Capitalism MMORPG

Mark Wallace wrote a brilliant article in The Escapist, describing a fictional MMORPG in which each player plays a nation and can chose different forms of government and economic systems, and then see how the interaction with the other countries works out.

The article is so well written, that I actually would have liked to play that game, even if it doesn't really exist, and the fictional player of the game in the story loses his job over it. And it made me wonder why there are so few games nowadays in which you play a country. There are lots of games where you play an individual, still many where you play a group, and some where you play a complete galactic empire. The few games where you play a country are about conquering other countries with an army, and ending up with an empire.

The answer is probably that there aren't many people around who like both economics and games. Europe, especially Germany, produces more economic simulation games than the rest of the world together. But the majority of players in the world prefer managing guns and armies to managing tariffs and tax rates.
- posted by Tobold @ 3:06 PM Permanent Link