I had two mayoral elections in 2025.
One of them was in my backyard. For much of the year, New York's local politics became a matter of national interest. It was a hot election cycle thanks to then-Mayor Eric Adams, an eccentric politician who spent years in office embroiled in scandal. Adams was vulnerable, and this created a power vacuum in the divided Democratic Party. It seemed almost inevitable that former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo would fill the gap, ahead of the sexual harassment allegations that forced him from office in 2021. That is until a young democratic socialist named Zoran Mamdani was able to successfully rally disaffected New Yorkers in a grassroots campaign story for the ages.
I had previously seen another mayoral race play out in Kaso-Machi. The consequences of this were not so global. The small Japanese village of Kaso-Machi was an example of a once thriving community that became a ghost town due to years of neglect by crooked politicians who did not have the people's best interests at heart. For years, there seemed to be no hope of removing Mayor Maeda from power—at least until an unlikely candidate became angry enough to take on the matter and express the city's frustrations.
You wouldn't hear about Kaso-Machi's election on the news because Kaso-Machi doesn't exist. This is a fictional setting in 2025. Promise Mascot Agency. Developed by Kaizen Game Works, the studio behind the 2020 cult hit. Paradise Killer, Promise Mascot Agency is an eclectic genre mixture that defies any simple description. This is an open world adventure. This is a truck driving game. This is a deck builder. This is a small business simulator. But above all, it is an example of life imitating art. His story about a group of costumed misfits trying to save the soul of their house took an unexpected turn. Promise Mascot Agency into one of the most relevant games of last year, now that the dust has settled. Despite its endless charm and silliness, there's a lot to be learned from a game that believes so wholeheartedly in the power of people.
Promise Mascot Agency does not begin with a political conflict; instead, it opens to the criminal. Michi works as a janitor for a yakuza family, earning him the nickname Janitor. After the financial scheme fails, Michie takes charge of his boss and goes into exile. As a result, he ends up in Kaso-Machi, a city that places a killing curse on the Yakuza people. He is doomed to wither away in a city that is itself in the process of dying.
At first, Michie is not particularly concerned about the city's problems. It's just a quiet hideout where he can help work off his boss's debt by running the local mascot agency, Promise. A bankrupt small business sends out its roster of mascots to events around town, whether it's a new business opening or a birthday party. By the time Michi arrives in town, the operation has already reached a dead end. The work dried up and most of the mascots fell apart. The exception is Pinky, a sentient finger with a serious anger problem. Together, Pinky and Michi try to rebuild the business into a comfortable mutual partnership.
It is through this relationship that Michie truly learns what is going on in the city. Mayor Maeda is a typical politician who talks a lot about investing in Kaso-Machi just to get votes but never follows through on his promises. His reign as mayor has led the village into decline, causing the town's dysfunctional residents to fall further into economic crisis while the rich get richer. This is enough to radicalize Michie, a man who sees nothing in common between the local government and the underworld he knows. What's a crooked mayor if not a yakuza boss, right?
Even though I was playing Promise Mascot Agency Even before the election was in full swing in my city, I couldn't help but see some parallels. In 2021, Eric Adams was elected as the 111th mayor of New York City, where I have lived for almost 15 years. All this happened just a few years ago, and yet everything seems blurry. Adams won the primaries (narrowly beating Catherine Garcia in ranked-choice voting), touting her history with the New York Police Department. None of his rivals could come up with a relevant business idea, allowing Adams to become the city's Democratic candidate, effectively winning the general election for New York City mayor. Then things got strange.
It's hard to explain how strange the Adams years were for those who don't live in New York. He had the energy of a local eccentric you might see in his wine cellar every morning. He was a constant source of strange sounds. Who can forget classic for example: “This is a place where every day when you wake up, you can see everything from a plane crashing into our shopping center to a person celebrating the opening of a new business.” The only time I saw him in person was when I attended an Xbox event aimed at local game developers, where Adams appeared as a surprise guest, beginning his speech to the crowd by saying, “I don't know anything about video games.”
It would have been a lot funnier if Adams hadn't had so much power. Under his leadership as mayor the cost of basic needs has increased all over the city. Adams did little to address this crisis, focusing instead on hire more NYPD officers and police crimes such as Fare evasion on the city metro. This in itself would have made Adams a controversial mayor, but his reputation was further tarnished by the scandals that followed him throughout his administration. Bribery allegations his final years as mayor stalled, ultimately weakening his chances of re-election in 2025. Many New Yorkers were fed up; they just didn't know how to deal with this rage.
Pinky finds herself in a similar position in Promise Mascot Agency. As the story progresses, Michie eventually asks Pinkie why she doesn't just run against the mayor in the upcoming election. Who, Pinky? A well-intentioned loudmouth with no political experience? This sounds like a waste of time considering Mayor Maeda's stranglehold on the city. In any case, one small discrepancy cannot change the situation.
The story will only take off when Pinkie gains the confidence to run for office and Michie becomes her campaign manager. In addition to sending talismans and collecting money to pay off the yakuza's debt, players are thrown another challenge as they travel around Kaso-Machi: pop-up debates. Pinky and Michie occasionally discover the mayor giving speeches throughout the city and are able to turn it into a campaign moment, exposing his hypocrisy while proposing a healthier vision for the city. What begins as a screwball comedy about incompetent mascots soon turns into a political drama about the unlikely attempt of the masses to give back a voice to the voiceless.
Like Kaso Machi, New York is a city of misfits.
Just a few months after I passed Promise Mascot AgencyThe election campaign in New York was in full swing. As we approached, the colors of 2021 began to emerge. Despite feeling like a weak candidate, Andrew Cuomo seemed poised to win the Democratic nomination without much opposition. Alternatives were limited, and no candidate was able to break through with a message strong enough to surpass Cuomo's name recognition. New York had to be run by another establishment politician with his own baggage at a time when the city needed change. No one could stop this inevitability—or so New Yorkers thought.
When I first saw the Zoran Mamdani campaign ad, I had no idea what I was looking at. I thought he Daily Show correspondent, based on his sense of humor and the quality of production of his videos. He spoke charismatically and said all the right things about New York's accessibility problem, but he felt like an unrealistic opportunist. Then his campaign posters started appearing in the windows of local businesses on my block. The streets were filled with agitators. Soon my mother, who lived in Massachusetts, asked me who he was. There was a real sense of momentum, fueled by a grassroots campaign strategy aimed at New Yorkers who didn't feel like city leaders were on top of their issues.
Like Kaso Machi, New York is a city of misfits. Iconic images of men in expensive suits strolling down Wall Street give only a narrow glimpse of the city's diverse makeup. It's something you only really see when you spend time living in the inner city with working people trying to make ends meet in a city where rental prices continue to push them further towards the outskirts. Survival seems to be getting harder and harder as wages fail to keep up with the rising cost of living. When I talk to out-of-town friends about rising economic barriers, they usually ask the same question: Why not just move? I offer a counterargument: why should people who care about the city move?
In all its fantastic whimsy, Promise Mascot Agency reminds me of home in a way few games set in New York City do. (See: this year Battlefield 6 and him ridiculous missions in Brooklyn.) This is the story of a community in crisis and at the mercy of a corrupt political machine that does not care about the needs of the people. Kaso-Machi feels hopeless. And yet, there are still a lot of weirdos here, ready to fight for the place they call home. One loud little finger inspires someone to speak out. The voices merge until the whisper turns into a roar. Together, the powerless will have the opportunity to move mountains, or at least stop political inevitability.
At the time of publication, Zohran Mamdani is officially the mayor of New York. It will be a long time before we know whether he can deliver on the big promises that carried him to victory, or whether he will become another in a long line of hated mayors of New York. History tells us to remain vigilant. But what makes this inauguration different from the last is that we now know who holds the power in this city. The agency is run by losers, and you'll have to answer to millions of Pinkies if you screw up.
