I am in love with Oiligarchy, Molleindustria's latest "serious game" that puts the player in the role of an oil tycoon who, if successful, will somewhat indirectly destroy the world. Molleindustria's most famous game before this was the McDonald's Game which I thought was informative, but didn't function quite as well on the game side of things. I consider Oiligarchy to be the best mix of education and game I have ever seen, with many points to be learned and/or earned (a bit cheesy, I know).
So, you're an oil tycoon. At the start of the game in 1946 (each turn is a year) you have available to you a small strip of Texas, where you can search and mine for oil to your heart's content, no regulation. It's not too difficult to start turning a profit, but the world quickly starts to want more and more oil, forcing you to find new areas of the world to drill, baby, drill. Each other area in the game (Alaska, Nigeria, Venezuela, and Iraq) has its own problems that discourage drilling. To overcome most of those issues, you need to control the United States government.
Elections happen at the end of every decade. You are given a quick mini-game of sorts in which the "Donkey Party" races the "Elephant Party" to the presidency, with their popular support at the times and your money donations determining who will win. The parties have no actual difference inside the game, so you quickly figure out that party loyalty will get you absolutely nowhere. In fact, for real control and keeping down the growing environmentalist movement, you have to keep donating to the loser to some extent as well. Anyway, enough money for the winning party, and you'll receive access to the "secret room" below the Capitol Building that will allow you to pass special measures to help your own profits, like a whole event chain leading to the Gulf Wars.
A successful gamer will follow history exactly up to the present day. After that, oil peaks as supplies suddenly begin to dry up, and the game becomes much more satirical. Humongous catastrophes begin to strike the economy and the people start to reform absolutely everything in their lives in an attempt to get by, but if you successfully kept them hooked on oil and kept the government in your hands, then the game will (SPOILER ALERT) end with the Mutually Assured Destruction of the Earth over your oil. Other endings are possible if the gamer takes different approaches, but according to the victory matrix the game sets out, if you win, the world ends.
The game is very fun to play overall, even though it's (perhaps realistically) stupid-easy to turn a profit. Keeping the government in your control is a bit more difficult, especially as popular opinion becomes more and more skewed towards environmentalism, eventually leading them to vote out the incumbent party by huge margins over and over as they realize whichever president they elected was just as oiled as the last guy. Anyway, it's a brilliant game, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone. Experience it yourself.
3 comments:
But it has such an obvious agenda, that it tips it's hand. The "voice" of the game creator is screaming in your ear the whole time it is played. If you are a zealot with a particular political bent, this might pass for fun, but for real gamers it's just noise.
Besides what happens after oil peaks, the game basically only replays what happened in real life if you're successful. I don't think you have to be a "zealot" to understand how destructive it is to have your government fighting for oil. Also, it would be normal for it not to appear fun to someone who disagrees, just as an editorial proclaiming "nature can suck it" wouldn't be fun for environmentalists to read. The game provides a procedural rhetoric. It's not meant to be an unbiased simulation, though in my opinion, it represents truth very well.
I think PoliticaObscura is appealing to that kind of faux-objectivity made famous by Fox News ("fair and balanced") and Intelligent Design, which attempt to portray anything that could slightly resemble an opinion as "one-sided".
Nevermind that any statement that isn't utterly neutral (is there such a thing?) would obviously favor one viewpoint and to point this out is almost a tautology. Pleading to present the "opposite" viewpoint in this case (i'm not sure what it would be--"oil has *not* defined the international politics of the 20th and 21st centuries, and it actually is just a totally harmless inanimate commodity?") is little more than saying that you disagree with the viewpoint presented. I really don't see anything wrong with a satire that grins through its teeth.
Anyway, PoliticaObscura will forever float in "pop politics" limbo with $5 phrases like "obvious agenda". I suppose, according to P.O., we have to make our points by accident, otherwise we are being dishonest.
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