🛠️ georgetown

Georgetown is a browser-based multiplayer persistent online town building game. Think SimCity, but multiplayer and always-on.

...and, with economic policy experimentation.

My primary motivation is to see how different economic policies (ex. land value taxes, universal basic income, or demurrage) affect player motivations and game play.

You can try it (in whatever half-broken state it is currently in) at: https://georgetown.sunnypursuits.com

History

Lars Doucet's review of Progress and Poverty opened my eyes to the potential of LVT, and led me down a rabbit hole of other economic reforms (extraction taxes, demurrage, etc.)

Many of these reforms are well supported by economists "in theory", but it's hard to "test" them in the real world, to see how people will respond. If only we had a safe place to run economic experiments...

In come board games.

In 2022, to test out the dynamics of some VNTRHB equity model ideas, I modified some rules to Acquire and tried them out on my friends. It worked well, and I liked the potential of board games as a vehicle for policy experimentation (and also, a vehicle to spread awareness and teach about these concepts).

I began toying with the idea of a board game to exercise LVT concepts - a modified version of Catan with Harberger Taxes. A challenge was making it "simple" enough to not be cognitively overwhelming or mechanically fiddly, but still represent the LVT concept and make for a fun game. Video game versions of tabletop games or board games are often "more fun", because they automate all the fiddly bits (at the cost of human interaction and tactility) - ex. Baldur's Gate 3 (for DnD5e).

Then, in early August 2024, someone on /r/georgism announced a Georgist-themed game jam, and well... it felt like the stars had aligned. I had to participate.

I had loved SimCity 3000 as a kid, and so a pared-down and Georgist version of it became the goal.

I spent much of August building it out. It was fun and very motivating to post updates on the Discord and have a few people actually engage.

You can check out the state of the game as of 2024-09-08:

There is still a lot left to do. Sadly, in 2025 I didn't make any time to work on it.

Plans

• "de-commoditize"
  • (all things are commodities right now)
  • diversity of terrain that affects farms (and maybe other future things)
    • WIP glamour shot:
  • diversity of market consumers with different preferences and balances
    • (currently, it's just a population number; the plan is to be more like Rollercoaster Tycoon - where each citizen is simulated)