Hello, Candidates!
I’m Matt. Now that we’re officially listed on Steam, it is my absolute pleasure to introduce you to The Electorate, a new election simulator that’s launching in the very near future. This will be the first of a weekly dev log, where I’ll be giving you an inside look at the gameplay, systems, and design behind the many features included in the game. Today’s dev log is about introducing you to me, the game, and the mission.
Without further ado, let’s get into it.
What is The Electorate?
The word “electorate” means “a body of people entitled to vote.” What that means for us is that the game is ultimately about the voters themselves, not the candidates. To me, when we take the focus off of candidates and instead build a game to tell a rich story about how voters interact and vote for candidates, you wind up with an election simulator that simply feels more weighty, realistic, and fun.
In a nutshell, The Electorate is seeking to become the ultimate election game. While at launch, only the US presidential election will be included, the long-term plan, which will be revealed in a more in-depth roadmap at a later date, will include elections from other countries and model their unique systems. I want the game to appeal to a global audience. It’s an ambitious goal, but one that I’m striving for each day, and with your help, we can possibly get there.
Why the United States First?
Well, to start, I’m an American.
I’ve been obsessed with presidential elections since I was a kid and have created statistical models that have correctly predicted the last three out of four presidential elections. In 2024, for example, my model for the popular vote was off by 0.1% for Vice President Harris and 0.6% for President Trump. I was dead-on accurate for the final electoral college tally, correctly predicting all seven swing states and their margins.
I’ve always wanted to make an election simulator, and after this past election ended and my model proved to be as accurate as it was, the validation helped me decide to take the leap and finally develop a game. It also helps that the United States has an incredibly unique electoral system (for better or worse) that happens to create an incredible gameplay loop around the electoral college.
The electoral college makes developing a game like this much easier than, say, the UK elections, where there’s multiple parties all competing for hundreds of small seats scattered across the country (with an exceptionally high concentration centered in the London metropolitan area). No, instead, the US has just two candidates with a realistic shot at winning, and very clear battle lines drawn. At any given moment, you’re really only competing to win a handful of states, and those states happen to be fiercely competitive, where only a few thousand votes can make the difference between winning it all or going home a loser. Sometimes while working on this project, I’ve wondered if America’s Founding Fathers actually created the system for video games with how perfectly binary and competitive it is.
With that in mind, the US presidential election was the natural starting place for me. However, the next step is to create nationwide Congressional elections, state elections for Senate seats, and gubernatorial races, as well as mayoral elections like New York City, and then expand to international elections.
Core Gameplay Features
The core gameplay is fairly simple, but don’t let that distract you from the layers of detail and depth underneath.
In The Electorate, you play as a presidential candidate. You play as either a Republican or Democrat (third-parties are coming soon) and run a full campaign from start to finish. You’ll spawn with the US map in front of you, showing all 50 states. You can select states and see your polling average, the demographics of the state, what the top issues are, and more. You can then zoom in to a state, and as you get closer, a county map will reveal itself. Here, you can interact with all 3,000+ counties in the US. Each have their own polls, issues, and demographics, all accurately tied to the latest US Census data in combination with recent voting trends.
The majority of your campaigning will happen on the county level. You’ll hold rallies, give speeches on important issues, attend fundraisers, build field offices, manage volunteers, and more. Rolling up to the national level, you’ll be able to run advertisements, prepare for debates, earn endorsements, manage campaign staff, meet with the media, and more. Occasionally, random events will occur, and they can be a boon or bust to your campaign.
Meanwhile, your opponent will be actively running their campaign, so it’ll be critical for you to plan your strategy accordingly and invest in the right people and resources. Finally, once you end your last turn, a dramatic Election Night simulation will begin with states releasing their results at staggered times in the same way you see on TV!
What Comes Next
In the coming weeks, we’ll be diving into each gameplay system, starting with our voting system next week. Expect these dev logs to drop at 10 AM EST every Tuesday going forward. (Tuesday’s are election days in the US, which is why I’ve picked it).
I’ll also be sharing a roadmap for planned features the closer we get to release. In the meantime, feel free to join our freshly created Discord server to discuss the game, give your thoughts and feedback on features, and help shape The Electorate into the greatest election simulator of all time!
Discord Server: https://discord.gg/Ne8NsQfvQD