Neocolonialism is a strategiccomputer game in which players take over different regions all over the world. It is turn-based, and allows three to six players at once. It is produced by American indie studio Subaltern Games, and designed by Esther Alter.
As in Risk, the world is divided into a number of different regions that player try to dominate. Unlike Risk, however, the goal is not to occupy as many regions as possible, but to liquidate the votes you have purchased in regions in order to put as much money as possible in a Swiss Bank account. The game lasts for twelve turns. At the end of the twelfth turn, the player who has the most money in their Swiss Bank account is the winner. Also, Neocolonialism differs from Risk in that the map of the world is rotated 180° in relation to the most common world map orientation, putting the north at the bottom.
In the introductory tutorial, the learner is player is told, "You will learn the basics of how to ruin the world." Later the player is warned, "Neocolonialism is a game about finance bankers attempting to extract as much wealth from the world as possible."
Gameplay
The game is played using the mouse alone; the keyboard is not used except when chatting with other players in multi-player mode.
Each player starts with fifteen units of currency, symbolized by the character "¤". There are three phases to each turn: investment, policy, and IMF (International Monetary Fund).
Investment Phase – the players take turns buying and selling government votes. On bottom center of the page there are options to buy, sell, or pass. Each region has ten "units" of voters that can be purchased. The price for a voting unit of each region is listed in the bottom-right panel. This price can fluctuate; the price of region's voting unit is determined by the mines, factories, and free trade agreements that currently make that region profitable (or unprofitable).
Policy Phase – the players manipulate regional parliaments. A player can tell their voting units whom to vote for in an election; propose to build mines or factories, or to establish Free Trade Agreements; or vote on the proposals made by the other players. When three or more voting units have been purchased in a single region, the region elects a prime minister. The prime minister of a region can propose a policy, but the policy cannot go into effect until it is ratified in the next turn (and sometimes the other voters of the region will vote against it). A policy will not generate money for players until it has been ratified. A Prime Minister also has the option of liquidating their own votes and sending the money to a secret Swiss Bank account. A Prime Minister has a three-term limit before re-election.
IMF Phase – the players observe and/or intervene in response to tragedies in different regions. These events are usually problems with the economy (such as a mine collapse), and they often result in a reduced value for each unit of votes in that region.
At the beginning of each turn, players can receive money, which they use to buy votes. However, a player will only receive money if they has bought votes in a region that has a Prime Minister. In every region where there is a Prime Minister, a player will receive an amount of money equal to 1/3 of how much that player's voting units are currently worth in that region. For instance, if Player 1 owns six voting units in Europe, and voting units in Europe are currently worth nine units of currency, then Player 1 will receive eighteen (six times nine, divided by three) units of currency.
A player only receives money at the beginning of a turn if the player owns votes. Therefore, if a player liquidates their votes, that player loses a source of income.
The vote distribution for a region is listed in the bottom-left corner of the screen. On the top-right corner is the "data" button, which shows where other players have purchased their votes. When three or more of a region's voting units have been bought, and all of them belong to a single player, the player is called a "dictator" and the region becomes a "dictatorship". Sometimes in a dictatorship, a coup occurs. A coup overturns the government, and causes the former-dictator to lose all of their votes. The player's money is not returned or refunded after the coup.
At the end of twelve turns, the player with the most money in their Swiss Bank account is the winner. An announcement is made—"The world has been ruined"—followed by the players and their scores. The number of voting units left on the map is irrelevant to the final scores.
Development
Esther Alter first got the idea in September 2011, when she was playing German-style board games with friends in Boston. A friend jokingly wondered how to make a board game "based solely on the Marxist theory of neocolonialism—in which developed-world institutions control developing-world countries by purely financial means."[3] A few months later, Alter reported her progress on the game so far, on a blog, with her screenname "sampedestal": "Neocolonialism is a complex cocktail of background financial and political decisions conjured by a global potpourri of rich people. It's far more subtle than its ancestral waves of colonialism were."[4] Later that month she wrote:
I have designed Neocolonialism to make some pretty significant approximations of what in reality is an exceedingly complicated system. Each region, for example, has only ten sovereign bonds, which players can buy or sell. It is a simple system that in no way reflects how sovereign bonds function at a technical, legal level, but it does reflect how they are wielded by finance capitalists as a kind of tool or weapon against their peers (and also the rest of the world).[5]
During the stages of development, Alter showed the developing versions of the game to various people who were interested, and she received a great deal of feedback.[6] Esther Alter requested donations for supporting herself while working on the game, stating in a video, "If you donate, you'll have a chance to take over the whole world."[7]
A version called "Neocolonialism 1.0" was released in November 2013, and was made available for purchase online.[1]
Reception
During its development and through its release, Neocolonialism has received mostly positive reception. Alter herself observed:
I got overly positive feedback from the people that saw the game. Perhaps the most interesting conversation I had was with a lady about why I chose to make a serious game that forces players to be the antagonists rather than the 'good guys' in the world. My response, which I hadn't quite formulated until I was in the middle of saying it, was that first, the idea of someone playing 'hero' to save the world is a very problematic paradigm; and second, because playing 'hero' is mostly wishful thinking.[6]
Rock, Paper, Shotgun wrote that "it seems very smart" and predicted that a game will "spin out into a world of dodgy dealings, with players ... making secret deals to get themselves into power, collaborating in their political policies, and looking to exploit the cheap labour of the developing world as much as possible".[8]IndieGames.com called it a "[b]rilliantly nasty imperialism simulator".[9]PC Gamer called it "DEFCON with a bail-out instead of a bomb. Your job is to do as much harm as possible to the world, all in the name of your growing Swiss bank account ... If the life of a heartless hyper-capitalist monster appeals, you can back Neocolonialism at its Kickstarter page."[7]
Hardcore Gamer observed:
Grand Theft Auto may let you go nuts in a city or even a state, but for a truly large-scale bout of pure psychopathy you'll want to manipulate global markets. NeoColonialism puts you in the shoes of a banker treating the world as your own personal financial pinata, and you won't stop beating it until every last penny is hammered out and all that's left is a sad little pile of confetti.[10]
It's one part Marxism, one part global economic collapse. While this looks to be a complex game that will take some careful work from Subaltern to pull off, it's hard to turn down the chance to be a powerful, amoral, behind-the-scenes conspirator and exploiter. For a couple hours, at least.[11]
After Neocolonialism 1.0 was released, Kill Screen called the game "partisan and derisive", a game that "someone might generate after reading Das Kapital and The Jungle". The review quarreled with the game's implication that every player is essentially "a villain", and that the game's creator "wants to paint wealth and its accumulation as inherently negative, and in a lot of ways [she] succeeds". Nevertheless, Kill Screen praised the game itself: "Alter's desire to portray a specific point of view cannot overpower the dynamic inherent in what [she] has crafted."[12]
Greece is a parliamentary representative democratic republic, where the President of Greece is the head of state and the Prime Minister of Greece is the head of government within a multi-party system. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the Hellenic Parliament. Between the restoration of democracy in 1974 and the Greek government-debt crisis, the party system was dominated by the liberal-conservative New Democracy and the social-democratic PASOK. Since 2012, the anti-austerity, democratic socialist party Syriza has taken the place of PASOK as the largest left wing party, with their first election victory in January 2015.
Monopoly is a multiplayer economics-themed board game. In the game, players roll two dice to move around the game board, buying and trading properties and developing them with houses and hotels. Players collect rent from their opponents and aim to drive them into bankruptcy. Money can also be gained or lost through Chance and Community Chest cards and tax squares. Players receive a salary every time they pass "Go" and can end up in jail, from which they cannot move until they have met one of three conditions. House rules, hundreds of different editions, many spin-offs, and related media exist. Monopoly has become a part of international popular culture, having been licensed locally in more than 103 countries and printed in more than 37 languages. As of 2015, it was estimated that the game had sold 275 million copies worldwide. The original game was based on locations in Atlantic City, New Jersey, United States.
Axis & Allies is a series of World War II strategy board games. The first version was initially published in 1981 and a second edition known colloquially as Axis & Allies: Classic was published in 1984. Played on a board depicting a Spring 1942 political map of Earth divided by territories, players take the role of one or more of the five major belligerents of World War II: the Axis powers of Germany and Japan; and the Allied powers of the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Turns rotate among these belligerents, who control armies of playing pieces with which they attempt to capture enemy territories, with results determined by dice rolls.
A regional lockout is a class of digital rights management preventing the use of a certain product or service, such as multimedia or a hardware device, outside a certain region or territory. A regional lockout may be enforced through physical means, through technological means such as detecting the user's IP address or using an identifying code, or through unintentional means introduced by devices only supporting certain regional technologies.
The Nintendo DS is a foldable handheld game console produced by Nintendo, released globally across 2004 and 2005. The DS, an initialism for "Developers' System" or "Dual Screen", introduced distinctive new features to handheld games: two LCD screens working in tandem, a built-in microphone and support for wireless connectivity. Both screens are encompassed within a clamshell design similar to the Game Boy Advance SP. The Nintendo DS also features the ability for multiple DS consoles to directly interact with each other over Wi-Fi within a short range without the need to connect to an existing wireless network. Alternatively, they could interact online using the now-defunct Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection service. Its main competitor was Sony's PlayStation Portable during the seventh generation of video game consoles.
Junta is a board game designed by Vincent Tsao, first published in 1978 by Creative Wargames Workshop and published, as of 1985, by West End Games. Players compete as the corrupt power elite families of a fictional parody of a stereotypical banana republic trying to get as much money as possible into their Swiss bank accounts before the foreign aid money runs out. Fighting in the republic's capital during recurrent coup attempts encompasses most of the game's equipment, rules and playtime. This game-within-the-game is however actually tangential to the players' main goal.
A Game of Thrones is a strategy board game created by Christian T. Petersen and published by Fantasy Flight Games in 2003. The game is based on the A Song of Ice and Fire series of high fantasy novels by George R. R. Martin. It was followed in 2004 by the expansion A Clash of Kings, and in 2006 by the expansion A Storm of Swords.
Axis & Allies is a real-time strategy World War II video game developed by TimeGate Studios and published by Atari for Microsoft Windows. The game was released on November 2, 2004. It is based on the board game series Axis & Allies from Milton Bradley and also on TimeGate's Kohan series. Set in the years after Japan and the United States entered into the war, the game allows the player to act as a World War II commander to build military forces to fight against other generals, using military units and technologies from the war. The player is able to rewrite and recreate the history of World War II.
Twilight Imperium is a strategy board game produced by Fantasy Flight Games in the genre of science fiction and space opera. It was designed by Christian T. Petersen and was first released in 1997. The game is in its fourth edition (2017), which has large changes over previous editions. It is known for the length of its gameplay, and its in-depth strategy.
Making History: The Calm & The Storm is a World War II grand strategy video game released in March 2007 by developer Muzzy Lane. Similar in ways to the popular board games Axis & Allies and Risk, Making History is turn-based with basic industrial, economic, resource, research and diplomatic management included. The game was released as Strategic War Command in Germany.
Imperial is a German-style board game designed by Mac Gerdts in which the object is to accumulate wealth in the form of bond holdings in successful countries and cash. Players take on the role of international financiers who purchase government bonds in the six pre-World War I empires of Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, and Russia. The principal bondholder of a nation gains control of its government and can order importation or production of armaments and ships; maneuvering of military units; construction of factories; and taxation. During play, an investor card is passed around which allows the purchase of additional bonds. A rondel – a wheel-shaped game mechanism with eight different options – is used to determine the options available to a country. The game box states that it is for 2–6 players, but a developer-supported variant allows play with seven. Imperial 2030 is a follow-up game released in 2009 with similar mechanics.
Sid Meier's Civilization V is a 4X video game in the Civilization series developed by Firaxis Games. The game was released on Microsoft Windows on September 21, 2010, on OS X on November 23, 2010, and on Linux on June 10, 2014.
eRepublik is a free-to-play, web browser-based massively multiplayer online game developed by Romanian studio eRepublik Labs which was launched outside of beta phase on 14 October 2008 and is accessible via the Internet. The game is set in a mirror world where players, referred to as citizens, join in local and national politics where they can help formulate national economic and social policies as well as initiating wars with their neighbours and/or tread the path of a private citizen working, fighting and voting for their state. It was developed by Alexis Bonte and George Lemnaru. eRepublik is programmed in PHP using Symfony framework and runs in most modern browsers. eRepublik has spawned a number of similar games due to the commercial success.
Glenn Drover's Empires: The Age of Discovery is the first of the Glenn Drover's Empires board games, created by Glenn Drover.
Sid Meier's Civilization: The Boardgame is a 2002 board game created by Glenn Drover based on the Civilization series of video games, in particular, Civilization III. Drover himself was a sales manager at Microprose during the original development of Civilization, though he was not directly involved in the creation of the video game.
Diplomacy is a strategic board game created by Allan B. Calhamer in 1954 and released commercially in the United States in 1959. Its main distinctions from most board wargames are its negotiation phases and the absence of dice and other game elements that produce random effects. Set in Europe in the years leading to the First World War, Diplomacy is played by two to seven players, each controlling the armed forces of a major European power. Each player aims to move their few starting units and defeat those of others to win possession of a majority of strategic cities and provinces marked as "supply centers" on the map; these supply centers allow players who control them to produce more units. Following each round of player negotiations, each player can issue attack and support orders, which are then executed during the movement phase. A player takes control of a province when the number of provinces that are given orders to support the attacking province exceeds the number of provinces given orders to support the defending province.
NarcoGuerra, Spanish for "DrugWar", is a strategy newsgame developed by GameTheNews.net. It was released in June 2013 for Android, PC, Mac, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.
Legends of Runeterra is a 2020 digital collectible card game developed and published by Riot Games. Inspired by the physical collectible card game Magic: The Gathering, the developers sought to create a game within the same genre that significantly lowered the barrier to entry. Since its release in April 2020, the game has been free-to-play, and is monetised through purchasable cosmetics. The game is available for Microsoft Windows and mobile operating systems iOS and Android.
John Company is a board game designed by Cole Wehrle, originally released in 2017 by Sierra Madre Games with a second edition in 2022 by Wehrlegig Games. The game concerns the fortunes of the British East India Company (EIC), nicknamed "John Company", as it trades with India and China, raises armies, and influences Parliament. One to six players take the role of families who co-operatively run the Company for profit, while competing against each other to acquire the most prestige.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
