I played the 1995 economic simulator that dared to convert Karl Marx — and went bankrupt

In 1995, PC Gamer magazine issued a direct challenge. In the back pages of its 22nd issue, an ad for a then-new game called Capitalism declared it was "good enough to make a convert out of Karl Marx himself." The testimonial came from, yes, PC Gamer.

Thirty-one years later, a journalist who has reviewed The Communist Manifesto for a major gaming publication decided to take up that challenge. Could this game, with its thicket of spreadsheets and input/output graphs, actually convert someone? And more importantly, could it offer a solution to current economic and social problems?

Capitalism the game does not work how you might expect. It is not set on Earth but on a procedurally generated pseudo-region of an Earth-like planet. Players can spin up a new game with any landscape — from a vast archipelago to a dense continent — and build their free market there.

The author attempted to build a business empire on the back of a single department store selling three products and a silica mine. Red-faced advisors warned of bankruptcy, but their wisdom was ignored. "And, frankly, they were correct. Fair play to those guys. We are very bankrupt now," the journalist admits.

The experiment raises a deeper question: can a 30-year-old economic simulator, built around spreadsheets and supply chains, offer any insight into modern economic malaise? The full article explores whether Capitalism can indeed make a convert out of someone who has studied Marx — or if it simply teaches the hard lesson of market failure.