The game we are designing, tentatively named TAX FRAUD, is a simulator game where you are a nouveau-rich millionaire who has just earned your first bucket of gold, and now wants to try to evade as much taxes as you can without being audited by the IRS. The game tries to show the numerous ways rich people in America have long been avoiding paying their fair share of taxes through both legal and illegal measures, including deductible donations, asset-based lending, offshore bank accounts, and more. Therefore, the core values of the game are class equality & economic justice, which is shown by satirizing the current system & its faults.
The core loop in the game takes the form of a fiscal year. Each fiscal year, the player will gain new income, receive gains in assets, and decide what measures to take to pay as little in taxes as possible. At the end of each fiscal year, the amount paid in taxes is deducted, and the remaining stays in your accounts. Through the loops, the player will learn to strategize and gain new techniques to evade taxes.
The arc of the game is the narrative element. We briefly introduce the player’s backstory, where they have recently made their first bucket of gold through a wonky start-up in Silicon Valley, and now must figure out “the ways of the rich”; this storytelling takes place as an arc. We also intersect the loops with arcs where the player interacts with other billionaires who provide them with tips to become more sophisticated at tax evasion. The player’s goals and forms of income changes as the years pass by, and finally, towards the end of the game, as the player/billionaire ages, they must also try to learn the ways to pass down as much of their wealth to their children as possible, which is an arc.
