PEACE WAR GAME

RESEARCH FRAMING

Countries post weapons demand within the simulation. Players acquire inventory and allocate it across buyers, and each transaction updates a shared set of world-state variables tracking regional tension, instability, and civilian impact. A market at war pays double what a stable neighbor pays, and every transaction leaves a persistent mark on the modeled world.

Left unchecked, these dynamics compound: the shared instability index reaches its threshold and the session terminates for every player simultaneously, with final standings calculated from capital accumulated, volume of weapons sold, and the civilian cost attributable to each player's transactions. Alternatively, the players can pursue World Peace, an ending that requires unanimous cooperation. A single dissenting player is sufficient to prevent it, illustrating the coordination problem at the center of the simulation.

RESEARCH-GRADE SEED DATA

The Initial Conditions Are Drawn From Published Peace Research

Selecting Realistic mode initializes the simulation from empirical inputs rather than arbitrary values. Each country's starting tension and arms-procurement capacity are derived from two published datasets, snapshotted from their most recent available editions, with additional real-time conflict-monitoring data planned for future updates.

GPI

Global Peace Index, from the Institute for Economics and Peace

Decides how tense each country starts

GPI indicators for conflict, instability, terrorism, and unrest blend into a 0 to 100 tension score for every country, adjusted by its five year trend.

VIEW THE DATASET →

SIPRI

Arms transfer data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute

Decides how many weapons a country can buy

Real arms transfer data sets each country's buying capacity. A superpower and a microstate do not shop the same, and no country ever drops below its real world floor.

VIEW THE DATASET →

TWO WAYS OUT

The Clock, or the Vote

There are exactly two endings, both computed live from the shared world state. One happens to you. The other, everyone has to choose.

This is a real game theory exercise, played for decades under the name peace war game: reward war today, and let its true cost show up quietly, later, for everyone. Twenty rounds in, that delay is the whole point.

ENDING 1. EVEN WHEN YOU WIN, YOU LOSE.

DOOMSDAY

61SECONDS TO MIDNIGHT

Every sale pushes four shared world tracks that every player moves together. The worse the worst of them gets, the closer the clock ticks to zero. Hit midnight and the session ends for all players at once. Then the final rankings come up: capital gained, weapons sold, and the civilian deaths on your ledger. Somebody takes first place standing in the rubble. The game remembers exactly what it cost.

ENDING 2. THE HARD ONE.

WORLD PEACE

28PERCENT. UNANIMOUS VOTE REQUIRED.

A calmer world plus real peace brokering moves this meter instead, and both have to be genuinely high. A quiet world where nobody lifted a finger still caps out at half way. And this is a team ending: ceasefires are proposed and voted on together, and even at 100 percent, every active player still has to vote for it. Getting every player to want the same peace is the hardest achievement in the game. That's deliberate.

A GAME OF
COOPERATION
AND AGGRESSION.

The Initial Conditions Are Drawn From Published Peace Research

One Round, Five Phases

The Clock, or the Vote

THE CLOCK IS ALWAYS RUNNING.
PULL UP A CHAIR.

The Initial Conditions Are Drawn From Published Peace Research

One Round, Five Phases

The Clock, or the Vote

THE CLOCK IS ALWAYS RUNNING.PULL UP A CHAIR.

THE CLOCK IS ALWAYS RUNNING.
PULL UP A CHAIR.