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I Ruled America as Donald Trump in 'Supreme Ruler'… It Was a Yuge Mistake

‘Supreme Ruler Ultimate: Trump Rising’ let’s you rule America as The Donald.
Image: BattleGoat.

A lot of pundits think they know how a Trump presidency will affect the world, but only BattleGoat Studios has run a simulation. The Canadian game developer created the Supreme Ruler series, a complex strategy game that puts players in charge of running a country.

The series is similar to the strategy game Hearts of Iron. In both games, players make macro level decisions to steer their state, but where Hearts of Iron is about war, Supreme Ruler focuses economy and diplomacy. BattleGoat's series has tackled the Cold War, World War II, the near future and now … Donald Trump.

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Trump Rising is a free DLC for Supreme Ruler Ultimate, the latest game in the series. Trump Rising starts on January 1, 2017 and let's players take control of a post-brexit UK, the Islamic State or, of course, the United States under The Donald.

I ran Supreme Ruler Ultimate for the first time and loaded up the Trump Rising DLC with the goal of making America great again, building that wall, defeating ISIS and renegotiating all trade deals. It's a sprawling and complicated game that comes with tutorials to help new players get used to its systems.

I'd never played the game before, but I wanted the authentic Donald Trump experience and I'm good at PC games, OK? The best, in fact. I'm so good at PC games it'll make your head spin. The Donald doesn't do tutorials.

So I jumped in with little foreknowledge of how the game works and set to work.

It took BattleGoat about three months to prepare Supreme Ruler for Trump. It took me eight hours to ruin America as Trump.

George Ceczy, co-founder of BattleGoat, go the idea for Trump Rising from a group of High School Kids he mentors. Ceczy helps kids get ready for the Canada-Wide Science Fair and one told him he should add Trump to Supreme Ruler.

It was a good fit. The game already included a sandbox scenario set in 2020 and BattleGoat spent a lot of time researching data and statistics such as GDP, unemployment trends and import/export patterns to build that scenario. But they also had to make a lot of predictions. Some were accurate, they thought Trudeau would become Canada's Prime Minister. Others weren't, they picked Jeb Bush for America's President.

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"We wanted to release some new content this summer and update the world conditions including all the world leaders from what we had previously predicted," David Thompson, co-founder and lead designer at BattleGoat Studios, told me via email. "And with the very real prospect of a Donald Trump Presidency, we knew we had to include him, if just to add more chaos to our already rather chaotic version of the near future."

It took BattleGoat about three months to prepare Supreme Ruler for Trump. It took me eight hours to ruin America as Trump.

I started fulfilling campaign promises as soon as Trump took officers. First, I advised my economic cabinet to suspend all extant trade deals. America has terrible deals, the worst, and only The Donald can get the best. So I put a hold on trade and figured I'd starve the rest of the world for a solid year. After 12 months, the rest of the world would be begging to cut a good deal.

Again, Supreme Ruler is complicated and difficult. There's so many levers and switches that affect things like taxes and social benefits that the game can quickly turn confusing and chaotic. Right away I increased spending on law enforcement, cut corporate taxes and slashed entitlements across the board.

It's easy to ruin your country instead of save it. Thankfully, the game has cabinet ministers a player can assign broad goals to and the AI deals with all the little levers and switches.

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After I clicked the "Isolationism—No Trade" box, I told the cabinet to focus on funding law enforcement, making the U.S. self sufficient, increasing the size of the military, and pouring an obscene amount of money into researching new weapons.

In early February, Russia invaded Estonia. Whatever. What's in Estonia anyway? A bunch of losers. I looked South. I had a wall to build.

A beautiful wall, the best. Image: BattleGoat

When I spoke with BattleGoat, I asked them if Trump Rising was a joke or a marketing stunt. Thompson admitted, to a certain extent, that it was. "Let's face it," Thompson told me. "Would you be … interviewing us if the DLC was named 'After Brexit?'"

Touché.

"But it was also an opportunity to create a simulation of a real Trump Presidency … our game is actually designed to simulate a … chaotic, isolationist, unpredictable world, which makes it perfect for [Trump]," Thompson said. "Some elements. such as the objective to 'Build a Wall' with Mexico, are added with an element of humor, yet we leave it up to the player to decide how they will make Mexico pay for it."

I built the wall, but I couldn't get Mexico to pay for it. I pressured them to pay up via diplomatic channels but they never agreed. After a few minutes of this I tossed my hands in the air and moved on to the next campaign promise--ending Radical Islamic Terror.

America's mighty fleet of nuclear subs floated out of Halifax, parked in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and fired eight mighty ICBM's into ISIS territory.

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Supreme Ruler is a niche title, one of those games that only appeals to people who want a really involved and lengthy sim. It's not for everybody, but Trump Rising has helped bring the game to more people. "The DLC has definitely given us a bump," Thompson told me. "We definitely got added to a lot of Wish Lists over the last month! And with three months left before the election, there's lots of time for people to decide they want to see a preview of President Trump in our game."

My version of the Trump presidency is going well, the best, OK. I took care of a few more domestic issues before setting my sites on the Middle East. In addition to the Trump Wall, players can place Trump Towers to stimulate economic growth, so I started adding the beautiful towers to America's major population centers. It cost, of course, but the best always does.

Trump's buildings now littered the United States. Thanks to the wall and towers, Trump's glory would be visible from space. I knew I could do one better. I pulled up the "Statecraft" menu and changed America's name. Now, the world would know the United States as Trump's America. My detractors wouldn't like it, but who cares?

On Feb. 22, 2020 North Korea invaded Taiwan. A few weeks later, Russia—now finished with Estonia—attacked Azerbaijan.

Russia running rampant. BattleGoat capture

Surprisingly, BattleGoat hasn't gotten a negative reaction from Trump supporters. A few appeared on their forums, but they haven't stirred up too much trouble. "As far as our community goes, the reaction has been quite positive," Thompson told me.

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"They always appreciate it when we provide new content and they are probably just as interested in the changes we made around Iraq, Syria, and the Islamic State as they are in dystopian Trump future. "

Speaking of Islamic State, it was time for my Trump to finish off ISIS and put an end to Radical Islamic Terror. Now, I could learn how to use Supreme Ruler's combat and war systems. But why bother when America has the best nukes around? Why have nukes if you're not going to use them, OK?

America's mighty fleet of nuclear subs floated out of Halifax, parked in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and fired eight mighty ICBM's into ISIS territory. Raqqa was dust in moments. Problem solved. No more terrorism.

A few months later, ISIS tried to sue me for peace. They wanted $80 million from me to end the war. Terrible deal. I countered, telling them I'd never nuke them again if they promised peace and turned over 100,000 barrels of oil. They declined.

On March 21, Russia pushed into Finland. China spent most of April hopping from Southeast Asian country to Southeast Asian country. South Korea made quick work of North Korea. Good. By the end of the Summer of 2020, everything east of the United Kingdom looked radically different than just a year ago.

Russia, China and South Korea were gobbling up every small country they could conquer. Pakistan attacked India. Germany started militarizing.

It was almost time to open up America's markets. By now, Trump funded scientists had developed new fancy military hardware such as cloned limbs and nanotech body armor. I had a yuge surplus of military goods and no wars to fight … but Europe and Asia were in chaos. What an opportunity.

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Everyone lining up to buy weapons from America. BattleGoat capture

Trump Rising is funny, but it's also scary and that's by design. "If we had written this into the game a year ago, everyone would have complained that it was not believable," Thompson explained. "There have been a few of our players that don't really appreciate it, we've been called 'passive aggressive liberal developers', 'Hillary shills', 'left wing hacks.'"

BattleGoat is proudly Canadian. "That gives us a very good view to observe the political goings on in the United States. We get exposed to all their news commentary yet we also get an outsider's perspective," Thompson told me.

He also stressed that Trump isn't a uniquely American phenomenon and pointed to Boris Johnson in the UK and former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. "Harper was far more subtle and smart than Trump could ever be."

"The politics of divisiveness and fear are dangerous and should always be fought against because even if they are tempered with good intent, they harm our society incredibly."

Back in Trump's America, I had turned the politics of fear and divisiveness into a financial windfall. By 2020, America was the world's premier weapon's salesman. Russia and China's wars of expansion provided enough fodder to keep America afloat through the middle years of the Trump presidency.

It all went to hell in the first few months of 2020 though, as the world's wars petered out. I had spent so much time selling arms to the world that I neglected all else. As the borders settled, America's economy tanked and Trump lost his re-election bid to an avowed Socialist.

The world looked different. Turkey and Pakistan had conquered most of the Middle East and become superpowers. Russia had problems taking over Europe where Sweden, Italy and Germany had conquered much of Western Europe. France ceased to exist, as did Poland. It was, as BattleGoat predicted, chaotic.

Trump's approval with the people was in the toilet but his approval with the military was 100 percent. After he lost the election, Supreme Ruler gave me the option to stage a military coup. It was successful. Long live Trump's America. The vote was probably rigged anyway.