Is Rollercoaster Tycoon a Critique of Capitalism?

This story was published concurrently in video form by Subpixel.

So, Chris Sawyer’s Rollercoaster Tycoon series is probably one of, if not the most, famous theme park management simulator of all time. With the first title in the long running series hitting store shelves over twenty years ago, Rollercoaster Tycoon has become beloved worldwide and has even found its way onto some “Greatest Games of All Time” lists.

So what has made Rollercoaster Tycoon so successful over the years? Well, I think a lot can be said about the whimsical nature of the gameplay itself. While the management aspects of park maintenance and oversight can dull the player’s experience, the joy of making your own out-of-control rollercoasters vastly outweighs any negatives brought about by the administrative tasks the game requires of you.

But at its core, Rollercoaster Tycoon is a management simulator — so what exactly does that mean for the player? Well, if you’re just interested in the coaster side of the game, there are sandbox modes that allow you to build whatever you want wherever you want with zero financial restrictions. But that’s only satisfying for so long. At some point you’ll likely want to manage your own real park, and all that that implies.

To be successful in any of the Rollercoaster Tycoon campaigns, you’ll need to abide by a strictly capitalist philosophy. And while this may sound good to the more staunchly libertarian viewers of this video, I think it actually works to the detriment of that particular economic worldview. How so, you might ask?

Well, part of keeping your park profitable is managing guest happiness. Lots of things can contribute to guest unhappiness, like park cleanliness, ride efficiency (that is to say, how often the ride is operational and not closed for repairs or maintenance), and lack of variety of things to do. But I want to look at those first two factors, since they directly tie in to the implementation of park staff.

There are a number of different kinds of staff members you can hire, but you’ll likely hire more handymen and mechanics than any other type of employee. Handymen are essentially the janitors of the Rollercoaster Tycoon universe, and are primarily responsible for cleaning up litter and vomit from park pathways. Mechanics are in charge of keeping your rides operational, and will do spot checks of working rides and fix broken rides to make sure your park operates smoothly — this is doubly important in parks where ride admission is a separate fee from park entry.

So how do these employees affect guest happiness? Well, guests will obviously become unhappy if your park is gross with trash and vomit or if there are no working attractions for them to ride, and if a guest stays unhappy long enough they’ll eventually leave your park altogether — resulting in unknown lost revenue for you and your park. So hiring the appropriate employees is a must.

But how does this reveal the flaws in capitalist philosophy? Well, like the saying goes, you have to spend money to make money. Not hiring workers to keep your park clean and operational means fewer guests will come to your park and even fewer will stay once they arrive, meaning fewer overall admission and ride ticket sales, fewer food and merchandise sales, and poorer reviews for your park. So, by spending the money required to hire essential park staff, you will earn more money in the long run. But within this context, you can spend more money than you actually need to. What do I mean?

Firstly, if your monthly income isn’t great — you may not be able to hire as many custodians or mechanics as you really need, leading to more guest unhappiness and generally poor park performance; but if you’re already making enough to hire the necessary amount of staff members, I’ve found that sometimes it makes more financial sense to not hire as many staff as you truly need. Each mission in a given Rollercoaster Tycoon campaign hinges on fulfilling three tiers of tasks, ranging anywhere from “Have X amount of guests in the park at one time” or “Build a coaster with Y specifications” — with those latter requirements often requiring a fair amount of capital to fulfill. In those moments I’d often see a boon in not hiring quite so many staff members, so I could more quickly save up money for new coasters and attractions. The inevitable hit to my park’s review score and guests’ happiness was negligible enough that I could overcome it later.

And it’s not just your guests’ happiness you have to worry about. Like it or not, your workers will also become unhappy if certain conditions are not regularly met. If your employee doesn’t receive regular on-the-job training or financial bonuses, they won’t do their work as efficiently as before, and if they become unhappy enough they won’t do their work at all. Who do they think they are, right? Here’s where problems arise. Sure, you could give your staff a raise, or pay to give them new training; but within the context of Rollercoaster Tycoon I quickly found it made more financial sense to just fire unruly workers and hire fresh ones. There are no penalties for firing misbehaving employees — your park staff can’t unionize or wage social media campaigns to highlight your unfair business practices — so you’ll end up saving more money in the long run by just cutting unhappy employees loose once their efficiency bottoms out and hiring new blood to keep your park running. No need to worry about wrongful termination lawsuits.

And in addition to this exploitative treatment of your workers, there are plenty of ways to exploit your guests. Rollercoaster Tycoon is about nickel-and-dime’ing your park guests out of every cent they brought with them. Everything in the park, aside from perhaps park benches and trash cans, can be monetized. Park admission is obvious, you should have to pay to get in; but rides can be monetized too. Merchandise is an obvious means of income, as well as on-site food and drink. But did you know you can put fees on bathrooms? That’s right, you can charge your guests to use the bathroom. Obviously too exorbitant a cost will keep folks from using your beautiful facilities, but just charging some small and innocuous fee will eventually add up over time. You can keep track of how guests feel about certain costs of things by investigating each ride or shop, and if they think they’re getting a “good deal”, you can probably up the cost a bit. Hey, if they didn’t want you to charge more they wouldn’t have raved publicly about how good a deal it was, right?

You can also use the environment to your advantage. Some parks are more prone to rain storms than others, giving you an opportunity to price gouge any umbrellas being sold in your park. Sell them at a reasonable fee when the sun is out, and hit those umbrellas with a price hike once the floodgates open. Guests like to be comfortable, so they’ll usually pay the crazy cost for an umbrella — and in the end, more cash in the bank is better for you than a slightly unhappy guest.

Your park layout can also be exploited to milk more money from your guests. Funnel your guests away from the park entrance on a tram or monorail and into carefully mapped out money sinks. A perfectly placed drink stand at the end of a long pathway can slake the thirst of desperate guests.

But, is all this enough to say that Rollercoaster Tycoon is some sort of subtle, or not so subtle critique of capitalism? Does Chris Sawyer secretly want to overthrow the bourgeois? I doubt it. All this more a fun “what-if?” discussion, more than any sort of accusation leveled against the many folks who’ve worked on the Tycoon series. But it does beg the question, “Why reward such harsh management?” Was it just the necessity of the gameplay loop, or something else?