Corporate Politics

Here's a game I've wanted to do for a long time. Corporate politics can be intense and hard-fought. The player starts as a manager at a large corporation with the goal of promotion to the top. The first question to ask about the design, as you already know, is "What are the verbs?" and here is precisely where the toughest problems in the game arise. Political behavior in a corporation is closely tied to the specifics of business activity. You can't design a game with a generic, one-size-fits-all "stab in the back" verb. The specifics of the stab in the back are essential to making it understandable.

The solution to this problem is to build an elaborate business story that unfolds in a linear and predictable fashion. This is a tale of interactions with outside agencies: other businesses, banks, the stock market, government agencies, and so forth. Within this tale there are many possible actions that each member of the corporation can take; the player will be but one of those members. Thus, the outside forces are fixed and immutable and the internal reactions to those forces are the battleground of the executives.