[DRAFT] Cut cords, strike chords

by **Ko-oren** » Fri Feb 25, 2022 6:15 am

Title: Cut cords, strike chords

For: nations with TV and internet, who are not cut off from the rest of the world, with a reasonable standard of living, without the State Media policy

Description: Seeing a quarter of his salary disappear on dozens of monthly subscription fees, ranging from TV and radio to a subscription to the entire catalog of Webflix just for the Great Bigtopian Bake-off, your brother calls you and begs you to do something about excessive entertainment fees. Some of your cabinet members are present in your office during the call and can't help but overhear his cries before the line quiets down.

Option 1: The minister of Economy breaks the awkward silence: "Tell him that he has to pick and choose. It's on him to pay only for what he actually watches - there's no way he needs everything. Stop coddling your family members, or they'll come to you with every little issue! Too harsh? Well, it's that, or you can pass a law about consolidating streaming services into one national service of which you control the price, whether the Foxneys of this world like it or not."
Effect: new TV productions look cheaper and cheaper the more you reduce the price of @@ANIMAL@@ TV

Option 2: Your minister of Media looks up from his Twitcher feed. "Funny, that's exactly what got us to this situation. People were fed up with the few channels they had, and the free market jumped to fill demand. Nobody should ever need more than just our national TV and radio coverage anyway. It tells everybody what they need to know, when they need to know. These commercial channels can go take a hike! People have better things to do than watch TV all day, every day. We should have ended this cacophony of media a long time ago - allow only our trusted public media!"
Effect: "Good morning @@NAME@@" is the best - and only - thing on TV

Option 3: Your niece, glued to the TV in your office, chimes in. "I need all of these! How else do you want me to keep up with my D-Dramas?" Your aide wrestles the remote from her while filling you in on the abbreviation ("Daguoan Drama") and changes the channel to 24/7 news and politics, befitting of a national leader. "I thought family was important? You can pay for some services and we'll share passwords."
Effect: the new season of Cephalopod Game looks like a school play after its production company lost half of its subscribers

Title: Cut cords, strike chords

For: nations with TV and internet, who are not cut off from the rest of the world, with a reasonable standard of living

Description: Seeing a quarter of his salary disappear on dozens of monthly subscription fees, ranging TV and radio to a subscription to the entire catalog of Webflix just for the Great Bigtopian Bake-off, your brother calls you and begs you to do something about excessive entertainment fees. Some of your cabinet members are present in your office during the call and can't help but overhear his loud desperate howling before the line quiets down.

Option 1: The minister of Economy breaks the awkward silence: "Tell him that he has to pick and choose. It's on him to pay only for what he actually watches - there's no way he needs everything. Stop coddling your family members, or they'll come to you with every little issue! Too harsh? Well, it's that, or you can pass a law about consolidating streaming services into one national service of which you control the price, whether the Foxneys of this world like it or not."
Effect: new TV productions look cheaper and cheaper the more you reduce the price of @@ANIMAL@@ TV

Option 2: Your minister of Media looks up from his Twitcher feed. "Funny, that's exactly what got us to this situation. People were fed up with the few channels they had, and the free market jumped to fill demand. Nobody should ever need more than just our national TV and radio coverage. It tells everybody what they need to know, when they need to know. These commercial channels can go take a hike! People have better things to do than watch TV all day, every day. We should have ended this cacophony of media a long time ago - allow only our trusted public media!"
Effect: "Good morning @@NAME@@" is the best - and only - thing on TV

Option 3: Your niece, glued to the TV in your office, chimes in. "I need all of these! How else do you want me to keep up with my D-Dramas?" Your aide wrestles the remote from her while filling you in on the abbreviation ("Daguoan Drama") and changes the channel to 24/7 news and politics, befitting of a national leader. "I'll go home to watch this! I'll never give you a password of my - my dad's - accounts ever again!"
Effect: you and many people like you sleep under bridges to stay up to date on Cephalopod Game

by **Ko-oren** » Fri Feb 25, 2022 6:17 am

An idea I had for a while that I haven't encountered in existing issues (as far as I know). I wanted to keep this personal to @@LEADER@@, without cutting into player agency (so I'm not 100% sure of effect line #2, for instance). If there are better/more established puns on the names I used, please let me know.

I'm also looking for an alternative to 'uncle' in 2, of course. There isn't "leader gender" somewhere, right? Would "my favourite family member" work - it's a little distant?

by **Outer Sparta** » Fri Mar 04, 2022 1:13 am

Is this supposed to be an issue dealing with national leader expenses, because I can't see Leader spending a quarter of their salary on entertainment and television subscriptions. I don't think this is a major issue, at worst it's just petty corruption or simply the leader is too enamored in entertainment to be governing.

by **Australian rePublic** » Mon Mar 14, 2022 4:38 am

This should be broaded and not apply exclusively to @@NAME@@

by **Ko-oren** » Wed Jun 01, 2022 1:41 am

I changed some of the wording. Thanks for the feedback above, it's something I struggled with while writing this. There are several issues that are about @@LEADER@@ and his family, often symbolising things that affect the population as a whole, and that's the way I wanted to go about this (because if @@LEADER@@ is spending too much on entertainment, there are probably many people in @@NAME@@ with the same problem). Should that be made clearer, or is it an angle that can work?

by **Bears Armed** » Wed Jun 01, 2022 8:16 pm

Is this actually okay under the rule about not violating 'Player autonomy' ?

by **Eggraria** » Thu Jun 02, 2022 1:23 am

I think the humor in having excessive subscription fees makes for a really interesting issue. That being said, echoing Bears Armed's concern, I think a possible way to frame the issue is someone getting into massive amounts of debt, or suing a streaming platform for charging way too much, and making it a big public concern. Enter dearest leader, primed on the situation and presented with options to fix the streaming situation.

Now, for grammatical and narrative nitpicks:

Option 2: Your niece, glued to the TV in your office, chimes in. "I need all of these! How else do you want me to keep up with my D-Dramas?" Your aide ("That's D for Daguoan Drama") wrestles the remote from her and changes the channel to 24/7 news and politics, befitting of a national leader. "I'll watch this from home then. Don't you dare change the password on any of your - our - services! Have I ever told you that you're my favourite uncle?"

Fit the parenthetical clause ("That's D for Daguoan Drama") either in the dialog of the niece or make it clear that the aide is saying that. It felt like a weird aside.

"Have I ever told you that you're my favourite uncle?" should be rewritten to say "Have I ever told you that you're my favourite relative?" -- not all leaders are men.

Your minister of Information looks up from his Tweetur feed. "Nobody should ever need more than just our national TV and radio coverage. It tells everybody what they need to know, when they need to know. To hell with this foreign dribble! And the commercial channels can go take a hike as well! People have better things to do than watch TV all day, every day."

I think a better ministry title could be Minister of National Media or something similar. Minister of Information can describe a lot of things, and feels kind of vague. It's a good opportunity to make a more pointed statement there.

I'm curious to see what further drafts look like!

by **Verdant Haven** » Thu Jun 02, 2022 9:21 am

- Like others here, I would be hesitant to declare that Leader is the one spending this much on subscription fees, not just because of problems related to how much Leader might be paid relative to the average person, but also as Bears Armed suggested, issues of Player Autonomy that start getting a bit tetchy. A good solution might be to use Leader's brother as the person having issues – the brother is a notoriously poor decision-maker with a penchant for bad financial habits, and him blowing through a significant chunk of his income on subscriptions would seem to be quite par for the course. That also might explain how a relatively inconsequential issue gets shoved on your desk.

- Having the first speaker suggesting consolidation of services into one bundled package almost begs for another speaker to object based on how that's exactly what led to the proliferation of streaming platforms in the first place (people fed up with cable bundles that made them pay for stuff they didn't want).

- The current option 2 just asks you to do nothing. That's the same as the Dismiss button. Make sure all your options are some kind of active choice (a choice that will do something).

- It seems like part of the intent from the options is to suggest the primary use of these platforms is to watch foreign content, but that isn't presented anywhere in the description of the issue. Is it important?

- There are a couple parody company names already in circulation in issues, which can fill some of the roles you're looking for. Twitter is in game as Twitcher, and Netflix is in game as Webflix.

- Effect lines aren't complete sentences; they appear as elements in a list. They shouldn't be capitalized or have periods, and should be written to fit into that list structure as well as possible.

by **Ko-oren** » Sat Oct 21, 2023 2:04 pm

Not sure how a year passed since my last update, but still working on this! I think I took care of the above comments:
- the 'foreign' issue broadens the scope of the issue beyond intended and was removed.
- description rewritten to concern the brother instead of leader.
- clarified option 2's effect.
- changed order of options (3 <-> 2) to make the story flow better.
- formatting and parody names brought in line with the rest.

Still looking to get this to a submissible standard and looking for feedback.

by **Ko-oren** » Wed Nov 08, 2023 8:31 am

Bit of grammar/spelling check and a new direction for option 3 (password sharing).

by **Verdant Haven** » Wed Nov 08, 2023 11:46 am

- Right now, Option 1 describes two completely different sets of actions, with no clarity on which you actually are taking if chosen. Are you telling your brother to limit his intake and stop coddling family, or are you nationalizing the media in order to enforce price controls? Options cannot be presented as either/or suggestions.

- In Option 2, the big surge in major streaming services was a result of people not wanting to pay for lots of channels when they only wanted a few – not the opposite. Bundling was the problem. All of that seems unrelated to the proposed solution though – if the answer is to ban non-government media, present the dangers of private media as the argument. Also, if option 1 is indeed about seizing control of the media, well... that's the exact same thing as this. The options need to do different things.

- Option 3 doesn't feel like it's presenting a government action – just a personal one that doesn't really fit the dilemma.

If I may be so bold as to suggest – boil down what the options *do* before you write the text to make them do it. Take a look at what they do, and ask if it is indeed a government action worthy of an option. "Tell your brother to only subscribe to what he really wants" isn't a government action. "Share your streaming password with your niece" isn't a government action. Things that might be government actions could be "Mandate that no more than X% of a person's income may be spent on entertainment" or "Require that all streaming services permit use of a single account for all members of a subscriber's extended family." Do the same with the dilemma: why is this dilemma government business? Your brother complaining about "excessive entertainment fees" is something he would do, but somewhere in here we probably need some reason to believe there might be a problem. After all, we're told that he is subscribing to literally dozens of services. Of course that's expensive – these are luxury products. Is there something about his complaint that gets at the experience of the average citizen, and represents a concern your government needs to address?

[DRAFT] Cut cords, strike chords

[DRAFT] Cut cords, strike chords

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