Econ.io is an online multiplayer game where players are nations that compete against each other to achieve the highest possible GDP. The game uses Node.JS and Socket.io, along with HTML and CSS. It is adpated from Victor Zhou's tutorial on building a Multiplayer io game (https://victorzhou.com/blog/build-an-io-game-part-1/)
Economics concepts covered: GDP/Full Employment GDP Law of decreasing marginal utility Negative externality Aggregate demand Aggregate supply Recession Inflation Economic growth Keynesian economic theory Phillips curve Production possibility curve
1. GDP/Full Employment GDP:
The player’s health represents the nation’s current GDP, with their output being diet pepsis. The player’s GDP is directly related to how fast they shoot diet pepsi. Therefore, as a nation increases their GDP, their output increases, meaning that they are able to shoot out more diet pepsis at a higher rate. However, if their current GDP decreases, they shoot out less diet pepsi.
The player’s score is their full employment GDP, which is their GDP at full output, or full health. Players' GDP gradually goes back to full output overtime, representing a fixing economy.
2. Law of decreasing marginal utility:
The picture of Mr. Pelkey’s face represents the consumer. When the player sells (shoots) diet pepsi to the consumer, the consumer gives a certain amount of marginal utility. This marginal utility decreases overtime, so after the consumer buys enough diet Pepsi, it will stop, and the player will gain 20 GDP.
3. Negative Externality:
The fun part of this game is causing negative externalities at other players by forcibly selling as much diet pepsi as each other. The way negative externalities are caused can be interpreted in many ways; what I believe happens is that the nation will have to deal with an excess of diet pepsi or with people drinking too much of it, causing the nation's current GDP to decrease.
4. Aggregate Demand:
Aggregate demand is represented based on the number of Pelkeys, or consumers, that exists on the map. If there are less Pelkey, it means that AD has shifted left. Conversely, if there are more Pelkey, it means AD has increased.
5. Aggregate Supply:
(The tiny diagrams are chemical structures for caffeine and aspartame).
The spinning gears are resources (worker, diet pepsi ingredients) that a nation can obtain. When a nation touches a resource, their aggregate supply shifts to the right, and their GDP increases by 200.
6. Recession:
A recession occurs when a player’s health is low, so their current gdp is low. A recession can also be represented when the number of Pelkeys decrease to 5 and AD shift left.
7. Inflation:
When the number of Pelkeys increase, aggregate demand shifts to the right, meaning that on AD/AS/LRAS graph nations are experiencing inflation. This is further shown by the fact that players rejoin the game with 100 gdp, so 100 more currency is being pumped into the game and the overall money supply in the game increases overtime.
8. Economic growth:
When a player obtains a resource, their aggregate supply shifts to the right, meaning that on the AD/AS/LRAS graph they are experiencing economic growth, so their output and wealth increases..
9. Keynesian economic theory:
One important point that Keynes said in his theory is that “in the long run, we’re all dead”. Since everyone in this game will either die or disconnect, his point still stands true. No matter what happens in econ.io, every nation will be gone eventually.
10/11. Phillips Curve and PPC Curve: The phillips curve and ppc curve appear on the map as the players move around. They don’t have much purpose in the game other than to act as a decoration and for people to remember what these curves look like.