Business And Economy Archive
Thread: SWG Stock Market
Keltrien wrote:
I've been thinking about a stock market for a long time now.
I think the best way to do it would to create a commodities market. The stocks would be units of resources. If you had the top 20 resources on the market and had some way to deliver market info on each resources (scarcity, who uses it, how rare it is), players could buy and sell shares of the resources. You make it valuable by allowing players to take ownership of their resources at any point, but strongly recommending that people who play the game keep them in the system.
It's on my plate of things I might do this year. It'd take a website with some crafty coding.
In another game I played ATITD (A Tale In The Dessert) they had this system instead of money. There was no money made in-game, the players made it themselves : a central "bank" gave you a note that sais "1.000 PN" if you gave them 100 of 3 resources. Everyone with such a note could go to the bank and say "here is a note, gimme the resouces", but people rarely did.
But we don'tneed a system like this, because we got in-game money.
I played with the idea to make "RIS-notes" : 1.000 RIS would be worth 1GDK scale, 1 Gurh king hide and 1 Woolamander bone, but after asking around no-one was intrested, so... Even at the contrary, people didn't like the idea, because it would draw away the resources from the market since the bank had to keep them in-stock.
. Probably way too complex to ever implement, though.
IntoTheGarbage wrote:
The main reason to incorporate (other than the tax incentives which obviously don’t apply) is the infusion of cash from investors. Any crafter who can run a successful business in SWG will already have a huge credit surplus and so would have no reason to incorporate.
Absolutely correct.
I love the idea of new features intended to promote advanced economic activity in SWG. But a stock market just isn't something that's necessary enough to require implementation, and that's because -- as IntoTheGarbage said -- stock markets exist to support capital formation,which simply isn'tnecessary in SWG because it's so amazingly easy for an individual to make lots of money. (This is different from the real world, where individuals with no connections or collateral generally have to work hard for many years to obtain lots of money.)
It's the same reason SWG doesn't have (or need) banks. Banks thrive by lending large sums ofmoney to people who want to create or grow their business... but when everyone can make plenty of money purely through their own action, who needs banks? Why pay interest to acquire money for capital investment when you canvery nearlypick up money off the ground for free?
It's also true that even if you could get large quantities of money, what would you invest it in that could offer a good chance of a positive return on that investment? Plant [i.e., harvesters] is easy to acquire on your own after a little work, and SWG doesn't support intellectual capital [i.e, inventing new items] -- so what's the point of systems such as banks or stock markets whose function is to promote investment in these forms of capital?
Again, I don't have a problem with adding new economic features to SWG. This is a game -- if enough people feel that having a stock market would be fun, that would be fine by me.
It just isn't the most useful economic feature we could add.
--Flatfingers
Flatfingers wrote:
-- as IntoTheGarbage said -- stock markets exist to support capital formation,which simply isn'tnecessary in SWG
Please refer to me as "IntoTheGarbageChuteFlyboy," 
That name was so cool, but I really hate the shortened version of my name.
/bow
/thank
Message Edited by IntoTheGarbage on 01-20-2005 11:44 AM
IntoTheGarbageChuteFlyboy wrote:
Please refer to me as "IntoTheGarbageChuteFlyboy,"
Consider it done. 
--Flatfingers
- Rebel Pilot 4/4/4/3
elmomcelroy wrote:
I like the idea of creating some kind of banking system [other than just to store credits]. Another idea in the "banking" world might be: loansharking a smuggler and a merchant get together to loan people money for intrest.... if you dont pay your dues .... player bounties
The problem is whats really required would be a combination of these ideas. a functioning bank that could generate money based on a fluxuating stock market. they take your money, invest it, and generate interest from it. players with a bit of moeny to spare can invest directally in the stock market, but the risk is greater. lastly, smugglers could loan large amounts to people and contract dues out to bounty hunters, who then take the money and gamble or invest....
boom, instant economy.
OdiousEncounter wrote:
Even cooler would be to invest in player companies. I'd love to invest in some of the top crafters on my server, and it could be interesting to sell stock in my new Shipwright buisness
Well actually this could be player implemented easily. The problem is what purpose the investment would have and how do you prevent fraud? Player companies and top crafters are probably not hurting for money. One of the prime commodities in the game are lots. It can be argued about the detrimental effect of lot trading, but that obstacle is diminished by the lack of mobility and thus usefulness of lot trades.
I have seen quite a few player companies, though player co-ops are more common.
Perhaps there should be way to lease lots or vendors from the game itself and eliminate lot trades. That could possibly create a need for investment, if the fees were high.
Commodities markets I think are too useless in this game. And there are far too many types of resources. It's not like you're buying copper certificates. You've got codoan, thallium, platinite, polysteel, mythra, and beyrillus to name a few. Sounds complicated. And updating a board with the available of each type of copper and each spawn of copper seems daunting.
Trust mechanisms are built into bank tipping, vendor purchases, vendor sales, bazaar sales, and the like. Trust mechanisms between people aren't very well developed, unless you consider fraud tickets to CSRs a good mechanism.
), you aren't doing your job . I see jedi running around the graveyard all the time. Comon, lets try to keep the graveyard a sacred place for the solo swordsman 
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