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8/31/2021 - Monthly Update from Alex, August 2021


Alex
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5 hours ago, Alex said:

Hey everyone,

This is Alex here, creator and Admin of Politics and War. I'm setting a new goal of writing a monthly update to everyone about what's going on with the game. I don't know that it will necessarily be anything fancy, but it is a way that I can be more open and transparent about progress in the game.

I'm also aiming for a less formal tone here--largely I'm just presenting my thoughts on the current state of the game to you all. I originally wrote this as an email to send out to all current players. But I'm also posting it here to open it up for comments.

So, let's dive in. What's on the docket for Politics and War in September and beyond?

Well, for those of you that don't know, I did start working with a part-time developer back last year named Payal. She doesn't play the game and isn't on Discord, so you haven't really been exposed to her, but she has been really helpful in getting a lot of things implemented in the game. She's also definitely a better programmer than I am. *insert Alex sucks as coding joke here* šŸ˜‚

Anyway, she is working with me on building out a new set of alliance positions and permissions. This is going to be a cool system that keeps the existing default positions, but lets you as an alliance leader add up to 6 more (total of 10) and customize the permissions for each position. This has been a long requested change, and I think it will really improve alliance management and roleplay which is great.

We're also working on setting up a treasure trading system, where you can propose an offer in-game to buy a treasure from someone. There's a lot more to this, but back when I explicitly wrote into the rules that it would be a rules violation to coordinate treasure transfer (through war) I promised I would implement a mechanism for actually transferring treasures not via war. Well, that should be coming soon, another long awaited change.

Behind the scenes we've also been working on a new draft of the Game Rules. After pitching these a few weeks ago and getting some feedback, I think we're ready to move ahead. Largely this is a logistical change - instead of having a ā€œ3 strikes and you're outā€ system, we are going to have a ā€œ100 Moderation Points and you're outā€ system, where each rules violation can get a different number of moderation points. Warnings will also automatically expire, which was another frequent request/complaint about the old system.

The rules change in itself isn't a huge one, but Payal is helping me build out a really robust back-end to build in a lot of these things and make moderation work far easier. My hope is that getting all of this done will really free up a lot of my time when I'm working on Politics and War, most of which actually gets spent going through messages, reports, support tickets, and other general moderation duties. I'd love to get back to spending more time actually developing content and improvements for the game!

The last thing that I wanted to mention in this email is that early this month we celebrated Politics and War's 7th anniversary, which is amazing that the game has been around for so long now. For those of you that don't know, I actually created Politics and War when I was in high school - all by myself and self taught. I had no idea it was going to turn into such a popular game or last for this long.

Politics and War is a huge part of my life, and more-or-less my career at this point. I've always loved making games, and in particular had an interest in government and economics, so really getting to do this is like a dream come true. Most days don't feel like work at all, and I am really fortunate that you all have contributed so much into building the community that makes this game what it is. Without all the players and alliances, discord servers, player-run banks and other institutions, Politics and War would just be a funny old website. Thank you so much for the countless hours you have all put into Politics and War.

Sincerely,

Alex

What kind of information will moderators see that isn't ordinarily visible to players? IP? Email? Some kind of event log that might expose all of a player's spy operations? Bounty placements? Ordinarily hidden inter-alliance bank transactions that might have been used for nefarious IC operations? Dossier? Messages? What systems will be in place to ensure that moderators don't quietly use their role to access privileged information for their own interests? If they do abuse the role, do we get a heads up when our privileged info was accessed by a rogue moderator? Do they get outed to Orbis? I'm really curious about exactly how it will work putting players on game moderation.

Edited by Zephyr
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On 8/31/2021 at 3:21 PM, Alex said:

Well, for those of you that don't know, I did start working with a part-time developer back last year named Payal

I misread this as "paypal" and was expecting it to be something aboutĀ donations.

I appreciate all the work you put into this game!Ā Don't beat yourself up about any coding mistakes people might criticize you for! Especially on the coding side, the best way to learn is to do. It's a lot easier to criticize than to actually be in the field trying to make something. If this wasn't a good game, you wouldn't have a dedicated base of thousands of players. It's super impressive that someone could make something like this in High School.

Edited by Azaghul
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