I drafted the initial rulebook in 2019. The first goal was to simulate the process of writing laws. Every political simulator was focused being or becoming president. There was an entire branch of government being neglected… and a market opportunity to create.
The second goal was to build a game simple enough to scale well for large numbers (10+) of people. The third goal was to create a new twist on social deduction. Most games divide players into teams and some level of shared information and secret powers. But what if everyone had no information and no powers? That’s the game I wanted to play.

In May 2020, I submitted Legislation: The Game to the Pittsburgh Tech Council’s Civic Hackathon, in an effort to promote civic education. It didn’t win, but helped provide enough steam to get it off the ground. I spent the next couple months building out the codebase, play-testing and talking with educational researchers and potential partners in education and online games.

In February 2021, I launched the site plus this blog, and completed the first bunch of complete playthroughs. And the rest is… well, history in progress.