I have experience with all of the PDX grand strategy games, and despite their monetization policy, I’ve enjoyed my time in all of them.
I’ve been playing Victoria 3 and I’m really enjoying it. I do still prefer Victoria 2, but I’m sure with more content eventually 3 will overtake 2 for me. I love looking at spreadsheets in general, so the sheer amount of information presented in Victoria 3 is fun to poke through. I find it very fun and satisfying to try to make my country as rich as possible and become my region’s economy capital.
But that’s the thing, capitalism as a concept literally only makes sense in video games. If there were no stakes in real life, it would be fun to compete against my friends to see who could make the most money. Almost like a high score on a leaderboard.
For the bourgeoisie, capitalism in real life is a game. There are no stakes for them, just like there aren’t any for anyone in Victoria 3. The proletariat are not players in the game, the proletariat are the pieces with which the game is played through the exploitation of their labor.
I know this isn’t a new concept, but I just found it funny to recognize how much I enjoy the competitive aspect of capitalism as a Marxist and wanted to share.
I have a challenge for you: next V3 game you play, try using your standard of living as your score. The game becomes DRASTICALLY different once you do that. Do you stick to laissez-faire, which is generating stupid numbers of free buildings while leaving everyone but the capitalists in the dirt, or do you rip the scaffolding off and see if your economy has grown enough to support everyone?
Playing this way is less a line-goes-up simulator, and becomes more of a game about timing and plate-balancing.
I did exactly that the first time i played in Vic 3, since i remember how stupid the laissez faire was in Vic2. It turned out surprisingly fine and fun.
Vic 3 is so much superior comparing to Vic 2 as no PDX game ever was compared to its predecessor.