulate national economic and social policies as well as initiating wars with their neighbours and/or tread the path of a private citizen working, fighting and voting for their state. It was developed by Alexis Bonte and George Lemnaru. eRepublik is programmed in PHP using Symfony framework and runs in most modern browsers. eRepublik has spawned a number of similar games due to the commercial success.

Floor 13 is a strategy video game published by Virgin Games in 1991. The game set in the United Kingdom, where the player is the director of a secret governmental agency involved in clandestine domestic operations; the headquarters is hidden on the thirteenth floor of a bank building in London Docklands, hence the title. A follow-up, Floor 13: Deep State, was released in November 2020.

Commander in Chief, also known as Geo-Political Simulator, is a government simulation game that allows a player to simulate being a nation's head of government. Players have a large amount of control over their nation, although this varies based on the form of government the player's nation has. The English version was released on July 25, 2008, and has also been released in French, German, Spanish and Russian. The French version has been named Mission-Président.

Hidden Agenda is a 1988 strategy video game intended to simulate the conditions of a post-revolutionary Central American country. The player takes the part of the newly elected president of the fictional country of Chimerica, which has recently been liberated from the rule of the corrupt dictator Farsante and his ruling clique. It is considered a forerunner of the Games for Change movement, alongside other early Macintosh games including Chris Crawford's Balance of Power.