Forager is a Capitalism Simulator Without Consequence
Is Capitalism a Skill? What happens when you level up?
At it’s core, Forager is simple: you gather resources, use those resources to make better resources, then use those better resources to make even better resources. You start with a small plot of land, then use coins to buy new plots. New plots increase the amount of land you have access to, which means more space to place structures, more ground for random resources to spawn from, and sometimes something else. But I’m not here to spoil those little surprises for you if you choose to play Forager. I’m here to tell you that when I set out playing Forager I was genuinely surprised by the game’s excellent design, especially within the inventory system. I thought it was so smart, I figured I’d write about it.
This excellent design seemed to come from HopFrog taking player feedback and incorporating it into the game’s updates, of which the last major one was in July. However, the more I played the more uncomfortable I started feeling. Some of the excellent design crumbles a bit as you continue and becomes just good design. Still good, but not quite excellent. That, combined with not enjoying the puzzles, exploration, or combat much after the first couple hours seemed to explain my discomfort, and I relented. However, I continued playing because the grind was enjoyable and addictive. As I continued playing though, I found the true source of my discomfort while perusing the skill table: capitalism.
Is Capitalism a Skill?
In several Civilization games, capitalism is something akin to a skill. In Civilization V it gives you “+1 Local Happiness from every Mint, Bank, and Stock Exchange.” In Civilization VI, capitalism gives you “widespread awe among your diplomatic contacts.” I find both of these effects silly. After the Great Recession of 2008, thinking that capitalism and banks cause happiness is ridiculous. It would be more accurate if it reduced the chance of other capitalistic countries from going to war with you, and increased your chance to attempt to coup another country, but I’m not a Civilization dev so who am I to say whether capitalism makes people happy.
Maybe the use of the words “capitalism” and “colonization” as skills is satirical in Forager. I thought this might be the case, but I can’t find much evidence to support it. The only push-back that I’ve encountered thus far is a druid who complains about someone destroying nature too much. They tell you, “The natural resources are being exploited by little jerks with pickaxes.” This could point to satire or irony sure, but as the only source of it thus far in the game I’m finding it hard to believe. Besides, the druid won’t stop you as you destroy the natural resources on the island repeatedly. No, they’ll complain but won’t act. There isn’t any reason for the player to stop mining and chopping trees. You need the resources to expand, after all.
You could argue that this is reminiscent of contemporary US politics, since quite recently the Supreme Court voted to allow a pipeline to be built underneath the Appalachian Trial, having two liberals join the conservatives, including Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Or even politicians profiteering off the Iraq War because of arms companies giving them money so they passed bills for them.
As you progress in the game, you unlock more and more industrial structures. You start off with structures like a forge to smelt ore, and an anvil that you can use to make a sword. Then you’ll get to factories, power plants, and offshore drills. Yes. Offshore drills. You feed the offshore drill a bunch of bottles and, after a wait, it gives you bottled oil in return. The same tiny bottles you use to catch bugs or store milk from a cow in-game. This interpretation of the offshore drill feels very “uwu exploitation of the earth’s resources is adorable in this smol little bottle hehe” and in 2019/20 it makes me feel tired.
There is no accountability in Forager for exploiting the land. By design, natural resources repeatedly spawn on the map so you aren’t ever stripping the land of resources. The druid’s concerns seem valid, but are actually unfounded because of how the game world operates: it is fact that resources will respawn; it is fact that you will never have an oil spill occur because of your offshore drill; it is a fact that your factories will never induce a global warming-like event. This made me start considering how the game uncritically uses terms like capitalism and how this complacency might affect the player. Although, because of how the game world operates, maybe this article is unfounded. We’re this deep though, so let’s dig a bit deeper.
Colonization
Colonization is also a skill in Forager. In Forager colonization makes plots of land cheaper and easier to buy, allowing you to expand at a faster rate. Let us consider one real-world instance of colonization: Europeans colonizing America. According to Business Insider, “Between 1492 and 1600, 90% of the indigenous populations in the Americas had died. That means about 55 million people perished,” and Forager equates that to buying plots of land. For what it’s worth, the plots of land do increase in price the further away from the starting area you get. Although, any metaphor derived out of that seems pointless in comparison to the triviality Forager considers colonization with: just another fact of expansion.
Colonization, just like capitalism, is also free of consequence in Forager. The game even has buffs that makes it easier to “colonize” new plots of lands by reducing their prices temporarily. There are no indigenous villages being pillaged, no peoples being raped or killed, or leaders being forced to bend the knee in the hope they and their people aren’t murdered.
When you don’t consider the complacency with which Forager treats capitalism and colonization, Forager is a fun game. It made me feel impervious to the consequences of capitalism, and made me realize that the only way I’ll ever feel like a billionaire is through video games.
This is especially surprising because of how open HopFrog is with how tough Forager was to create. There are dev blog posts about changing the design of secrets and puzzles because they “sucked” in the demo. There is also a comic in-game about how he had to move back home and his mother invested her life savings into Forager, “barely knowing what a videogame even was.” Maybe, if we had a shorter work week and were paid more in general we could use that time to create art like Forager without worrying about income. We could more easily work on projects that truly brought us and others joy.
In the end, Forager’s uncritical takes on capitalism and colonization made me feel tired. It made me consider how much capitalist propaganda is built into videogames simply because so many people don’t realize that a better world is possible. The game does keep me coming back and grinding though, and maybe, when we consider what “grinding” under capitalism is like, there is a lesson about capitalism in the game after all.
