NationStates

I've wondered for a while how to suggest this addition to NationStates, and finally remembered the forums.

It probably exists and I just haven't noticed yet, but what if a stock exchange was added as an actual feature of the game and not just a roleplay in the forums?

I've never seen a stock exchange feature. It's probably was a April fool event.

However there is a site that can simulate the stock market with fake money but don't recognize the name.

Seems like a cool idea but... isn't it replicated by trading cards?

Umpus wrote:Seems like a cool idea but... isn't it replicated by trading cards?

Trading cards aren't exactly the same. If you're using the stock exchange, you're looking up companies you know and research or least you try to figure out how to win more money by different strategy. In cards, you can speculate on what card will increase like the future delegate of a certain GCR or boost of popularity of someone, but the knowledge is different.

In 2012, NationStates ran a mini-game for April Fools' Day, which parodied the IPOs of Zynga and Facebook — both of which were big news at the time.

For April Fools' Day 2014, there was a mini-game that parodied the growing interest in cryptocurrencies, three years before Bitcoin’s price went crazy.

The trading card game, a recent permanent feature, started as the theme for April Fools' Day 2018. There were major changes from the original event because of the flaws with the trading system. The flaws resulted in me and Araneidae effectively being paid to accumulate thousands of cards through many nations,* while New Legland was able to price one of their trading cards at over a thousand units to be sure of having the most valuable collection at the end of the original run, whether or not that player had the money to pay for it.

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* In the original run, I and Araneidae placed symbolic ‘buy’ offers for 0.01 in order to get the cards from our puppets in our distribution network. Unlike Araneidae, however, I only placed the buy offers when the transfer actually took place. Later, we would transfer the bank from the puppets by selling unimportant cards for the amount of bank that each puppet had (as a result of disposing the unimportant cards).

It kind of reminds me about of Tesco’s Double the Difference campaign: as originally implemented, Tesco lost a lot of money because their shoppers figured out how to get all the items for free, and get a voucher on top.

Source: https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/ ... ee/1062163

Ahh, so that's what it is for! I remembered that there is this thing called ByteCoin Exchange, which is now in Archives.

viewforum.php?f=34

Conemara wrote:I've wondered for a while how to suggest this addition to NationStates, and finally remembered the forums.

It probably exists and I just haven't noticed yet, but what if a stock exchange was added as an actual feature of the game and not just a roleplay in the forums?

This has been suggested before, and IIRC was rejected because determining the underlying "real" values of the businesses concerned -- which would be necessary for setting initial values (unless every business was, unrealistically, given the same starting value) and for properly "informed" trading -- would be impossible.

I like the idea they could add a few more slots next to leader and capital for National companys, one at the Start and the next one or two could have a population or stock price goal to unlock.

Like if you're company stock goes for $1000 you can unlock a second company.

Plus the starting company worth could be randomized.

Bears Armed wrote:

Conemara wrote:I've wondered for a while how to suggest this addition to NationStates, and finally remembered the forums.

It probably exists and I just haven't noticed yet, but what if a stock exchange was added as an actual feature of the game and not just a roleplay in the forums?

This has been suggested before, and IIRC was rejected because determining the underlying "real" values of the businesses concerned -- which would be necessary for setting initial values (unless every business was, unrealistically, given the same starting value) and for properly "informed" trading -- would be impossible.

The initial values could be randomised using a random number generator.

But I don't know how a stock exchange feature would actually work anyway. I mean, how would one obtain currency to purchase stocks in the first place? I assume there would be some kind of microtransaction thing in place to buy more currency, on top of an additional starting amount provided gratis. If so, then no thanks. It's all starting to sound a bit like gambling.

The New California Republic wrote:

Bears Armed wrote:This has been suggested before, and IIRC was rejected because determining the underlying "real" values of the businesses concerned -- which would be necessary for setting initial values (unless every business was, unrealistically, given the same starting value) and for properly "informed" trading -- would be impossible.

The initial values could be randomised using a random number generator.

But I don't know how a stock exchange feature would actually work anyway. I mean, how would one obtain currency to purchase stocks in the first place? I assume there would be some kind of microtransaction thing in place to buy more currency, on top of an additional starting amount provided gratis. If so, then no thanks. It's all starting to sound a bit like gambling.

I think the curancy comes from the value of your company/ proffet from the stocks you have.

The New California Republic wrote:

Bears Armed wrote:This has been suggested before, and IIRC was rejected because determining the underlying "real" values of the businesses concerned -- which would be necessary for setting initial values (unless every business was, unrealistically, given the same starting value) and for properly "informed" trading -- would be impossible.

The initial values could be randomised using a random number generator.

In which case, with no linkage of values to "real" businesses [as roleplayed, and affected by the stats] in NS nations, would there really be enough of a connection to anything else within NS itself to make it worth inclusion in NS rather than just development -- if anybody feels like doing so -- as a completely separate game?

Christian Confederation wrote:

The New California Republic wrote:The initial values could be randomised using a random number generator.

But I don't know how a stock exchange feature would actually work anyway. I mean, how would one obtain currency to purchase stocks in the first place? I assume there would be some kind of microtransaction thing in place to buy more currency, on top of an additional starting amount provided gratis. If so, then no thanks. It's all starting to sound a bit like gambling.

I think the curancy comes from the value of your company/ proffet from the stocks you have.

But you'd need to have an initial amount of currency to purchase stocks and companies in the first place. Chicken and the egg.

Bears Armed wrote:

The New California Republic wrote:The initial values could be randomised using a random number generator.

In which case, with no linkage of values to "real" businesses [as roleplayed, and affected by the stats] in NS nations, would there really be enough of a connection to NS itself to make it worth including?

To make it fair then probably not, even though I understand that would undermine the point of the whole exercise.

The New California Republic wrote:

Christian Confederation wrote:I think the curancy comes from the value of your company/ proffet from the stocks you have.

But you'd need to have an initial amount of currency to purchase stocks and companies in the first place. Chicken and the egg.

You get one company when you Country is founded, you can have 3 but the next two are unlocked when you're company is worth 1000, and 5000 respectively.

I could have sworn something similar was an April Fool's Joke the year I joined. I joined 10 days after that.

A while back we considered selling shares in The Sands.

For those that don't know, we run casino games weekly via the poll feature. Every quarter, we add up the profit or loss of the players, and the casino. We publish this information in our quarterly report.

The idea was that potential investors could use a discount cashflow model to determine what they thought a fair value would be. That involves estimating what the casino's future profits would be, and choosing an appropriate discount rate.

We would then set up a forum thread devoted to trading Sands shares. Investors could post bid or ask prices. If you wanted to trade at that price, you would quote the post, and match the trade. Once the post had been quoted, noone else could take up that same bid or ask.
You could cancel a bid or ask by deleting your post, as long as you managed to cancel before someone else took you up on it. Each trade would be for a single share only.

One problem would be trying to keep on top of who owned how many shares. Some people might think they'd traded a share, when actually they'd been ninja'd, but hadn't noticed. Another problem was what to do if a shareholder CTEd. What happened to their shares?