A month after the launch of Paradox Interactive's latest grand strategy game, Victoria 3 (opens in new tab), some players are pondering one persistent problem: the communists are right. That is, the communists are right: in 19th century countries, where persistent conservative interests prevent modernizing reforms (such as the abolition of slavery), players start spouting off against landlords, exploitative capitalists, and the petit bourgeoisie in the manner that Marxists a century ago or today would have said ...

"I hate landlords," one player wrote shortly after release (open in new tab)."

"I hate the landowners: inbreeding, backwoods hatred, slave ownership, tax cheats, obstruction of progress, heads in the sand, hatred of the law, anachronistic assholes in stupid hats."

This is something Mao himself might have said, except for the swearing. (I am not a historian.) Such rhetoric occurs because in Victoria 3, powerful interest groups can block the passage of laws, and powerful landlords and industrialists will block reforms that might reduce their power, control, and profits. For example, they favor ideas such as regressive taxation or giving voting rights only to the wealthy.

Players have also found that a properly implemented communist economy would not only make them a world-dominating superpower, it would also make the average standard of living of the lower and middle classes equal to or better than the upper classes in other countries.

In my review of "Victoria 3" for PC Gamer, I described the internal politics and economy of "Victoria 3" as a well-designed system full of struggles to shape and reform the composition of society in order to get the state you want. To understand why such struggles lead many players to the conclusion that communism is OP, I contacted the development team of "Victoria 3" and game designer Mikael Andersson told me.

"It is no secret that 'Victoria 3' is in many ways a historical materialist simulator. The form and organization of the economy you choose will affect the circumstances of the individuals who participate in that economy. They shape the political ideology of the country and influence it to develop in a particular direction." If you emphasize the interests of the capitalist class by importing cheap raw materials from foreign colonies, private investment will be strong and manufacturing will grow rapidly. This also empowers industrialists who wish to liberally structure the country's laws to guarantee their profits and social status. However, if the economy is concentrated on domestic production in highly productive and technologically advanced factories and the export of consumer goods, the lower classes will prosper, gain power, and assert their rights to democracy, a living wage, and humanitarian policies.

In short, a strong working class that produces, consumes, and exports staples under a worker ownership model raises prices and thus wages for everyone involved in key industries like food and construction. Coupled with certain liberal reforms supported by both capitalists and communists, society will not only be more stable but also economically stronger. This leads to incredibly funny posts like "The current communist meta is too strong (open in new tab)" and "Damn, this game has made me value real subsidies and welfare (open in new tab)."

The late-game council republic government is an arrangement whereby workers elect representatives to a higher council, forcing the working class to own factories and farms. It is meant to distribute wealth more equitably and to more immediate and realistic interests. Andersson explains: "This means that your personal investments will disappear. However, an increase in the wealth of the population means an increase in demand for the manufactured goods you are producing and a decrease in demand for the exotic luxury goods and art that the mega-wealthy used to spend their surplus funds on. The result is more stable industry, less need for welfare benefits, and more tax revenue.

At the same time, the success of communism is not incredibly easy to achieve: in each of the posts about the Communist Council Republic as an S-tier government, one is reminded of how the minimum wage and welfare destroyed the balance sheet of the state, or how the monarchist, colonialist police state was a poor or how a monarchist, colonialist police state can maximize its own economic power at the expense of its impoverished colonial subjects. While a certain amount of economic scale is necessary for communism to succeed in Victoria III, and the alternative works (insofar as a racist police state can be said to "work"), many of the countries with the largest GDPs by 1936, the year Victoria III ended, did so using communism They have done so by using communism.

There are more liberal alternatives to communism, such as command economies and authoritarian state-run socialism, but players have not used them much, nor do they complain about them.

"We didn't plan for these effects," Anderson says. Some of these effects could likely be balanced a bit better, and that is something we will work on, but the core dynamics remain the same: enacting a distribution of wealth that promotes a demand-driven economy is one perfectly reasonable way to play "Victoria 3."

"Another thing to keep in mind is that while "Victoria 3" is an ambitious simulation, it is not a perfect simulation. Currently, there is no clear mechanism to model corruption, cronyism, foreign economic influence outside of trade, or direct interference in the politics of other countries. Perhaps that is something we will see more of in the future."

In any case, we will be watching with interest the growing class consciousness of the three Victorian players. Why, because, at least according to Marx, communism is inevitable.