Rock band fantasy stock market

SinisterMinisterX

SinisterMinisterX

Illuminatus
Staff member
http://71.237.68.72/stock/index.php

In this fantasy stock market, you buy stock in rock bands. The object of the game is to build the most valuable portfolio.

The game is currently in testing phase. Users should expect bugs and crashes from time to time. Report these to me by PM.
You can also expect rule changes as I tweak the game. I'll try to keep all the changes posted here.
You may suggest rule changes or any other improvements to me, again by PM.

Create an account by filling in your email, password and nickname. On subsequent logins, you just need the email and password.

You start the game with $500 in cash, and earn another $1 per vote you cast. (That's vote, not ballot - if you vote in all 6 polls on one ballot, that's $6 for you.) So cash is easy to get. Right now, all you cash counts in your portfolio value, but this is planned to change soon (changing to a maximum of $500 cash counting towards portfolio value).

Click on the "buy" button on the right side of the polls to buy a stock. You can buy up to 5 shares in each stock, if you have the cash. You can only own one-third of the different stocks. So with the 12 stocks currently in this test version, you can own up to 4 different stocks, up to 5 shares of each.

Another limitation on stock ownership is that only half the players can own a given stock. I'd like to get 10 beta testers, so this means up to 5 players can own (for example) Iron Maiden stock. In other words, watch the list of users below your portfolio. When it gets bigger, it means that a stock may have become available to you that was not available before.

After each buy or sell transaction, the price of a stock changes slightly. It goes up a nickel after each share bought, or down a nickel after each share sold.

You cannot vote in polls if you own one or both of those stocks. You only get to influence the market for other stocks, while other voters influence the prices of stocks you buy.
You do not have to buy any stocks to vote in the polls. And because of the ownership limits, there should usually be some open polls you can vote in.

At the conclusion of each poll, a stock's price is adjusted depending on how well it did in the poll. The polls are not decided by simple majority. A more expensive stock is expected to get more votes. Each stock has a secret number of votes it must reach to win. Polls are run in rounds of 6 polls at a time. The next round of polls will not be started until all polls in the previous round are closed.

Known bugs:

At the conclusion of a round of polls, the game may generate a screen with no polls and possibly an error message. Just refresh your browser, and it will be fixed.

The list of portfolio values below your portfolio may be wrong - check what is listed for you portfolio there, and if it is different from the value given just above, then most of the values there are wrong by the same amount. (Example: if your portfolio is cut by half in the list, then most others are too.) An exception: portfolios of cash only (no stock) appear to be correct at all times. So the amounts may be wrong, but your ranking should be approximately correct.

Right now, there are some inactive features of the site which are being debugged. I need you to play the game so I can gather data to debug them. When I can get the bugs fixed, you'll get graphs to track your portfolio or various stocks over time, and information about how stocks perform against each other in the polls.
 
I too, but I'm trying to understand the rules
there are some words I don't understand and I don't want to be poor as soon as it starts  ::)
 
Thanks to those who have helped test the game so far. Here's a quick update...

The data I needed to debug the next features of the game has been collected, and those features should be activated tomorrow.

Tomorrow I will activate a "soft cap" on cash - if you have $500 cash or more, then voting will not get you more cash. If you have less than $500, you will gain $1 per vote.

Also tomorrow, I will remove the restriction about voting on your own stocks. You'll be able to vote in all active polls at all times. You'll be able to "cheat" to your heart's desire. This is not what I desire for a permanent improvement, but just an experiment to see how it affects the game.

In the first post, I said to PM me with ideas for improvements. That is no longer true - if you have such an idea, please post it here so we can all discuss it. This thread is now a place for some communal game design. (However, please continue to use PM to send me bug reports, including a copy of any error messages you see.)

LC has stated his intention to come up with "a more complex formula" to improve the game. Don't be afraid to propose rule changes which could drastically alter the game. If your idea is better than mine, I'm open to it. But there is one general principle which holds true: good games are often simple. I am not going to introduce complexity unless it makes the game more fun.

When you're thinking how to improve the game, focus your thoughts on fun. Say to yourself: "what do I wish I could do in this game right now"? Even corrupt and underhanded ideas are good - after all, there's corruption in real stock markets too.

Once again, thanks to all who have played so far. We could still use about 4 more beta testers -  so if you haven't played yet, read the first post in this thread again to get the link and rules.
 
Here's what I was thinking.

vT=(va+vv+vt+vp+vu-vs)

Where:
T= total value
va= value of album
vv= value of votes
vt= value tour
vp= volume purchased
vu= value user input
vs= volume sold

va=a1+a2+a3....
whereas a1=as*(0.00001/ny-yr)
where as=album sales
ny=next year
yr=year released

translates to 1 dollar per 100,000 units moved
 
I have to say I don't particularly like the possibility of voting more than once in a poll.  In my opinion it makes the game too fast-paced.  Last night I was on and off the game for almost an hour, and I found that the best way to make money is simply to be present and buy stocks as soon as you see the band is going to win a poll.  This makes the game very fast, as the polls can cycle through very quickly and you make the best money by making the choices at exactly the right moment.  

While this is all well and good, it doesn't really offer as much value to someone who only checks once or twice a day (probably most people).  There is no gradual increase in the value of your stocks and they can literally fall overnight.  I realised this last night and therefore sold all my valuable stocks when I quit, and bought some low-value stocks.  There's no sense in holding valuable stocks for extended periods of time (as in, even for a day) as they can just as easily come down in the next poll (and will, since everyone votes against it to drop its value because they can't have it).  

In effect, the value of stocks wildly fluctuates, with the speed determined by how fast the polls are completed (and therefore how many people are online at the moment).  There seems to be a slight value boost to the more popular bands (Megadeth and Rainbow have been going strong quite consistently), but it's quite minor and even those stocks can and will drop.

So perhaps the amount of ballots cast in a poll should be limited?  Maybe to once every half an hour or something?  This way no one could spam much (especially if you can vote for your own stocks), and the game would at least slightly slow down until we get more players.

P.S. Maiden is going strong. :p
 
OK. I've been doing some thinking about all that...

LC: while that's an interesting idea, I won't put things like album or tour values into the share value. Why not? Because it's more work. Research and calculation to get the right numbers, and more to keep it updated. This is a game. I'm not looking for a hugely time-consuming project here. But what exactly did you mean by "value user input"? You account for votes and sales elsewhere - what other input is there, or should there be?

Invader: I think you have some important concerns, and I agree with just about every word in your post. So here's one idea that has crossed my mind...
I do want to reward those who can visit frequently and keep updating their stocks to best advantage. But how to do that without penalizing the once-a-day players?

6-hour cycles.

Each poll runs for 6 hours, each player can vote once, not in polls where you own a stock. Most people can easily visit once or twice a day for a minute or two - and three shouldn't be too hard for those so inclined.

Polls that get 0 votes are discarded. Polls that get votes will result in stock price changes. There will be no limit on number of votes within the time window (except the obvious that it's the same as the number of players).

How's that sound? (Be aware, it would take me a few days to get that running - so unlimited voting will be active for a while.)
 
I like that idea.  It means polls aren't held up by a lack of players but people can still play quite actively.  :)
 
Well, for me, it comes to a point where user input should guarantee infinite returns.  It's *too* simple for me right now, and there's no real way to guarantee futures other than to buy and hope people vote lots for your stock holdings.
 
Two things I'd like to address...

1. As promised, I will shortly open the voting so that everyone can vote in every poll. This gives you the ability to cheat, and vote for stocks you hold. I ask all players to voluntarily restrict your own voting to no more than once every five minutes. Three reason. 1 - minimize the inevitable cheating. 2 - give everyone a fair chance to vote. My server blocks you out if someone else is voting, and we want to minimize blocks. 3 - The game has to move at a pace where I can observe what's going on, for debugging reasons. We can play briskly, but not insanely fast.

2. I want to tell you all about what inspired this stock market - it may help to indicate what I want this game to become.

Back in 2000, there was a fantasy stock market like this, but for USA pro sports. It was called Wall Street Sports - the company who now runs the site is totally different, though.

That game was based on expectations of athlete's performances. Consider a baseball player. Based on analysis of past performance, he might be expected to hit 1.6 hits per game.

Now you watch the game. If he gets 2 hits, he has beaten his target, and his stock will gain value. All stock adjustments are done the next morning. So there's a buy run on that athlete's stock, driving up the price as it happens.

Thus the game had a daily cycle, with the best portfolio at the end of each month winning a prize.

But rock bands don't have daily real-world predictable events like that. So the predictable events here are the polls.


So to LC:
"...there's no real way to guarantee futures other than to buy and hope people vote lots for your stock holdings."
Yes, exactly, that was my idea. I agree it needs improvement.

But - I still don't understand what other type of "user input" we could use to "guarantee infinite returns". Do you have a more specific idea in mind?
 
I do want to reward those who can visit frequently and keep updating their stocks to best advantage
Click to expand...

lets' see what happens to life; once we are investing in something we can't let it go and if we do,
then our investement drifts away -so yes, it has to be a kind of "punishment" not from the administrator
but from the game itself -just as in real life
 
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