Hacker News Reader

Always thought it'd be cool if there was some economic simulation game (simcity, city skylines, etc.) that was tied to real life commodity markets.

View on HN

This often backfires on your game design. Like in escape from tarkov, where booming bitcoin prices made any player with GPUs very rich ingame. (also, tying the weather system to moscow weather led to people being annoyed at the constant rain)

I'd be interested to see someone attempt market manipulation IRL to affect their game though.

Classic Tarkov issue. Real bitcoin ruined the economy for a bit.

Would that make the game less fun?

or would the economy be the fun part of the game, automating and driving down prices?

I think games like factorio, the fun comes from automating and being less of a mental burden.

Real world ecconomics doesn't act like the simplified models in econ 101. Anyone with significant supply is adjusting how much supply they produce based on expected demand to keep prices where they need them. Sometimes someone chooses a lower price to take business from competition, but that is still a complex analysis.

I was thinking a bit like EVE online or Off World Trading Company but using real life stats.

Tying EVE online outcomes to real world markets is a guaranteed way to disrupt real world markets.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com