A game about gift, debt, egalitarian and hierarchical societal modes. – [Author’s description]
Meritocratic Individualism (hplus)
Posted by Stephen
on April 14, 2012
A game about gift, debt, egalitarian and hierarchical societal modes. – [Author’s description]
I suspect I may have been playing this exactly backwards, but I did a very good job playing exactly backwards so the sense of accomplishment outweighs the sense of remorse. Unfortunately, there seems to be no one left to help me gather the harvest so there’s a lot of rot in my fields. But I’m not so concerned: winter seems to tidy that up and summer apparently forgives all sins.
Assuming I’m reading it properly, an especially interesting thing about this game is that it’s easy — and fairly entertaining — to play it wrongly, and it’s hard — and fairly dull — to insure a nice outcome for everybody.
Someone should probably run off and make a Zynga-style social farming sim with this sort of antagonistic gifting mechanic grafted on.