Tag: Economy

Coke, Financial Services and the Misplacement of Responsibility

Dennis July 19, 2013 No Comments

In the NRC blog Hoera, een cokesnuiver by Joris Luyendijk, he talks about the newest behind-the-velvet-rope book regarding the London financial industry, the excesses and the psychopathy of the financial services industry. For those who are interested in the book, it’s called Binge Trading – the real inside story of cash, cocaine and corruption in the City. I couldn’t care less about the book, or any of the other books mentioned in the article, but what did strike me was near the end Luyendijk talks about the Jerusalem Syndrome.

Every year, several tourists come to Jerusalem and literally wait for the messiah, sometimes for months, during which they slowly go insane. (If they weren’t insane to begin with.) They stay in hostels and one of the hostel owners had the opportunity to observe several of these cases up close. The hostel owner’s theory was that these people feel terrible and completely helpless and by placing their hope in the messiah, they placed the responsibility for all their ails outside of themselves. Someone else would solve their problems for them.

Luyendijk suggests that the often suggested therapy to heal the broken financial service industry, the expulsion of all the psychopaths, gambling- and coke-addicts, fulfills the same psychological desire as waiting for the messiah. It makes the world a simple and tidy place, everything makes sense, and it places the responsibility on others, instead of ourselves. The reality is that we are all complicit to the current situation and the morally bankrupt financial services industry.

We all had a hand in it, buying into the housing boom, not questioning economic returns of more than 7% a year (a double of value in 20 years, which is kind of insane), but also in demanding cheaper gas, cheaper meat, cheaper clothes, etc. Everything is related and the financial services industry is the tip of the iceberg, but below the service lies a deeply corrupt society that we all belong and contribute to. We all get worried because China isn’t achieve more than 7.8% economic growth this year? Do you think that growth is achieved with the amicable involvement of everyone that works for it? Are you fucking kidding me?

We blame coke-addicted traders, but I think we despise them so much because they remind us of our own addiction to growth. We want to eat the sausage, we just don’t want to know how it’s made. Of course, it’s easy to speculate on the cause, but what’s the solution? I don’t know what the solution is, but I do know where it should start; introspection and honesty.

Economy, Ammunition, Gear and Reputation in Shadowrun: Corrosion

Dennis February 8, 2011 No Comments

One of the most difficult challenges with an online game – any online game, browser or otherwise – and to an extent normal games as well, is how to keep the economy under control. When you play monopoly, the amount of money in play is always the same, it just changes hands. When you play a computer game like World of Warcraft or Shadowrun: Corrosion, where you can create money out of nothing by doing missions or quests, it becomes important that the amount of money earned (created) is balanced out by the amount of costs incurred (destroyed.) In Shadowrun: Corrosion, we’re looking at ammunition to help solve that problem.

Ammunition comes in different forms; actual ammunition for weapons like pistols, rifles and bows are the most common types of ammunition. You can buy this ammunition and it depletes whenever you fire your weapon. Not every character will have use of that type of ammunition as shamans and mages can use spells instead, and there’s always the option to duke it out with your fists or with a katana! In essence, these will have an edge over those using ranged weapons, but they’ll most likely suffer more damage as a result of drain and as a result of closing the distance to their opponents, essentially making hospital trips and slap patches more their kind of ammunition. In the end, nuyen is destroyed and the economy remains more balanced.

Balancing the costs and earnings of a character is probably something that’s going to take a lot of effort. Interestingly enough, a game I used to play, The Dead Awaken, a really simple but very addictive and popular browser game where you try to survive in the midst of a zombie plague, had terrible balancing. Inflation was insane, prices sky rocketed, but luckily it didn’t diminish the popularity of the game. Unfortunately, in the case of Shadowrun: Corrosion, I think it’s going to be a lot more important to keep things balanced. Essentially, training is probably going to be the biggest nuyen sink, followed by ammunition in the long run, and then perhaps gear.

Because there’s not that much gear out there that scales with a character’s progression, with the possible exception of Cyberware (regular, alpha-, beta- and deltaware) and spells (force 1, 2, 3, etc.), we were thinking of keeping certain gear bound by reputation constraints. That way it takes a while before you can get your hands on an AK-98 with all the trimmings, putting the emphasis more on weapon modifications. Another thought was to incorporate special weapons. Like Ah Mae Sing’s Colt L36, a special issue L36 with some bonuses, much like they do in Fallout 3.

Getting back to ammunition; the idea is now to make certain ammunition purchasable (regular rounds, gel rounds, etc.) and make certain ammunition purchasable from special vendors or perhaps only something as a reward for performing particular missions. EX Explosive Rounds, adding an extra 2 points of power to a weapon must be something worth putting a little effort in. Running out of ammo in the middle of a mission is going to cost dearly when ghouls tear you apart as your weapon repeatedly goes “click click”. It’s going to be even better when you get ambushed in a PvP fight and they didn’t realise you were packing EX rounds in your Ares Predator and had the Woo Clip modification doubling your ammunition capacity. I see potential. :)

Rising Sun, p. 217

Dennis February 7, 2011 No Comments

“The Japanese say it’s because America has become a land without substance. We let our manufacturing go. We don’t make things anymore. When you manufacture products, you add value to raw materials, and you literally create wealth. But America has stopped doing that. Americans make money now by paper manipulation, which the Japanese say is bound to catch up to us because paper profits don’t reflect real wealth. They think our fascination with Wall Street and junk bonds is crazy.”

What strikes me is that this was written in 1992-1993, and even then it was evident to all those with rudimentary knowledge of macro economics that it was an unworkable situation that would one day come crashing down on us. Fifteen years later, in 2008, several large banks and investment firms are in trouble and are all saying ich habe es nicht gewusst.