Short lesson: Ask students to identify major issues that impact a specific variable such as unemployment.
After, ask what they learned about their goal policy.
#DEMOCRACY 3 LETS PLAY FREE#
Let them free play as they try to implement the policy.
Short lesson: Give students a specific goal policy based on playing in your home country. So, how can we use Democracy 3 in the class? From these examples, you can build your own lessons and run with your own ideas. Instead of trying to outline all the possible uses, let’s look at a few examples. Students who make scenarios not only can learn about democracy in general by crafting a scenario, but can learn about local issues as they convert those issues into scenarios.īeing a modifiable system simulation, Democracy has far more applications to the classroom than can be discussed here. Building scenarios for the game allows students to learn through creation and construction of their own systems. The beautifully and effectively designed visualizations of Democracy 3 make complex relationships approachable and serve as a perfect jumping off point for discussion.įinally, the ability to modify the game can be key in the learning process. By experimenting with and (almost certainly) failing within the system, players can learn a significant amount about how real governments work and what must be taken into consideration when supporting a policy. The complex, yet accurate, system simulation the game uses to drive its gameplay can provide a significant opportunity for experiential learning for players. It should come as no surprise that Democracy 3 is a powerful learning tool. With a strong modding community, the number of unique scenarios, challenges, and countries available to play continues to grow even now, 8 years after its release. Players can easily see how one variable affects another as the lines connecting them show the nature of the relation ship (red for negative impact, green for positive) and the strength of the relationship (speed and size of the arrows moving along the line).įinally, the game was designed to allow for near infinite content. Democracy 3 uses visualization to help players understand how the complex variables relate and how policies can impact them. Luckily, the designers do an excellent job of making the vast amount of information easily approachable. These demographics include religious beliefs, race, political leaning, wealth, education level, and many more statistics based on the actual population of countries. The players job, then, is to use the information available to them to attempt to influence the system in a beneficial way.Īs if that isn’t enough, the player has to deal with realistic demographics based on the chosen country. Each policy costs political clout and, importantly, impacts dozens of variables across the board. The player takes on the daunting task of improving the country by passing policies. 
Variables range from national security to budget issues to health care and beyond. Players run their country by passing policies and analyzing the effect of each policy on a complex web of variables that describe the state of the country. As the president / chancellor / prime minister, the player must not only keep their country running efficiently, but do so in a way that does not stress the political system or prevent their reelection. In Democracy 3, players take control of the government of their selected country.
This politics simulation may appear simple at first, but its complex systems and modding community bring together a nearly perfect combination for a teaching tool.ĭemocracy 3 was released in 2013 by Positech games. In this month’s deep dive on using games for classroom education, we will be mixing theory and application as we explore Democracy 3, a wonderful little political simulator.
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