Hey I'm curious - do you have a process for researching historical events for these games? Like do you read a book on the topic? Or watch documentaries? Or just via internet? How do you decide what goes in the game and what gets cut? What gets represented in the game play and what doesn't? Would love to hear the process for getting this level of understanding of the relationships between orgs and interest groups and the curation process!
Viewing post in The Flint Sit-Down Strike comments
Mostly books, movies, or podcasts. A good period drama generally lays out the basic structure of a conflict: who are the actors, what are the resources that they have at their disposal, etc. Podcasts are good for this as well, especially if we are talking about current events. Then its LOTs of internet research to fill in the details. With a good understanding of economics, figuring out how the various actors and resources fit together generally falls into place. As a rule of thumb, history happens because of changes in economics, technology and/or demographics. However, these changes tend to lead to interesting conflicts and clashes, like the one simulated here. Put another way, the industrial union movement was probably going to do some combination of things that you can do in this game to bring major corporations to the bargaining table. They had been trying to do this for decades, and the high tariffs, political environment, and low immigration rates of the 1930s finally allowed unions to win. Building a game like this is about figuring out how to represent those forces through the actions and decisions that actors on both sides could make.