Psst. Political Machine website sneak peek..

I get server errors in Opera and Firefox, something on line 242 about add name="IISWildcardModule

We just sneaked in a last minute update, you might have been trying to look at the site as we were uploading some new magic. It should work fine now.

I have to admit that a website tied in to the political "discussion" on joeuser has the effect of turning me off to the idea of buying the game. Simulated politics is fun, arguing politics on the internet is not.

I'm glad I'm still to obssessed with GC2 to take up another game, much less a web site aimed at encouraging lovers of political argument. I'm afraid I'll end up involved eventually.

If you were looking for notes on the beta:

* Change "Inbetween" to "In between"
* "Democrat" is not an adjective. The party is "Democratic" and members are "Democrats." The "Democrat" misuse is nasty baggage from the '90s. It is the equivalent of deliberately refusing to say someone's name correctly.
* C-SPAN's Washington Journal makes room for minority party & independents; so should the bottom area of your home page.
* If legally kosher, seems like home page could also use a list of links to non-partisan, non-commerical resources such as C-SPAN, THOMAS, and the US Census Bureau.

You don't have to participate on the political forums.

I have to say I enjoyed the previous version and I am looking forward to this version. It'll suck you in GW!

I know, I'm just telling you the impact the site design has on me. I can't speak for anyone else, but I don't know that associating a game about politics with internet political arguments is in your best interest. It certainly turns me off, that's all I know.

A game about political issues shouldn't be connected to the discussion of political issues? 

But you can play the game without ever even knowing the site exists (as most people who buy the game at retail will).  The site is not in any way essential to buying, downloading, playing or enjoying the game.

It's counter intuitive, I'll grant you. The site's an advertising tool, designed to bring people to the game, yes? What I'm saying is that, for me personally, a site full of internet arguments is not an effective advertisement for the game. It has the opposite of the desired effect, in that I don't want to look at the site and find out about the game. This is my reaction, I can't speak for anyone else, and I offer it only in the spirit of what little help my feedback might or might not provide.

Good feedback though.  Will have to give it some thought.

Perhaps it would be good to have the 'real' political discussion areas there but minimized and moved down on the page so that a viewer has to work a bit to get to that discussion, meanwhile include a more prominent and featured area that links to forums discussing the game.

Something like this (excuse crude text drawing please)

 

+-----------------------------+

| Banners, etc.                  |

| Reviewer comments/marketing materials |

| Pictures/etc.  |

| -------separator------------|

|What gamers are saying about the game (link to forums/messages)|

|More banners linking to other Stardock products/games|

+------------------------------+

| smaller area with header noting What's going on in real-world politics |

| less prominent links to various JU political forums... |

+--------------------------------+

 

Hopefully that makes some sense.  Again, apologies for crudeness of note.