Plenty of games, especially strategy and simulator games, have game mechanics related to politics or economics. From Recettear’s “Capitalism Ho!” to Hearts of Iron 4’s focus trees, political descriptions can be added to flavor game mechanics, and because different game devs have endless variation in personal worldviews, these additions can be absurdly bad at times. Even if the mechanic itself is good, it can have dunk-worthy labelling. Post the worst that you can think of, even if they come from an otherwise great game.
I’ll start: In Civilization VI, different government types you choose have different slots for policy cards, which let you select political policy bonuses for your civilization. In the modern age, two of the government types you can choose are “Democracy” and “Communism”. Already this is liberal drivel conflating Communism with non-democracy and “authoritarianism”. But the policy slots for these governments are even dumber, as Democracy gets more “diplomatic” and “economic” policies, and Communism gets more “millitary” policies. Famously, America and the west (clearly what Democracy is inspired by) never destabilized the world with arms manufactoring and invasions, I guess.
Peter Molyneux is both a visionary and a hack. He’s been trying to make “the game where your choices have consequences and real moral dilemmas” for decades now, and every time he tries it fails in a different way.
As long as you ignore his own hype, he makes some of the weirdest and interesting games. I still like Black And White because of this. A true “missed the moon and landed among the stars” guy.
He made some awesome games in the 90s. Populous, Syndicate, Theme Park, Magic Carpet, Dungeon Keeper, etc.
