Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

Website revamp(s) incoming

Posted on February 15, 2013

It never rains but it pours. Tons of stuff that I’ve been lining up for aggggeeesss is all about to happen at once. In the not too distant future, there will be a new look not only for Positech’s home page, but also this blog. I know both sites look a bit rubbish. They are one step away from someone’s geocities homepage. It’s a bit sad really…

For a self-confessed business and stats-junkie like me, this brings painful confessions, because there is no easy way for me to be able to say in six months that ‘getting my websites redesigned gave me a ROI of 14.23% due to the increased sales thanks to the pro-look of the site’. Nobody ever emails you to say they had considered buying Democracy 2, but only decided to do it once the background graphics of my blog looked more professional. There is no way to quantify this stuff except by gut feeling.

The best way I can look at it is to say ‘I make $X. I should spend $Y of that on making sure my company store front looks good, and is well promoted’. It seems to be working so far.

In actual gamedev-related news, work continues on Democracy 3. I have been working on a much better financial model for government debt. In the old game, it was rubbish because you just accrued more and more debt at a fixed interest rate, and it it went beyond a fixed debt-ceiling, you got thrown out of office immediately and the game ended. That was partly because back when Democracy 2 was made, the idea that any western government could even get close to defaulting on their debt, even enough to seriously affect the interest rate for their debt…was laughable.

OH HOW THINGS CHANGE…

Democracy 3 will be much cooler. There is an equation that relates the level of debt to GDP of a country to the ‘riskiness’ of it’s debt as perceived by the bond market. This gets assessed behind the scenes and the countries credit rating is calculated. If it drops, there is a short term ‘shock’ effect on the market, as well as a rise in interest rates. It’s all rather cool :D That means that the finance page for the game can now show you the global economy in a graph, along with the current debt interest rate and credit rating, and debt/GDP ratio. GDP in this case is kinda fudged (it’s a fixed range, which is multiplied by the GDP value from the game), but it all works pretty well, and is a huge improvement.

 

Democracy 3: Capital Gains Tax

Posted on February 12, 2013

I’m mulling the possibility of a capital-gains tax policy for Democracy 3. The key thing is to get the effects of such a policy right.

I’m thinking it makes broad sense to link the money raised by the tax to GDP. The better the economy, the more the tax will raise. I also wonder if it’s worth making this a relationship that skews upwards, so when the economy is really poor, CGT brings in nothing, but when it’s really booming, it should bring in a bunch, as clearly the equity market and asset values should be going up.

Regarding it’s effects, I reckon CGT would represent a drag on the economy to some extent. Why invest all my money in a country with a high CGT if it takes a chunk of my profits, rather than a country with no CGT? For the same reason, I assume it should also upset capitalists a bit, and the wealthy especially, who are the only actual voters who will lose out financially from it.

Socialists should love it, as it is a brake on inequality, and effectively a tax on the rich. I think the self-employed 9think small business owners) should dislike it because it potentially cripples the income they take from their business through dividend payments and eventual exit strategy stuff.

In gameplay terms, does this differ that much from corporation tax? possibly not by much, although CGT should possibly be more unpopular with the wealthy and more popular with the socialists, as it is a far more direct attack on what some people would call ‘unearned income’.

Anything I’ve missed? Apart from the existential hell of coming up with an icon that automatically makes people think ‘Capital gains tax’

On a related note, this makes interesting viewing (UK data):

CGT Doesn’t bring in much cash, in the grand scheme of things. Also makes you realize just how trivial the climate change levy is right now.

The psychological value of ownership, and how free to play games use it.

Posted on February 11, 2013

Hi all, I’m back! I’ve also been reading. Despite the lure of watching Aaron Sorkins ‘newsroom’ on the plane, I also found time to read most of this book:

fastslow_
You can read about it on amazon here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0141033576

It’s pretty cool, but the bit that really stuck in my head was the bit about an experiment I’d read about before, but not fully grasped the implications of. It’s to do with ownership. In a nutshell, the tests ask a bunch of people to value something they do not possess, but are shown, such as a mug or a bar of chocolate. Different people are then given the item in question, and possess it for a while, during which they can see it, but are distracted by other tasks. Those people are then asked what their selling price is for the item. Overwhelmingly, people value the item they own much higher than the value people gave to it when asked to buy it.

In short, owning something makes it seem more valuable. Which is understandable, we want to appear rational. I know my car must be a bargain, and worth > X (where X was what I paid), otherwise I’d be a gullible idiot, and I don’t want to feel that…

So…relating that back to 2 topics I obsess over… the popularity of Free To Play Games and the price wars and low prices of non-free games…

Free to play works because it doesn’t ask you to value the game until you already feel you own it. How much would you pay for farmville to buy it outright? maybe $5? But play the game for free for a month, build up your farm, invest it, and then hit a plateau in the game where you really need to buy coins to continue…. and suddenly YOUR game is worth a lot more than $5. You value the game you already own very highly, and so buying add-ons for it is just common sense. I suspect this is why DLC works so well, and sells so well. You have already made a commitment to valuing the game, by investing your time. Only a fool could try to rationalize NOT spending money on it now…

Food for though.

Away for THREE weeks. OMG etc.

Posted on January 21, 2013

I never go away from positech towers for very long normally, but circumstances are such that I will be away for three weeks. That’s a very long time for me, and I will have to find a way to check email at least once to watch out for any “have a billion dollars if you reply today!” emails from wealthy and delusional publishers.

I am like a hungry animal wanting to work on games at the best of times, but I’ll probably be even worse by the time I make it back, at which point my calendar tells me all manner of things that have been brewing for ages start happening and it will be work,work,work and busy,busy,busy.

roos

Unlike most geeks, I never take a laptop or ipad on holiday with me, and even my phones net capability is something I never use, it being frankly more hassle and annoyance than use anyway. I think it’s good to switch off now and then. Hopefully positech will still exist when I get back in three weeks time. That’s the beauty of internet companies, you don’t have to physically close a store or turn away business. I anticipate some angry emails from people who ask for download links re-sending who don’t get a reply for three weeks but I bet that’s a quicker response time than EA/Activision anyway :D

See you next month.

Democracy 3 : simulating the private sector

Posted on January 18, 2013

Sooo… One of the drawbacks of Democracy 2‘s model was that it only really accounted for public sector pensions, housing, schools and hospitals. This was unrealistic and I’m fixing it in Democracy 3. In D2, if the state didn’t provide schools, people were illiterate. You don’t need to be Ron Paul to be convinced that it isn’t as clear-cut as that. So how am I planning to fix that?

Democracy 3 has policies (things the player chooses to implement, or not, and adjust) and also ‘simulation values’, just like D2 did. A simulation value is basically a statistic, something that arises out of the simulation and which you have zero control of. Pollution levels are one example. Literacy (a catch-all for general educational level) is another. In Democracy 2, a player couldn’t change the literacy level, but they could implement various state policies that would indirectly affect it, like state schooling.

Democracy 3 has the literacy level stat, and also a private schools stat. By default, private schools are at a certain level (tied to GDP, and therefore the general level of wealth), and they have the same effect (roughly) on literacy as state schools do. However, they have effects public schools don’t, such as a reduction in lower and middle incomes. This is because those values represent ‘disposable’ incomes for those groups, and having to pay for private schools eats into that. The truly wealthy laugh off mere school fees, so it’s not an issue for them. Also, unlike state schools, the private schools don’t reduce inequality, or boost state employees and trade unions, and they keep capitalists, rather than socialists happy.

icons_privateschools icons_stateschools

Now let’s revisit state schools. they work exactly as they used to, except they have an effect on private schools. The more you spend on public schooling, the less private schools there are. In effect, the better the state schools are, the less people are prepared to empty their pockets for private education, which makes sense.

So hopefully, the net result of this is a system where either approach (laissez faire or state intervention) can get you decent schooling, but you have to pick how to handle it. The state schools have to be paid for, which will mean cuts elsewhere or higher taxes. The private schools are paid for by people direct, but they can cause problems of inequality (with knock-on impacts on crime etc), and the people will need more money left in their pockets to pay for it (lower taxes). To further enhance the whole area, I could introduce policies which gave tax-credits for private education, which would allow me to keep private schooling afloat during a recession. Maybe a system of state scholarships could reduce inequality and compensate for private schools as the only option? (technically this is tricky).

Obviously this is a VAST simplification of the real world, but I think it’s far closer to reality than the Democracy 2 system. My plan has pensions, housing and healthcare working the same way.

Thoughts?