“Swarm is a 2D programming and resource gathering game. Program your robots to explore the world and collect resources, which in turn allows you to build upgraded robots that can run more interesting and complex programs.”
I would need to check into this more, but I wonder if this could serve as a forum to explore a participatory economy.
I think what Michael Hicks is doing is an even more productive version of this kind of game. I also know that someone who is broadly sympathetic to participatory economics, who got his PhD from Carnegie Mellon, and who worked at the Brookings Institution before becoming a professor at George Mason University pioneered a lot of games of this kind. In his games agents were not optimizing, but following rules. I believe there are now games where agents are given preferences and optimize when they make their choices. Robert Axtell was his name.