With the changes made latery, we believe it's time to call the status of the game as BETA2! During this second BETA stage we will begin marketing the game to increase the playerbase.
We have also added a new city, Los Angeles (USA). These land pieces are now up for auctioning.
Below is a list of the most important changes made since BETA1.
Quoting BETA2 Changelog:
- Added titles based on net worths to players
- Added IPO system for large enough companies
- Added ability to edit company ads
- Added dividends payment system
- Added player groups feature
- Limited bank deposit interest to 1%/day
- Auctioning system for land with no owner and stocks lost by dead players
- Credit rating system for players
- Improved main menu (categorization, dropdowns)
- Increased pace energy is lost to 4% for regular workers
- Introduced energy loss rate of 2% per 30 minutes for some company managing functions
- Added company CEO system
- Added flu system (approx. once a month, lose 20% health and 50% energy)
- Added taxation of land pieces, at a per-country fee
- Adjusted company creation fee
- Included company creation fee to company net worth
- Limited companies' item trading ability to The Exchange only
- Allow shareholders to view financial data
- Showing company debt on company page
- Included items (price from The Exchange) to entity net worths
- Split net worth and market cap for public companies
- Added VIP system (1€/month) (ability to hide ingame ads, hold 10 worker jobs instead of 5, increased friends list limit, see history page networth graph up to 90 days backwards)
If you have any ideas, proposals, reports, don't hesitate to post!
Yours,
MoneyGame Team
P.S. A small note about public companies: their net worth is calculated the same way as private companies now, with a market cap value separately showing the value based on shares. We had to make this change because it was too easy to create artificial stock value via insider trading.
Well done on the changes Gluten, it's shaping up nicely.
However I must say, it seems a little early to start marketing the game to gain a larger playerbase.
Not to say I wouldn't like a larger player base, finally some people to live in my apartments or buy from my shop, but I don't think it's a good idea for the game just yet.
I'm sure you would attract quite a couple players initially, the website is very appealing. However, I doubt you will retain many, if any, players with the current lack of game-play.
Most companies are still useless, no-one will buy the products, because no-one needs them.
Any amount of new players (who will just 'work' initially and then start their own companies) won't solve the lack of demand and only cause a higher supply.
The only influx of money right now is the two jobs at the 'general' companies. Even players with every company and a lot of cash barely earn anything from anything else than jobs. Yet there are many outflows, such as taxes, dead players, purchasing companies, auctions etc.
An economy can only grow by expanding the money supply (central banks mainly do this by expanding debt).
https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/07/central-banks.asp
https://mises.org/blog/does-growing-economy-require-expanding-money-supply
Since games don't have 'real' consequenses it'll be too easy to manipulate debt, thus a real-world scenario sadly wouldn't work.
The best option to grow a simluated economy like this one is by creating demand. Demand for products is strongly needed, and players can't provide this demand alone (more players will only end in more supply rather than demand). Artificial demand is needed, this doesn't have to be complex at first, a simple 'automated' spend x (% of total money supply) amount buying products every x minutes from random store would do the trick at first.
A good aim for progress in games is usually a growth of ~1 to 2 % a day, maybe a little higher to start off, due to the high outflow of money maybe 2-4% would be a good start for this game.
Untill players can progress and this isn't a 'work button simulator' (basically the only thing players earn money from currently) for most players I doubt you will attract a retaining and stable playerbase. Thus marketing would be quite a waste of resources for now.
I really hope you'll address these concerns soon and continue working on improving the game.
You've been doing great lately adding features and fixes to the game.
I'm a new player, with only a measly 73.48 USD to my name, but I plan to stick around for a while to see where these updates lead. I see that the game has so much potential, but it looks like the markets need to be developed more. I just wanted to chime in and say I really agree with XDCD's suggestions and I'm glad you're taking many of his and other's suggestions onboard.
There are a few browser based RPGs that I've had a great time with in the past (HackerForever and NationStates to name a couple) and MoneyGame could easily join them in popularity once it is developed right. Otherwise, it's possible many newbies that see your advertising will join and play for a day, before deciding to not come back. I really hope you keep spending the time building this!
Have you considered open sourcing any components of MoneyGame, or publicizing any interfaces so that others can help out in development?
