This page is about political games - as in, games where discussion and alliance-making between players is an important aspect of the game. This is not about topical politics in games. I will not write about topical politics in games.
Political Games are many-player games where players can target other arbitrary players and significantly affect their gamestate, whether it be through the game’s mechanics themselves or discussion with the other players. Most, if not all political games can be reduced to the Chip-Taking Game.
Classic games tend to have little to no political elements, possibly because they’re “evolved out” of games throughout the years.1
Firstly we’ll see that Political games must be many-player: In a single faction games there’s no other group to politik with, and in 1v1 games there is nothing to be gained from teaming up with your only opponent. For an alliance to be formed, there must be at least three different factions competing for supremacy.
Secondly we’ll think of many-player games where players cannot target specific players, and notice how those games are not political. Consider a footrace: at least 12 different players competing, yet intervening with other players is explicitly disallowed, and so “alliances” matter not to the final result of the game. While it is possible to affect other people’s gamestate in racing games like Mario Kart, you can only affect whoever’s in extremely close proximity to yourself, and targeting someone specific is a nightmare, so the game remains non-political. However, Mario Kart’s balloon mode (where you can run down after specific people) is incredibly political despite being fundamentally the same game engine.
Knowledge of the game state is not required for a game to be political, as noticed in games like Mafia or Werewolf where all the players’ identities are hidden (and so the victors are impossible to determine) yet politics are an incredibly central part.
Political elements, if not added with great care, can overshadow all other gameplay elements in terms of effect on the final results. This is noticeable in chip-taking-reducible games, where any player with a noticeable lead tends to be “hunted down” by the rest of the players regardless of whether it is in their best interest (as sometimes targeting the leader reduces your own chances of victory1).