Escape Velocity
A multiplayer business simulation where the rules change every time you level up.
Most business games keep the same mechanics throughout. Build widget, sell widget, buy bigger factory, repeat. That teaches nothing about how real value is created, because real businesses must transform what they are to keep growing.
Escape Velocity is the game where learning to play by yesterday's rules is the fastest way to lose.
The Premise
Every player starts with the same thing: one problem to solve, one customer to serve. The goal is to reach escape velocity — the point where your business grows faster than you can push it. Where the flywheel spins itself.
The path has seven stages and three phase transitions. At each transition, the genre of game you're playing fundamentally changes.
STAGES 1-3: Resource management game (build and sell)
── PHASE TRANSITION ──
STAGES 4-5: Ecosystem strategy game (enable and attract)
── PHASE TRANSITION ──
STAGES 6-7: Civilization management game (maintain and govern)
Players who keep playing the old game after a phase transition stall. This is the core teaching.
Core Loop
Every stage runs the same feedback loop at different timescales:
PERCEIVE (what's happening in your market?)
↓
DECIDE (where do you allocate attention?)
↓
ACT (build, partner, invest, govern)
↓
MEASURE (what changed?)
↓
ADAPT (update your model)
The loop speed determines the stage. Stage 1 loops in seconds. Stage 7 loops in epochs.
The Seven Stages
Stage 1: The Solve
Genre: Puzzle game
You have: One problem. One customer archetype. Limited time.
Core mechanic: Interview customers (NPC or player), identify their real pain (not stated pain), build a minimum solution. The game teaches psycho-logic vs logic-logic — what people say they want vs what they actually do.
Win condition: One customer pays repeatedly without you convincing them each time.
Fail state: Build something nobody pays for. Run out of time. Solve a stated problem instead of the real one.
What you learn: Specific knowledge is earned, not taught. The best solutions come from proximity to pain.
| Resource | Source | Constraint |
|---|---|---|
| Time | Fixed per turn | Cannot be bought |
| Attention | Player choice | Split = diluted |
| Reputation | Customer satisfaction | Slow to build, fast to lose |
Stage 2: The System
Genre: Automation game
You have: A working solution. Incoming demand. Still limited time.
Core mechanic: Codify your solution into a repeatable system. Hire (AI agents or player-workers), build processes, create documentation. The game tracks your leverage ratio — output per unit of your direct time.
Win condition: Your system produces value while you're not actively directing it. Revenue grows faster than headcount.
Fail state: You remain the bottleneck. Every decision routes through you. Leverage ratio stays flat.
What you learn: The first form of leverage is code and process. Separating knowledge from the person who earned it.
New mechanic — Data Flywheel: Each customer interaction improves your system slightly. Customer 100 gets a measurably better experience than customer 10. This is automatic and compounds.
Stage 3: The Workflow
Genre: Territory control game
You have: A codified product. Growing customer base. Competitors entering your space.
Core mechanic: Expand from solving one problem to owning the adjacent workflow. Your product becomes the system of record. Customers store data in your system that makes leaving expensive.
Win condition: Competitors can build a better point solution, but customers won't switch because you own the workflow.
Fail state: A larger player integrates your feature and you have no workflow to defend. You become a feature, not a product.
What you learn: Switching costs are the first real moat. Data gravity is stronger than feature superiority.
New mechanic — Switching Cost: Displayed as a meter for each customer. Higher switching cost = more stable revenue, but also more responsibility. If you abuse lock-in (raise prices without adding value), trust erodes and switching cost drops rapidly.
Phase Transition 1: Product to Platform
The screen changes. Literally. The UI transforms.
Before this point, your interface showed YOUR product, YOUR customers, YOUR metrics. After the transition, the view zooms out. You now see other players' businesses that could build on top of yours.
What changes:
- You stop building features. You start building APIs and primitives.
- Your "customers" include other businesses (other players).
- Success is measured by ecosystem activity, not just your revenue.
The test: Can you let other players build things on your platform that you didn't design, approve, or control? Players who can't let go of product control get stuck here permanently.
Mechanical shift:
- Direct build actions are restricted
- New actions: Open API, Set Platform Rules, Allocate Developer Resources, Revenue Share
- Your dashboard shows ecosystem metrics alongside your own
Stage 4: The Platform
Genre: Ecosystem strategy game
You have: An open platform. Early third-party builders. Competing platforms.
Core mechanic: Attract builders and users simultaneously. Set platform economics (revenue share, pricing tiers, governance rules). Balance extraction vs investment. Every rule you set shapes what gets built.
Win condition: Third-party revenue on your platform exceeds your own product revenue. Network effects measurably accelerate growth.
Fail state: You compete with your own builders (they leave). You extract too much value too early (ecosystem dies). A competing platform offers better economics.
What you learn: Network effects are the first moat that money can't buy. Platform economics is governance, not engineering.
New mechanic — Network Effect Multiplier: Visible metric showing how each new participant increases value for all existing participants. Follows Metcalfe's Law initially, can reach Reed's Law (group-forming) with the right governance.
| Decision | Short-term | Long-term |
|---|---|---|
| High platform tax | More revenue now | Builders leave |
| Low platform tax | Less revenue now | Ecosystem grows |
| Compete with builders | Capture their margin | Destroy trust |
| Enable builders | Share the margin | Compound the network |
Stage 5: The Standard
Genre: Political strategy game
You have: A thriving platform. Industry recognition. Regulatory attention.
Core mechanic: Your platform's conventions become the industry default. Not by mandate — by adoption. Universities teach your API. Hiring managers look for experience with your tools. Every new entrant builds to your spec because anything else costs more.
Win condition: Competitors build products that are compatible with YOUR standard. The industry thinks in your categories.
Fail state: A technological discontinuity makes your standard irrelevant. A consortium of competitors creates an open standard that routes around you. Antitrust action forces you to unbundle.
What you learn: Standards are the highest form of leverage. Once you ARE the standard, the ecosystem feeds itself. But standards also attract regulation.
New mechanic — Standards Adoption Curve: Track how many players, NPCs, and institutions reference your standard. Once adoption crosses a threshold, it becomes self-reinforcing. Below the threshold, it can collapse.
New mechanic — Regulatory Pressure: As standards adoption grows, regulatory events trigger. Players must navigate hearings, compliance requirements, and political dynamics. Ignoring regulation = forced breakup. Over-complying = innovation stalls.
Phase Transition 2: Platform to Infrastructure
The screen changes again. Your company name fades from the UI. Success metrics shift from growth to uptime. The game becomes quieter.
What changes:
- Innovation metrics are replaced by reliability metrics
- Your success is measured by how few players think about you
- Downtime causes cascading failures across the ecosystem
- Your decisions affect players who don't even know you exist
The test: Can you accept being invisible? Can you optimize for reliability over excitement? Players who keep innovating recklessly at this stage cause systemic instability and get forcibly downgraded.
Stage 6: Infrastructure
Genre: Civilization maintenance game
You have: Essential infrastructure. Billion-dollar businesses running on your systems. Government dependencies.
Core mechanic: Maintain reliability while managing political pressure. Other players' economies depend on your uptime. Your decisions have systemic consequences. Balance innovation (necessary to stay relevant) with stability (necessary to stay trusted).
Win condition: No one evaluates alternatives. Not because they love you — because the question doesn't occur to them. You are assumed, like electricity.
Fail state: A security breach affects the entire ecosystem. Political action breaks you up. Complacency lets a technological shift make you irrelevant.
What you learn: The most valuable position in an economy is the one nobody notices. Infrastructure is the ultimate leverage — and the ultimate responsibility.
New mechanic — Systemic Risk: Every action you take is evaluated for cascading consequences. Move too fast and you destabilize the ecosystem. Move too slow and you become a bottleneck. The optimal speed is just fast enough that nobody notices the change.
Phase Transition 3: Infrastructure to Gravity
The camera pulls all the way out. You see the entire game world. Your infrastructure is a gravitational center. Other players, businesses, standards, and economies orbit around you.
What changes:
- Your market cap decouples from your revenue
- You are valued on total economic activity you enable
- Your investment decisions determine which technologies succeed
- The game recognizes you as a civilization-scale entity
Stage 7: Gravity
Genre: God game
You have: Ecosystem gravity. Civilization-scale influence. Existential responsibility.
Core mechanic: Shape the direction of the entire game economy. Where you invest, industries form. Where you withdraw, industries collapse. Your challenge is stewardship, not growth.
Win condition: The economic ecosystem you enabled generates more value than any single entity could. Your legacy is measured in what others built because you existed.
Fail state: You optimize for extraction instead of enablement. The ecosystem routes around you. Or worse — a systemic failure you could have prevented cascades into collapse.
What you learn: The highest form of value creation is creating the conditions for others to create value.
Multiplayer Dynamics
This is where the game gets interesting. Players at different stages share the same world.
Cross-Stage Interaction
| Your Stage | Interaction With Lower Stages | Interaction With Higher Stages |
|---|---|---|
| 1 (Solve) | None | Buy tools from Stage 2-3 players |
| 2 (System) | Sell tools to Stage 1 | Build on Stage 4 platforms |
| 3 (Workflow) | Compete with Stage 1-2 | Lobby Stage 5 for standards |
| 4 (Platform) | Attract Stage 1-3 as builders | Depend on Stage 6 infrastructure |
| 5 (Standard) | Define rules for Stage 1-4 | Need Stage 6 reliability |
| 6 (Infrastructure) | Serve everyone below | Enable Stage 7 gravity |
| 7 (Gravity) | Shape the entire economy | — |
Alliances and Coalitions
Players can form alliances at any stage. Alliance dynamics change at each phase transition:
- Stages 1-3: Alliances are tactical. Share resources, split markets, joint development.
- Stages 4-5: Alliances become ecosystems. Your platform's builders are your allies — until they aren't.
- Stages 6-7: Alliances become geopolitical. Infrastructure players coordinate (or compete) at civilization scale.
The Kingmaker Problem
Stage 4-5 players can choose which Stage 1-2 players succeed by featuring them on their platforms. This creates political dynamics, lobbying, and the temptation to pick winners instead of letting the market decide.
The game tracks ecosystem health — platforms that pick winners create fragile ecosystems. Platforms that set fair rules create antifragile ones.
Economic Model
Currencies
| Currency | Earned By | Spent On | Properties |
|---|---|---|---|
| Credits | Revenue from customers | Hiring, building, expansion | Inflationary. Easy to earn, easy to spend. |
| Trust | Reliability, fair dealing, transparency | Nothing directly. Unlocks Stage transitions. | Deflationary. Hard to earn, easy to lose. Compounds. |
| Standards Tokens | Protocol adoption | Governance votes, regulatory lobbying | Scarce. Distributed by adoption, not purchase. |
The Trust Economy
Trust is the meta-currency. Every interaction either builds or erodes it. Trust cannot be bought, only earned. Players with high trust:
- Attract better builders to their platform
- Face lighter regulatory scrutiny
- Survive crises that destroy low-trust competitors
- Unlock phase transitions faster
Trust compounds. A player who maintains high trust for 10 game-years has a qualitatively different position than one who just reached the same trust level.
Tokenomics (On-Chain Layer)
For the blockchain-enabled version:
- Player-created standards can become real on-chain protocols
- In-game assets have true ownership (transferable, composable)
- Game treasury governed by player DAO
- Revenue distribution: builders / players / treasury / liquidity
This connects to game economics — the game itself becomes the experiment in economic design.
What the Game Teaches
| Stage | Business Lesson | Life Lesson |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Solve real pain, not stated pain | Listen to what people do, not what they say |
| 2 | Separate knowledge from the person | Systems outlast individuals |
| 3 | Switching costs beat features | Depth of relationship beats breadth |
| 4 | Network effects can't be bought | Enable others and you enable yourself |
| 5 | Standards are the highest leverage | What you normalize shapes what's possible |
| 6 | Invisible infrastructure is the most valuable | The best support is the kind nobody notices |
| 7 | Ecosystem health beats individual extraction | Stewardship creates more than ownership |
The Meta-Lesson
The game teaches that the game changes. Players who succeed are the ones who recognize phase transitions and transform — not the ones who perfect the current stage. This is the loop of consciousness applied to business: Perceive, Question, Act, Measure, Adapt.
Most people fail not because they play badly, but because they keep playing a game that no longer exists.
Technical Architecture
Minimum Viable Game
Stage 1 only. A focused puzzle game where players identify customer pain and build solutions. This is a complete, shippable game on its own.
MVP SCOPE
├── Customer interview system (NPC conversations)
├── Solution builder (simple resource allocation)
├── Market feedback loop (did it work?)
├── Leaderboard (revenue + trust score)
└── 30-minute play sessions
Expansion Path
Each subsequent stage is a game expansion that changes mechanics:
| Release | Content | Genre Shift |
|---|---|---|
| v1.0 | Stages 1-3 | Resource management |
| v2.0 | Stage 4 + Phase Transition 1 | Ecosystem strategy |
| v3.0 | Stage 5 + Regulatory system | Political strategy |
| v4.0 | Stages 6-7 + Phase Transitions 2-3 | Civilization management |
| v5.0 | On-chain layer + real tokenomics | Live economic experiment |
Stack Considerations
| Layer | Options | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Frontend | Browser-first (React/Canvas) | Accessibility. No install barrier. |
| Backend | Event-sourced architecture | Every game action is a ledger entry. Enables on-chain migration. |
| AI | Agent-based NPCs | Customers, regulators, market forces are AI agents with their own objectives |
| Blockchain | EVM-compatible L2 | For v5.0. Asset ownership, governance, composability |
| Data | Every transaction logged | The game generates real economic research data |
Connection to the Mental Model
This game is the VVFL loop made playable:
| Game Element | Mental Model | What It Teaches |
|---|---|---|
| Trust currency | Value System | What you stand for determines what you build |
| Phase transitions | Belief System | Your model of reality must evolve |
| Feedback loops | Control System | Measure, adapt, compound |
| Standards capture | Standards | Proven protocols become infrastructure |
| Network effects | Coordination games | Culture is the only moat |
| Data flywheel | Feedback Loops | The meta loop that makes everything else work |
The game exists within the game economics thesis: better to fail in a simulation than real life. Every mechanic is drawn from how trillion-dollar businesses actually formed. The difference is you can run the experiment in hours instead of decades.
Open Questions
- How long should a full game take? (Hours? Weeks? Persistent world?)
- Single-shard economy (everyone in one world) vs instanced (separate game worlds)?
- How much AI agency for NPC market forces?
- Should the on-chain layer be present from v1.0 or added later?
- Spectator mode for researchers studying the emergent economics?
Context
- Game Economics — Why game economies matter
- Game Mechanics — Web3 mechanics and asymmetric gameplay
- Game Loops — Core, meta, and rendering loops
- Game Theory — Nash equilibrium and coordination
- Standards — What survives simulation becomes real
- Play — The game of life this game simulates