In Spinnortality, you play the CEO of a fledgling cyberpunk MegaCorp, chosen by the enigmatic Board of Directors to guide the company to immortality and world domination. You begin by researching and deploying products to the various nations of the Earth, but as your wealth grows, you'll find yourself engaging in politics, purchasing media outlets, inciting riots, sponsoring rebellions, and creating mutated humans to serve in your company. Hanging over your future is the specter of death for you and the members of the Board - but with enough research, you can get around that too.
This game provides examples of:
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Advanced AI can trigger "The Event" and try to Take Over the World. Unusually, a case could be made that its victory would be a good thing, and part of its method of taking over is to help the nations of the world grow prosperous.
- Bread and Circuses: The Consumerism ending allows you to control humanity not through open dominion, but through guided democracy, control of the media, and bribed politicians.
- Corrupt Politician: Democratic or dictatorial, all of the political parties in the game can be influenced by corporate money to pass pro-corporate laws. The Reform Agendas are partly about fixing this problem - should you choose to take them.
- The Empire: The Imperial victory condition is to control the world through one-party dictatorships, paid off by your company and backed by corporate armies, propaganda and surveillance.
- Evil Pays Better: You're a big business, this is to be expected. Many events allow for nasty options like Organ Theft from sentient human clones or forbidding mutants to reproduce through copyright laws, and these decisions tend to pay better than not doing so.
- Executive Meddling: In-Universe, the Board sets you a series of mission objectives, which may not have anything to do with your actual plans. If they're really screwing up, though, you can tell them to pike off - just remember that if you fight with them too much, they can fire you for it. On the positive side, completing tasks for the Board gets you the Authority needed to set Agendas that can lead towards victory.
- Fantastic Racism: Mutants face social ostracism worldwide at first, as well as laws that deem corporate creations to be property rather than people. The Xenophobia/Multiculturalism slider affects just how racist each region is.
- Full-Circle Revolution: After a government collapses into anarchy, there's no guarantee that the government that replaces it won't be exactly the same kind of government with a new name attached.
- Job-Stealing Robot: Your employees and the public at large don't like it if you recruit too many AI workers, who never go on strike or demand higher wages.
- Kill Sat: You can build a giant laser on the moon to wipe out countries, for all your supervillainous needs.
- MegaCorp: You, your rivals, and anyone holding shares in a corpornation. Big money-generating corporations capable of overthrowing nations.
- Multiple Endings: One for each method of taking over the world, one for walking away, one for letting an AI take over, and one for burning the world down in the climate change crisis.
- Mutants: The products of genetic engineering are generally referred to as mutants. At first, mutants are effectively corporate property, but as genetic engineering becomes more common, augmented humans are going to want human rights - which many normal humans don't like.
- N.G.O. Superpower: You're a MegaCorp, so of course you're this. The Black Ops and Aid agenda lines let your company further embody this trope: Black Ops builds your corporation's military power, while Aid is about developing your corporation's humanitarian aid capabilities and influencing the world through aid contracts.
- One Nation Under Copyright: Called a "corpornation" in this game, these are nations whose government is a corporation and are controlled by the plurality shareholder. The New World ending requires you to take over most of the world this way.
- People's Republic of Tyranny: It's not uncommon to have a one-party state governed by the "Liberal Party" or "Democratic Party."
- The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: Rebels against a one-party state pretty much do nothing but smash and burn stuff in the hopes of throwing their country into civil war. There's no guarantee that what rises from the anarchy won't be another one-party state.
- Slave to PR: You want to keep an eye on your public opinion. The Board doesn't like CEOs who are too obviously amoral.
- The Starscream:
- You can use this as a tool when dealing with the Board, by holding transfer bodies hostage as a tool to gain Authority - a quick way to win the game.
- In the Imperial Victory, you use your control of the world to depose the Board and become the only emperor.
- Take Over the World: Your objective, in several different flavors depending on what Agendas you pursue.
- Imperial Victory: By uniting the world through one-party states, you establish a traditional empire under your command.
- Consumerism Victory: You maintain a facade of democracy across the world, and instead control humanity through money and the media, programmed by the latter not to realize who's pulling the strings.
- New World Victory: Nations fade away as the world is reshaped into a new vision of corporate control, where the 1% live in luxury while the rest of the world are trapped in the machine.
- The Humane Victory subverts this, as you don't end up taking over the world. You instead build a better one and dissolve your corporation, as megacorporations in general fade from the Earth.
- Villain Protagonist: You're the head of a MegaCorp. At best, you're a Well-Intentioned Extremist; even if you really want to make the world a better place, that costs money and requires you to bribe politicians and engage in espionage.
