Capital;

Don't play with food

An improved version is available but is currently in testing at https://oikos-qsis.onrender.com/indexeng.html

It is a platform under development, and the free server it is hosted on sometimes takes a while to start up and restarts without saving data if it is not used for 15 minutes.

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We simulate capitalism in its most basic form: agents who exchange and produce to maximize their profit.

In the game, each player begins with a certain amount of wheat and iron.

The games are played in successive sessions, with two phases in each:

Phase 1: Deliveries: Each player can make up to five deliveries of their wheat and/or iron to other players.

Phase 2: Production: Each player chooses a single production process, which can be different each session:

Process 1: Uses 280 wheat and 12 iron to produce 575 wheat (or equivalent ratio).
Process 2: Uses 120 wheat and 8 iron to produce 20 iron (or equivalent ratio).
Process 3: The available materials are halved.

All materials are consumed in the processes, and only the resulting product is available after production.

The delivery and production cycle repeats in each session.

The winner is the player who obtains the greatest amount of wheat·a + iron·b in the final session, where a and b are set by the administrator and are not made public until the end of the game. The final session is also not announced.

Contracts can be signed to guarantee deliveries and form companies.

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In the games, you can act as an administrator and/or a player.

- The administrator starts the game, adds players, and manages the phases of each session.
- The player negotiates and contrats with other players, makes deliveries, and produces.

Administrator

The administrator starts the game by opening a room. Multiple rooms can be opened to run several games simultaneously.

In the administrator console, players must be added—either individually or via a spreadsheet. Once added, the administrator provides them with the room name, username, and password (via email, WhatsApp, or any other method) so they can participate. The administrator also explains the procedure for contract validation.

When a room is created, the game begins in a paused state. The administrator controls the transition to the game's subsequent phases: deliveries and production.

Other sections of the console provide information on various aspects of the game, such as each player's wheat and iron quantities or the deliveries that have been made. It also allows for editing player data—for instance, modifying the amount of wheat and iron a player holds—and downloading information for analysis.

Player

Each player enters the room using the username and password provided by the administrator. The player console displays the current room, the session phase (paused, deliveries, or production), the players' available wheat and iron quantities, and the deliveries made so far. It also shows production and delivery data from previous sessions.

The console includes a calculator that shows the production output achievable with specific quantities of wheat and iron. Using this calculator is essential when deciding whether to trade or determining production choices.

Negotiating with other players is a key part of the game. Negotiations can take place in person, via email, WhatsApp, forums, etc. When the delivery phase is open, a section becomes available for transferring wheat and/or iron to other players. Players can sign contracts to form companies or cooperatives and to guarantee deliveries.

If production is enabled in the game, players can access a section that allows them to choose one of three production processes. Once a process is selected, it cannot be changed. If no selection is made, the third process is used by default.

Contracts

In Capital and Anarchy, contracts can be signed with up to 4 players. To be effective, contracts must be delivered to the administrator using the means they establish for validation (identified emails, for example).

Delivery contracts:

Contracts specify the participants’ names, the quantities delivered by each one, and the sessions in which deliveries will take place; future-session deliveries may be agreed. If a contract specifies deliveries in a session later than the one that turns out to be the last, later deliveries are ignored.

Without a contract, it is allowed not to reciprocate a delivery.

Company and cooperative contracts:

A company or cooperative may be formed through a contract specifying the names of the participants (up to 4) and the company or cooperative name. Participants continue playing as before, making deliveries and contracts individually, but:

The wheat and iron of all participants in the last session are considered divided equally among them.
Participants are jointly liable for delivery contracts signed by any member.

A player may belong to only one company or cooperative.

A company or cooperative may not be dissolved except by unanimous agreement of the participants or as otherwise provided by the founding contract.

Game Variants

Game 2: Anarchy

We simulate a market with different objectives: agents who exchange and produce to maximize their individual goals.

The objectives can be set:

The same for all players: for example, the winner is the one who achieves the highest sum of their wheat consumption across all sessions.
Different for each player: then a player is not compared to the others but to themselves, in comparison to other games or previous sessions.

Contracts can be signed to guarantee deliveries and form cooperatives.

Game 3: Plan

We simulate extreme planning: the planner allocates resources without market to achieve a given objective.

Deliveries are made between the production processes under the control of each planner, without negotiation or exchanges with other planners. Each planner must have an independent room with three virtual players so they can use all the production processes.

The objective can be defined as in Capital or Anarchy.

The games can be compared, for example, Plan versus Capital, so that some players play Capital while the rest try to beat their results with Plan. They can also be combined, so that some players play Anarchy while others play Capital, with everyone trading in the same market.

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We recommend playing Capital first with the default variants. However, the administrator can:

Define different starting resources for each player (by default, everyone starts with 1000 wheat and 1000 iron).
Modify the information available to players (by default, all deliveries and quantities are known, but not the last session, nor the a and b values in Capital).
Determine the maximum number of deliveries (by default, 5 or fewer).
Modify contract terms to allow for compensation for lost profits (by default, whoever breaches the contract loses).
Modify company conditions (by default, companies must have 4 or fewer members).
Establish a redistribution of a percentage of wheat and iron to be shared among all players (by default, no redistribution).

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More features will be added soon, and versions geared towards online play will be available, although this is already possible.

The free server where the application is hosted sometimes takes a while to start up and restarts without saving data if it is not used for 15 minutes; other servers would save the data. It can also be used with a personal computer as a server, for example, by installing Node.js to run the application and ngrok to access it online.

Capital is an experiment for testing economic theory and also a teaching tool. It can be used freely, without registration or participation in the research; however, we would greatly appreciate permission to analyze the results and would acknowledge this in resulting publications if desired. The game was inspired by Alfons Barceló, «Juegos de simulación con modelos económicos reproductivos», El Trimestre Económico, Vol. 56, Nº 223(3) (1989), and the first results of the research were presented at the X Jornadas de Análisis Input-Output (2024) and at the 32nd International Input-Output Association Conference (2026). For more information or to collaborate on the project, please contact us at mmuinosp@ucm.es .

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