Drillin', drillin', drillin', although them boats keep spillin'...
Oiligarchy is a web game made by Molleindustria. You can play it here.
The game has you playing as the CEO of an oil company immediately after World War II. Your have one goal: maximize your profits by selling oil to America, or else your board of directors will have you fired. To accomplish this goal, you have to keep America hooked on oil to fuel its economy, which means greasing the palms of politicians to make them pass bills friendly to your business and unfriendly to the environmental movement. Eventually, you can get America to invade other countries for their oil, have anti-terror legislation passed to silence environmentalists and social justice advocates, bribe Third World dictatorships to drive out the tribesmen who stand in your way, and use other nefarious means to get as much oil as humanly possible.
But eventually, that oil is going to run out...
As you may have guessed by now, this game takes a very particular view of the oil industry. At the same time, however, what other game affords you the opportunity to play as a card carrying Captain Planet villain, Laughing Mad at your computer while poisoning lakes and killing caribou?
Tropes:
- Apocalypse How: If the US' oil addiction is not broken after Peak Oil, but actively encouraged, the result is World War III and an implied Class 2, with Mutually Assured Destruction becoming a reality as companies nuke one another for control of the world's last remaining oil. The "Farewell West" ending features more of a Class 1, as the GDP crashes and the West enters a period of terminal decline that takes modern civilization down with it.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: The Player Character is one, being the corrupt head of an oil company. Over the course of the game, they can bribe representatives to increase the US' addiction to oil, aggressively crack down on any protests against you, and eventually doom the West to an inevitable economic and civil collapse or straight-up cause World War III if they choose not to break America's oil addiction.
- Corrupt Politician: The Nigerian government can be bribed - first to make it easier to drill for oil, then to execute the Ogoni when they start protesting the damage caused by your drilling. They'll also sell you the services of mercenaries for a nominal fee.
- Crapsack World: Keep America hooked on oil, and it will slide deeper and deeper into this. The newspapers begin to mention that heating costs are forcing millions to relocate to warmer places, food distribution networks are breaking down to the point of food riots and cannibalism becoming common, and humans are being processed into oil to stave off collapse. This eventually culminates in World War III or the "Farewell West" ending, where Western society undergoes a more gradual decay.
- Cruelty Is the Only Option: The game forces you to be an absolutely evil jackass. When the Ogoni start protesting and blocking your oil fields, can you find a peaceful solution? No, your only option is to bribe the government to kill everyone. And you cannot get to invest in Iraq without manipulating the US government invading them. And lets not even get into the part about the environment. The only way to avert this is to aim for the "green" ending right from the beginning, which can easily be achieved if you do nothing to keep environmentalism from spreading (by systematically skipping the elections and not "oiling" the representatives) and let oil demand regularly outstrip supply in order to have energy-saving acts approved, only opening new wells to placate your shareholders and avoid getting fired. By using this strategy, it is possible to retire as early as 1975, without even having reached peak oil in Texas.
- Day of the Jackboot: You can organize and fund one in Venezuela if you manage to corrupt the U.S. president.
- Eagleland: Type 1 if you don't have the government in your pocket, and Type 2 if you do. An "oiled" American government will happily fund short-sighted, oil-friendly bills and back the oiligarch's corrupt practices so long as their pockets are lined, along with being willing to pressure foreign countries to drill for more oil and go to war over new wells. By contrast, a non-oiled government will focus on passing eco-friendly bills and looking into renewable energy, eventually resulting in a more positive ending.
- Earn Your Bad Ending: A given considering your actions are a direct threat to life on Earth. The optimal ending leads to Mutually Assured Destruction, but the other ending, Farewell West, ends up being an unintentional case of this (see Guide Dang It!).
- Failure Is the Only Option:
- Of the four endings, one involves you getting fired and another one involves the end of the world (and text saying "you spend your last days in darkness, pondering your role in creating this mess"). The third involves a happy ending for everyone except the Villain Protagonist player; an ending in which reduced reliance on fossil fuels renders the oil industry less important. The last involves keeping the western world addicted to oil but not actually supplying it, crashing the GDP so hard that modern civilization slowly collapses due to a permanently ruined economy. It does not appear to be possible to make the game last forever without eventually running into one of these endings.
- There are some more minor examples as well. If you do offshore drilling in Alaska, there will be a spill no matter what you do, and you will get fined for it no matter how much you corrupted the politicians. If you drill anywhere in Nigeria, the pigs and fish will die (whether or not you ignore environmental regulation), the people will start demonstrating, and the Ogoni will eventually turn violent (whether or not you get the government to attack them first). Once Iraq is invaded, there is no way to prevent an insurgency from beginning.
- Featureless Protagonist: The eponymous oiligarch is never given any features or personality, since they're meant to be you (the player.)
- From Nobody to Nightmare: Your oil company starts off as a small post-World War II business venture and goes to... well... an oiligarchy that keeps the entire world oppressed, feeding it untold amounts of money to pay for oil obtained through everything from human rights abuses to burning live humans to make more of it once you hit Peak Oil.
- Gaia's Lament: You eventually damage the environment in places like Nigeria and Alaska, on top of the occasional headline about climate change.
- Global Warming: Shows up around the midpoint of the game. It doesn't really affect the gameplay, though.
- Guide Dang It!:
- The Farewell West ending. It can be reached (although the creators believed otherwise when they first discovered the issues in obtaining it), but one can generally only do so by blowing up all of your oil wells just as Peak Oil is about to hit, and maintaining a near-100% oil addiction through your savings. As soon as the GDP reaches -12% growth, it's yours.
- It is possible to reach it more conventionally by careful management of oil supply and demand. After the peak, carefully keep oil supply just below oil demand. The price will rise slowly, as the GDP falls. Your job is to keep the oil supply close enough to demand to keep the price rise as slow as possible, without ever letting oil demand outstrip supply at any time (in which case GDP growth returns to +3% and the ending becomes impossible). If you keep this up for several decades without reaching $300/barrel, you can reach the Farewell West ending.
- Alternatively if you go for a M.A.D. ending but balk at turning humans into oil, usually Farewell West will trigger once GDP drops below a certain value/GDP growth dips to -12%/price-per-barrel tops out at 300$ for long enough.
- Greed: A core theme of the game is putting the desire to profit above all else, and the damage that this unchecked greed can cause. The oiligarch can resort to using shady tactics such as bribery and government-sponsored violence to ensure that their profits keep rising, even as the environment steadily becomes more devastated and the cracks in the system start to show. Indeed, the oiligarch's greed has the potential to cause World War III in one ending, or total economic collapse in a second.
- Green Aesop:
- If we don't stop relying on oil to run our society, then we will a) start nuking each other for oil, b) start using each other to make oil then start nuking each other for oil, or c) end up permanently ruining our economy when the oil runs out.
- A subtle one regarding Alaskan oil drilling: once you explore for oil up there, you find that there isn't nearly as much as there is in places like Venezuela, Nigeria and Iraq. Perhaps it's the developers' way of saying that "drill baby drill" won't solve our oil problems?
- Heel–Face Turn: You're encouraged to pull this off halfway through to get the "retirement" ending instead of the "nuclear war" ending. The best way to do so involves simply ceasing to bribe Senate representatives so that eco-friendly bills can be passed.
- Historical Hero Upgrade: Saddam Hussein, by virtue that he will never invade Kuwait unless you push him to by persuading the Kuwaitis to drill illegally.
- Human Resources: Late in the game, once oil starts running low, you can start making "biofuels" by processing humans into oil.
- Inherent in the System: The oil industry requires you to do extremely evil things to maintain the bottom line. From destroying the environment to bribing the federal government to paying African dictators to slaughter dissidents. Once the oil starts running out unless you decide to forgo your wealth and retire, you'll resort to turning humans into oil.
- Karma Houdini: Depending on the oiligarch's actions, they can become this. For instance, it's entirely possible for the oiligarch to corrupt the Nigerian government and violently suppress the Ogoni protests, then allow the world to switch to green energy and gain the relatively happy "Retirement" ending without having to answer for their crimes.
- Karma Houdini Warranty: While the oiligarch can (mostly) avoid the consequences of their crimes with enough bribes, two of the endings involve this. In M.A.D World the world devolves into nuclear war, destroying your wealth and leaving you to spend your final days rotting in a bunker. In Farewell West, Western civilization is permanently crippled by economic collapse.
- Mirroring Factions: Both political parties in America can be easily swayed with bribes every election season.
- Multiple Endings: There are four endings, two of which can be only triggered at or after Peak Oil is reached.
- Retirement: Reach an oil addiction of less than 25%, usually by refusing to bribe representatives. The oiligarch peacefully retires as the US breaks its oil addiction and embraces sustainable energy, public transport, and eco-friendly lifestyles.
- M.A.D World: Reach Peak Oil, but keep the government addicted to oil by bribing representatives. After oil hits $300 per barrel, The Last World War erupts for control of the world's remaining oil supplies, with nuclear Mutually Assured Destruction becoming a reality. The oiligarch retreats to their private fallout shelter to ride out the storm but is left trapped in the dark as the bunker's power runs out, leaving them to spend their final days thinking on their role in causing The End of the World as We Know It.
- Farewell West: Drop the GDP to around -12% after passing Peak Oil. The Western world enters a period of terminal economic decline as the GDP crashes from a lack of oil to sustain its growth, creating a mildly dystopian Post-Peak Oil world.
- Fired: The oiligarch is fired for failing to deliver enough profit to keep the shareholders happy. Uniquely, this can trigger at any point due to being Oiligarch's Game Over.
- No Party Given: The two political parties are referred to as the Donkeys and the Elephants, with no real difference between them. They will both happily pass oil-friendly bills so long as you fill their pockets with oil money.
- No Party Like a Donner Party: One of the consequences of peak oil is that, once food distribution networks break down, people will turn to cannibalism for sustenance.
- Pointy-Haired Boss: You can fail to deliver profits by simply sitting back and doing nothing, eventually leading to your dismissal by the shareholders.
- Post-Peak Oil: You eventually reach a point in the game where you can't sustain oil production. What eventually happen is you start processing humans into oil, Western civilization collapses due to a crash in GDP growth, nuclear war, or simply a less-oil dependent world.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: To prolong your wealth and influence, you can bribe the American government to keep the world hooked on oil. Of course, you can defy this and refuse to bribe lobbyists and allow the world to transition to green energy peacefully. The game itself actively encourages defying this trope halfway through as playing it straight leads to either World War III or terminal economic collapse, screwing everyone (the oiligarch included) over.
- Sleazy Politician: Bribing Congress to pass oil-friendly, anti-environmental bills is a major part of the game, and the only real way to progress past 2030 without being made obsolete by green energy.
- Toxic, Inc.: Your oil company's drilling operations cause animal life to die off, even without you actively bribing politicians to let you ignore environmental regulations.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: The game is replete with Kick the Dog moments, many of which you are forced to undertake in order to progress. For instance, your only response to peaceful protests is to have the leaders arrested and hanged while the rest are brutally repressed by the government.
- Villain Protagonist: You, the "protagonist of the petroleum era." Your goal is simply to make as much money as possibly, and fuck everyone and everything else. Eventually, you will either cause The End of the World as We Know It through your greed, or go out of business (whether by being fired or retiring.)
- We Have Reserves: Mercenaries cost only $50. This is nothing compared to the profits you make each year, so you can just throw away their lives carelessly - they're easy to replace.
