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OIKOS

Don't play with food

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The website is accessed at https://capital-1-z313.onrender.com/  . 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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OIKOS includes three economic games: Capital, Anarchy, and Plan. 

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

• • The player negotiates and contrats with other players, makes deliveries, and produces.

  • The administrator starts the game, adds players, and manages the phases of each session.

In all three games, 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.

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Game 1: Capital

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

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.

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.

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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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Administrator

The administrator starts the game, adds players, and manages the phases of each session.

Starting a Game

• The administrator will log in to the platform;

• On the page that opens, they will click on "Create new room";

• On the next page, they will enter a name and password for the room, and the administrator console will open;

• Multiple rooms can be opened to run several games simultaneously.

Adding Players

• • In the "Player Management" section of the console, the administrator must add the players:

1. Either by adding them one by one, with their name, password, and the wheat and iron they will have at the start of the game;

2. Or from a spreadsheet that contains the following fields in the first row: name, password, wheat, iron.

• Once the players are added, the administrator will inform them of the room name, their username, and their password (by email, WhatsApp, or any other means), and they will be able to participate in the game.

Managing Game Phases

• • When a room is created, the game will have the delivery phase open;

  • The administrator can determine the transition to the next phase with the "Close Deliveries and Open Production" button;

  • This button will change to "Close Production and New Session" to allow the player to move to the next phase;

  • It will then change to "Open Deliveries" so the administrator can continue with a new session when desired;

Game Progress Information

• • The other buttons inform the administrator of other aspects of the game, such as the amounts of wheat and iron for each player or the deliveries that have been made.

  • They also allow the information to be downloaded for analysis.

Validating Contracts

• The administrator will inform the players of the procedure for validating contracts.

Game Variants

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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Player

The player trades with other players, makes deliveries, and produces.

Entering the Game

• • Each player enters the platform;

  • They enter the room name, their username, and their password, which the administrator will have given them, and they will access the Player console:

Game Progress Information

• The first section of the console displays the room the game is in, the amounts of wheat and iron the player has, the number of deliveries made, and the stage the session is in: deliveries or production.

• The third section of the console is a calculator that shows the production that would be obtained with certain amounts of wheat and iron. Using the calculator is essential when determining whether or not a trade is worthwhile and also when deciding on a production.

• The fourth section displays the deliveries the player has made or received in the current session.

• The bottom buttons on the console show the amounts of wheat and iron available to all players, as well as all deliveries made during the session.

Deliveries

• Negotiating with other players is an essential part of the game. This can be done in person, via email, WhatsApp, forums, etc.

• If deliveries are enabled in the game, a section will be available to send wheat and/or iron to other players.

Contracts

• Players can sign contracts to form companies or cooperatives, and to guarantee deliveries.

Production

• If production is enabled in the game, a section will allow you to choose one of three production processes.

• Once a process is chosen, it cannot be changed. If no process is selected, the third process is assumed to be used.

• Players cannot access information about the processes selected by other players.

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Contracts

In Capital and Anarchy, contracts can be signed with up to 4 players.

For contracts to be valid, they must be submitted to the administrator through the means established by the administrator for validation (e.g., identified email addresses).

Delivery Contracts

• Contracts will specify the names of the participants, the amounts delivered by each, and the sessions in which the deliveries will be made; deliveries in future sessions can be agreed upon.

• A player who breaches a contract loses the game.

• Without a contract, it is permitted to not make a delivery.

• If a contract specifies deliveries in a session after the final one, subsequent deliveries are ignored.

Company and Cooperative Contracts

• A company or cooperative can be formed with a contract that specifies the names of the participants (up to 4) and the name of the company or cooperative.

• Participants will continue playing as before, making deliveries and entering into contracts individually, but:

1. When measuring goal achievement, the wheat and iron available to all participants in each session will be considered to be divided equally among them.

   • • For example, in Capital, the wheat and iron of all participants in the last session will be considered to be divided equally among them.

2. Participants will be jointly and severally liable for delivery contracts signed by any member.

• A player may only belong to one company or cooperative.

• A company or cooperative may not be dissolved except by unanimous agreement of the participants.

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OIKOS is currently at version 0,2. 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.

I will not be able to continue developing the application for a while, but it can be downloaded if anyone wants to continue it. It is almost finished, but, for example, it still needs a limit on the number of submissions. 

OIKOS was developed as an experiment to empirically test economic theory and as a teaching tool. OIKOS games can be used freely, without registration or participation in the research, but we greatly appreciate any contribution, such as sending the results of a game, and we will acknowledge it in any resulting publications if you wish. The game was inspired by Alfons Barceló, «Juegos de simulación con modelos económicos reproductivos», El Trimestre Económico, Vol. 56, Nº 223(3) (July-September 1989), and the first results of the test were presented with 18 co-authors at the 10th Input-Output Analysis Conference (2024). For more information or to collaborate on the project, please contact us at mmuinosp@ucm.es .

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OIKOS, Don't play with food © 2025 by Manuel Muiños is licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0

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