An idea for a game

Miscellaneous General
1

In response to the criticism that every version of SimCity involves being a micro-managing statist, Maxis published “SimCity Societies,”

The game was very poorly developed and doesn’t really accomplish what it set out to do – allowing players to have the option of running a free market society or a socialist society.

Some people have said that it would be impossible to have any market simulation, because such a game wouldn’t involve any input from the player.

So, instead I had a novel idea:

Instead of starting from scratch, why not create “Sim-Anarchism,” where, instead of starting with a blank map and building a city, you start with a pre-made city with a corrupt, inefficient government and the goal is to slowly deregulate the economy more and more.

Obviously, this would pose a challenge: Too much de-regulation all at once and the people (if they’re like most people) are bound to flip out and kick you out of public office. Too little de-regulation and your nation would end up piling up debt, until you’re run into the ground, economically.

Different types of regulation would also have different effects. For instance – only reducing taxes on one aspect of the economy would obviously make that industry have a competitive edge over others. In order to help you stay in office or address certain economic problems, you could also take bribes.

The goal is to steadily decrease the size of government until it’s eventually gone.

The simulation could be based upon Austrian economics.

What do you think?

2

Yes, Austrian economics can play an important role in such a game. Two works that come to mind are Time Will Run Back by Hazlitt and “How and How Not to de-socialize” by Rothbard. These would be quite helpful in our endeavor.

Are we starting off with a totalitarian state, socialist-democrat government, or what? Before introducing market reforms, we must first give the characteristics to our initial government.

This is a fun idea!

3

“Running” a free market society is contradictory to the very idea of a market. The difficulty consists in replicating an essentially multi-player situation on a single player game. The task is really insurmountable, given that a market involves the actions of rational agents, different conceptually from those of a computer script (short of true AI).

A market game must implement a few necessary mechanisms:

  1. Raw materials

  2. Production processes and intermediary goods

  3. Finished goods

  4. Persistent, multi-player world

There are already a handful of these games, one that I can recommend is Eve Online.

4

Actually, Majesty is a pretty laissez-faire sim. It still involves running a Kingdom, but the way you get heroes to do things is by giving them pecuniary incentives. Fun game too.

5

I’m not suggesting running a market. I’m suggesting a game where the market runs itself, but is grossly hampered by the government. You, a politician, have to slowly work to eliminate the government, without angering the public.

And I don’t think you’d necessarily need a multi-player world to do it.

If you simplify the market and government – not including EVERY possible aspect of both, you could develop an AI that is subjectively rational.

For instance, in the sim games, Sims are essentially just mindless automatons, as I said, indistinguishable from the rest.

A game built upon praxeological grounds could create artificial individuals like the following:

Instead of just having the economy be represented simply by a few macroeconomic factors (bulk resources – food, gold, etc..), as in a number of RTS games, you could instead create a variety of resources. These resources would be developed and traded by individual units, with no input from the player at all. All the government can do is take away resources and give them to others. Every time the population increases and an individual needs to be created, they would have two essential statistics:

*Their ability to produce a certain good

*Their ordinal preferences for other goods

…which would be generated at random.

They would produce the good they’re subjectively good at producing and trade for their subjectively desired goods (at their own subjective elasticity).

The amount of goods and kinds of goods produced would thus depend on the individual units trading. The only difference between that and reality is the complexity. In real life, there are countless goods, countless skills, and people are very unique.

This way, you’ve got a pretty basic simulation of the Austrian theories of economics. It’s not a perfect simulation, but still good enough to be fun and interesting.

EDIT:

What I described above seems pretty similar to Majesty, except no anarchism.

6

I haven’t played SimCity since I was in grade school, long before hearing anything about Austrian Economics, so I hadn’t really thought of that. But you’re right: your job was really to micromanage a city where a population couldn’t do a single thing for itself.

Accidental plane crash? Better hope you built a fire station close enough or the fires will burn for years.

Traffic congestion and no one is using side streets? Better eliminate the roads entirely and build a railroad or your assistant will barge into your office every 5 minutes warning you about the problem.

Also, your ability as mayor to cause disasters and then come to the rescue of your town by putting out the fires and rebuilding damaged buildings is a bit unsettling. I typically remember getting bored with a town and sending in Godzilla to give me some entertainment. For every fire he set, I caused much more damage by destroying all of the adjacent buildings in order to put out the fires and rebuild. So much for my governing abilities!

I think I like your idea for a new game much better.

7

Doesn’t being God make you feel like a dick? Victoria: Revolutions by Paradox Interactive can simulate this good. While it is a war game (What can I say, Iike military history), one of the main aspects is creating a sustainable economy and promoting the growth of Capitalists through lower taxation, which they go and build factories and railroads on their own for you. Original Victoria is “statist” though because the player is in complete control. But, control is fun in a fake world that doesn’t affect anybody.