Welcome to Gaia! ::

One cannot deny the focus of online gaming today when we move past the superfluous novelities around it. WoW, Eve, Second Life, our own Gaia and many more can simply be boiled down into one lone prospect--the exercise of markets, 'free' enterprise and wage-slavery itself. One slaves away at monster hunting, inane postings, the buying and selling of 'rare' items and even supplying one's own money in order to by fictious items in a virtual world.

But what if the goals of the virtual world moved away from the individual and more toward a collective society?

We live in dark times, my friends. The masses we're so enamoured with are easily willing to spill out the mantra "Marxism is only good in theory" because they're confronted with the historical context of the corrupt and totalitarian "communist" governments and the capitalist's media spin on what constitutes as human behavior. Because so fewer people have time to read books and the corporate control on nearly every other outlet, people have difficult phathoming exactly what a Socialist or Anarchist society good achieve.

Enter Collectivism: The Online Game.

The purpose of such a project is simple in its own right: to allow people to partipate and enjoy working in and for a collectived society.

You play an individual of your own creation living in one of three societies: a democractic top-down socialist government a la Leninism, a democratic worker's councils economy/government a la Luxembourgism, or an Anarcho-Syndicist society. Leninism would be entirely government controlled, the Anarchist society would be controlled be loosely affilated unions and Luxembourgism would be a half-way ground for both.

Your character would be resposible for retaining his own well being (shown as Sim-esque stats like 'hunger', 'thrist', 'rest' 'health', etc) as well as the entire well-being of a given society by going to work in the factory, fields or labs (which we can fun-ified via mini-games) and by participating in their selected societies decision making process.

Players would start on an Earth-esque planet with 1900's technology. Each spot on the planet would have from 10 to 25 resources, some of which would have to be unlocked. People would use these resources to build factories/refineries, power plants, labs, transportation, hospitals, amusements and on some servers, militaries.

The factories would be used to create 100+ "goods" that can be used to help out an individual and the society, providing them with basic needs and luxury items, weapons and factory equipment.

Power plants would be used to help keep a society electricifed, adding what goes in in factories, labs, hospitals, etc.

The Labs (which use both resources and goods) would aid in helping society move along by unlocking new resources, factories, transportations, goods, medical equipment, amusements and weapons.

Transportation would be used to help the flow of goods and people.

Hospitals are obviously around to help the sick or dying. Yes, to make the game more real, your character would have to die at some point, but considering the length of the average game, you wouldn't have to make more than four.

Amusements are interesting, since they require something a touch different. Amusements take away from the society and unlike the rest of game, the only reward would be emotional (meaning you don't gain anything out of it via stats). Amusements would start out simple, such as board games, a silent Gaia-esque movie theatre or a radio station which people could operate and it would move onto more creative and interesting amusements such as the Youtube-esque "TV", a gaming system, a video system to watch movies at home... Amusements can also be places to hang out too, like a resturant, bar, coffee shop, park, a stage theatre for plays, club houses for something simular to guilds and a place for private roleplaying.

The Military is another story entirely. If you were on a server that put 'war' into the equation, then you'd have to deal either other societies aimed at destroying your own and/or an NPC society aimed at destroying your society.

Governments are the hardest thing to factor in though, especially in the case of anarchists, which DOESN'T have said government. For Anarchists and Luxembourgists, establishments could send out 'requests' for x number of resources which would have to be decided upon by the factory/farm. For nationalized collectives, the order would come from the top on what to produce and where it goes to. Of course, most of the time people will be in charge of their respected governments/unions.

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So, what do you think? What problems do you see? Would it be fun? Engaging? Is it just too complex for our technology, even if it was 2D? Heck, would you want to play such a game? Would non-political or even pro-capitalism gamers want to? Your thoughts and feelings, comrades!

It's an amusing concept, to be sure. I don't spend much time using MMORPGs or virtual reality these days, but one of my major issues with those sorts of games always was that there really seemed to be no point to them aside from getting ahead monetarily or in terms of levels, and not enough focus was put on creating, say, lasting friendships. Too much economics, not enough relaxation... It would be interesting to have a game that would focus on more than just getting gold.

Hmm, the Idea of wage slavery in a game is rather odd, if one is talking about monster hunting...

While one can make amusing games which describe the world as it really is, there is really no point...

Now you seek to get the 'masses', well, good for you. Go get that ever ellusive mass. I, a marxist will instead look toward the working class, not in its capacity as 'gamer', but in the capacity of proletarian. If you just want to get people to agree that something should be done, go ahead, you might raise the conciousness of one or two people, most would just play the game. If you want to change the world, however, one must look to the proletariat as it labours: at the site of work. Workers need to be organised, in the real world, against theyir real opponents, the bourgeoisie, not in an imaginary world, against imaginary opponents, the other players.

In fact, what all such gaming tends to do is atomise the gamer: it is them against all others: alliances come and go, but winning is always winning. So, organising such a game would more than likely just contribute further to the problem you complain at WoW for...