Game Design Sketchbook: Crude Oil

…Oil isn’t like corn or some other renewable commodity, where the amount you produce and sell this year has no limiting effect on how much you might be able to produce next year. If you pump all your oil out today and sell it at today’s price, you won’t have any to sell at tomorrow’s price. What if tomorrow’s price is much better than today’s price? Sit-and-wait starts to sound like a more attractive strategy than pump-and-sell, especially if we are on the verge of an emergency-scale oil shortage. Of course, you’d want to be grabbing as many leases as you could in the mean time, not to pump-and-sell, but to add to your will-pump-someday holdings. On the other hand, if you withhold supply too much, people will learn to live with less oil, demand will weaken, and the price bubble will burst. We saw that happen toward the end of this past summer, as demand reacted negatively to high gas prices. Hybrid cars are all the rage now, and oil just isn’t selling like it used to.


Crude Oil is a networked two-player game that explores these issues.

The Escapist