In the mid 90s I worked with game developer Kellogg Creek Software, to advance a democratic process political simulation game into universities. It was a very robust simulation engine, drawing from real polling and results statistics from decades of presidential elections. In the game, the player is a campaign manager and must select a candidate and running mate from the range of 'real world' politicians that we rated on a scale of 1-10 across 50 different personality characteristics – and then make decisions throughout the game to sway votes across the country and ultimately win the presidency. Political Science professors were amazed by the detail and accuracy.
Then Mindscape Inc. approached us with a proposal, to include our game in the 25th Anniversary suite of game and utility products they were releasing for Garry Trudeau. So, we adapted the game to include Zonker and the other Doonesbury characters as potential candidates, and wove much of Garry's wry humor and sarcasm into the product, changing the name from Power Politics to Frontrunner 96, The Doonesbury Election game.
I used a combination of photography with some 3D rendering, standard Windows UI devices…and integrated the 2D Doonesbury drawings that were sent to me by Garry’s artist who inks the strip. Everything in the campaign office animated when clicked – the clock, the file cabinets, the drawers, the door, map, globe, coffee cup, everything.
