perfectcompetition.net is a multi-player, online, business strategy game.

Each player starts with an amount of money. (Premiums start with $100,000; standards start with $50,000).

The objective of the game is to create and amass wealth by producing and selling goods, by providing and selling services, by researching and patenting intellectual property, by investing in companies through the sharemarket, by speculating in shares for capital gains, by lending money through company bonds, by managing a real estate portfolio, or by doing some or all of these things.

The game is played by people over the Web. Whilst there are AI bots, or artificially intelligent software agents, it is essentially a massively multiplayer online game.

Players make business decisions, and at the end of each "game day", the system computes the consequences of each player's decision vis a vis the decisions of everyone else. Notwithstanding server and network downtime, each day in the game is equivalent to 15 minutes in real life; there are 365 days to a "game year"; and there are 8 game years to a round. During a day, players can make as many decisions as they want to. When the day ends and the server computes for the day, no further decisions can be submitted for the day.

After the eighth game year of a round, the assets of every player are converted into cash. The system then compares and ranks all players by the amount of money that they have. The top 10 wealthiest (premium account) players will receive points. The best player will receive 10 points; the next best will receive 9; the next, 8; and so on, until the 10th best player who will receive 1 point. Points accummulate over time, and can be used in subsequent rounds to convert into game cash. Hence, the accomplishments of a player persist over time. Playing a round with the default starting amount and a round with several fold more are two different experiences.

The economy of the game is not dissimilar to a real economy. On the one hand, players are competing with each other (consumer spending, share capital gains, access to capital, etc). On the other, players are dependent on each other (supplies, sources of capital, executive staff, etc). The invisible hand is ever present.