In Eco by Strange Loop Games, I stumbled few times in communities of players who defined their group as communists. While this has little to do with communism in the real world, here is what I learned with them.
Just a quick peak here since there are obviously more accurate resources about this concept. Briefly, communism is an ideology that reaches into politics, economy, social and other aspects of a society. Two main ideas of communism are (1) common ownership of the means of production and (2) the absence of social classes. With careful planning and distribution of resources, communism aims to alleviate and eliminate social inequities. These ideas obviously clash with capitalism, which is based on the private ownership of the means of production for profits and where there is a clear distinction between the owners of capitals and the rest of the people. These ideas clash, but many societies now integrate them both to some level. Anyway, this is a ballpark introduction only.
I believe there is a difference between a serious and accurate scenario of communism in Eco and what I have seen about 7 to 10 times on random servers. Briefly, these "communist" servers are those where every player is expected to leave his stockpile and crafting tables open. One server I visited even forbid claiming lands. The idea is that any player can take the resources or use the tables if they need it (!).
I believe my third of fourth game of Eco was on a server where 6 people declared themselves team USSR a and 3 others were team USA. The USSR team spoke passionately about their communist approach where the players had their stockpiles open to other USSR members while team USA players were making puns about their capitalist ways. The chat was very active and funny since they were people from both teams who knew each others in real life : this was just a friendly setup.
The Canadian in the middle suggested team USA was also communist, since they also shared stockpiles and crafting tables between themselves. I had a blast...
This last comment serves to show that there is more to communism in Eco than just letting stockpiles open, but I write here based on what I have seen in the last years and this is pretty much how some players of Eco are doing it/calling it.
Obviously, this open approach gave rise to problems on the servers because some players inevitably took more resources than they contributed. Once, a player removed all the furniture from the house of his neighbor because "I need them more that you do and it's easy for you to make more". On another one, I met a particularly happy troll !
There was also the issue of players who went "semi-communist" by making some lands open and some not. Other players had different reactions, ranging from explaining the expected benefits of this approach to asking the admin for a ban.
No servers succeed with an open stockpile approach, except when people knew each other well before playing the game. Even with the best intentions, another player can use resources dedicated to another's project and a high level of trust, communication and overall maturity is necessary to overcome these situations and enjoy the game.
Recently, I woke up on day 2 in a world where the admins apparently wished for a communist server. I decided to stay and we modified a bit the original recipe by restricting access to storage areas and placing stores with prices of 0 credits. This way players could still have a free access to resources but it was easier to see who took what.
Eco is a simulation allowing many experiments. To that end, there are more accurate ways to make a communist and socialist setup.
For instance, to simulate shared property of production, players (or the government) could make public workshops where players bring resources and order crafted items through work party much like the Fab Lab contraption (common ownership of production). There could even be a law allowing the crafting of basic crafting tables like the masonry table or the farmer table, but preventing higher ones like anvil, sawmill, kiln and above unless it's done by the state or within public workshops.
To simulate the planned economy component, there could be central stores in the map buying and selling basic resources for the same price. With the max amount of items bought, you can easily communicate which resources are missing or which are too many. Players can bring resources back at the community workshops for processing. Alternatively, you can have few players with a special title who manage state-owned stores to sell crafted items. These stores can distribute basic items (food), items that are best made in bulk to save on resources (10 trucks) or those who are needed in high amount (hewn, bricks, lumber, etc.).
Common means of production does not necessarily means state ownership, but if you want to simulate this, you can have a law that prevents crafting or installation of store and advanced crafting tables, unless it's done by state representatives.
I am pretty sure others could come with better and more accurate ideas about a communist server, but it's a start and it would give some substance to the pale and broken idea of open stockpiles. If you already did a more realistic communist server in Eco, please tell me what you did and how it went.
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