People with the Intel integrated video cards 82815 and 82810E have experienced the following problems with The Political Machine:
1) With version 1.0 and 1.01, they get a Failed to Initialize Display error.
2) With version 1.02, they can load Political Machine, but there is no text.
We reported this issue to Intel, and received a response back from their engineers. As the drivers for these cards were created before DirectX 9.0 came out, not all features of DirectX 9 (including the use of TrueType fonts) are supported. Intel has informed us that these drivers will not be updated.
We are sorry, but without driver support there isn't anything that we can do.
Stardock's return policy is that if you ordered the game from us and you cannot run it after technical support has determined that your system will not support it, we will give you a full refund. So to get a refund, e-mail support@stardock.com with a copy of your DXDiag.exe report (for verification purposes).
If you bought The Political Machine at store, you will have to contact the store regarding its return policies. Make sure that you make it clear that it will not run on your system, as this is often key to their return policies. If they won't take it back, there are stores like Game Stop that deal with used games.
You will probably continue to have issues like this with new games as they come out. If you want to upgrade your video card to extend the life of your computer a few more years before you want to upgrade it, you can get a pretty decent video card at www.pricewatch.com for about $50, which you should be able to install without having to uninstall the integrated card.
Computer stores like Comp USA often have upgrade centers that can help you if you aren't familiar with upgrading your computer's hardware.
Again, I'm very sorry that we are not able to do more for you.
--Cari Begle