To all those players who became billionaires, and also to those financial advisors that show how anyone with modest income can become a multimillionaire in a 50-year working lifespan through the miracle of compound interest:
People have been investing in property, stocks, and in interest-earning bank accounts for centuries. Someone starting with $38,000 in 17th or 18th century would be worth trillions or quadrillions today[1], or at least their descendants would be.
So where are those trillionaires and quadrillionaires?
The problem is that over long spans of time (50+ years), there are wars, revolutions, devaluations, confiscations, hyperinflationary periods, and other economic disasters that have wiped out all savings.
There's no reason to assume that these things won't happen again when projecting over long periods.
I'd recommend renaming this to "Show HN" since it appears to be your own. FWIW, it's kind of fun considering how simple it is -- it feels like there's a kernel of a great game here. I found AdVenture Capitalist to be pretty addictive TBH.
In the game you start with 38,000 dollars. For reference at a rate of return of 5.575% [0], this would yield on average 8.6 million after 100 years. I only mention this to give some idea of what the returns on investment are in the long term.
got 3.91B on the first try. Buy as many as you can whenever you think the recession is about to end, and sell at the top of the boom.
What's interesting is that I liked getting into as much debt as possible at all times. At a certain point I got confused and thought my net worth was decreasing because my debt was going from -200 to -25 or so. I then went and got myself into half a billion in debt straight after, and came out a billionaire a few minutes later. I like this game.
Definitely a fun start to a game. Reminds me of Adventure Capitalist and predating that Dope Wars and some similar games. It definitely needs to have independent boom/bust cycles for each city as right now there is no reason to touch most of the mid-priced areas.
Also I think the boom/bust cycles need to be a little bit more volatile. Right now it's far too easy to buy low and sell high as fast as you can click.
Yep, Adventure Capitalist was my inspiration, I was addicted to the game a few months ago and thought it would be nice to do it with real estate. And to challenge my coding skills as well.
My only suggestion would be to somehow mitigate the amount of clicking required at later stages of the game. Perhaps some sort of press and hold functionality.
Hi! I really like your game. However, selling apartments will remove too much playerDebt. If I buy the first apartment in Athens and I sell it one year later, I get from 38k to 47.2k after just one year! There's a similar bug with cancelling mortgage, I think you made a mistake in computing the constant 2.22 in your code.
Thanks for the concern. The logic behind the scenes goes like this:
- You pay 20K for a house.
- You owe 80K + 80K * 2.5% * 40 years. That's your total debt.
- If you want to cancel the mortgage, you must pay 80K, and your net worth will go up because you do not have the 40 year mortgage anymore (even if you just paid 80K).
- If you buy and sell one year after, the same happens with mortgage towards your net worth. In terms of savings, during 1 year you will get approx 600 * 12 rent, -350 * 12 mortgage. That's 3K more. Then your remaining savings will go up 1% (as savings account return) which is around 200. Last, Since it's a boom in the economic cycle, while your debt will have diminished, the value of your house will have increased. So basically you sell the house for more, owe less and that is the result.
This situation is what makes the world go crazy over real estate, become overbought and then, BOOM. Economic crisis.
I got to 8b second try. Get to the most valuable property as soon as possible and then ignore everything else not worth you time/clicks. Then buy as much as you can early in the Boom when prices are lowest. When a Recession starts, start selling everything while the prices are still high. Rinse and repeat. I kept all the debts until the end.
This only really works because the boom/bust cycle is too predictable and consistent, so it really just becomes a 'how fast can you click' game. It would be better if a) more random boom/bust points, duration, and rate of rise/decline, and b) buy and sell in bulk.
I've only played through once, but got 1.66B and felt I could probably get higher pretty easily.
My strategy was to initially buy high/sell low to get net value up so I could purchase higher value properties. By the time I could buy the most expensive properties I had stopped selling anything. Whenever a recession ended I would simply buy as many of the most expensive thing possible before the price raised too much. Similarly I would cancel any debts, and do any maintenance as soon as the bottom of the recession hit. Buying properties seemed to cancel the need to refurbish, but I haven't looked at how complex the logic is so I'm not sure.
Just like the similary addictive classic Drug Wars (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drugwars) game you just have to buy low and sell high which is not so easy in RL.
Buy as many as you can, do nothing else, sell at 2090. Ended with 30 billion net worth.
I have to sell at 2090, because I need to click thousands of times to sell all the estate.
alister|10 years ago
People have been investing in property, stocks, and in interest-earning bank accounts for centuries. Someone starting with $38,000 in 17th or 18th century would be worth trillions or quadrillions today[1], or at least their descendants would be.
So where are those trillionaires and quadrillionaires?
The problem is that over long spans of time (50+ years), there are wars, revolutions, devaluations, confiscations, hyperinflationary periods, and other economic disasters that have wiped out all savings.
There's no reason to assume that these things won't happen again when projecting over long periods.
[1] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%2438000+at+6%25+for+40...
xavils|10 years ago
10.8% would not be unheard of, over a shorter span at least, right?
mmastrac|10 years ago
blazespin|10 years ago
xavils|10 years ago
lambdapie|10 years ago
[0] The average return of S&P500 from 1915 to 2015 according to http://dqydj.net/sp-500-return-calculator/
EDIT: these figures are wrong because they don't include dividends. See thread below.
reddytowns|10 years ago
blazespin|10 years ago
http://www.halfhill.com/inflation_js.html
devin_liu|10 years ago
What's interesting is that I liked getting into as much debt as possible at all times. At a certain point I got confused and thought my net worth was decreasing because my debt was going from -200 to -25 or so. I then went and got myself into half a billion in debt straight after, and came out a billionaire a few minutes later. I like this game.
blazespin|10 years ago
rebel|10 years ago
Also I think the boom/bust cycles need to be a little bit more volatile. Right now it's far too easy to buy low and sell high as fast as you can click.
xavils|10 years ago
I will improve boom/bust soon.
rl3|10 years ago
My only suggestion would be to somehow mitigate the amount of clicking required at later stages of the game. Perhaps some sort of press and hold functionality.
mangeletti|10 years ago
The hilarious part about this is the fact that the clicking represents the time it would take to manage / buy / sell property when you're that rich.
andy_ppp|10 years ago
xavils|10 years ago
altvali|10 years ago
xavils|10 years ago
- You pay 20K for a house.
- You owe 80K + 80K * 2.5% * 40 years. That's your total debt.
- If you want to cancel the mortgage, you must pay 80K, and your net worth will go up because you do not have the 40 year mortgage anymore (even if you just paid 80K).
- If you buy and sell one year after, the same happens with mortgage towards your net worth. In terms of savings, during 1 year you will get approx 600 * 12 rent, -350 * 12 mortgage. That's 3K more. Then your remaining savings will go up 1% (as savings account return) which is around 200. Last, Since it's a boom in the economic cycle, while your debt will have diminished, the value of your house will have increased. So basically you sell the house for more, owe less and that is the result.
This situation is what makes the world go crazy over real estate, become overbought and then, BOOM. Economic crisis.
marianos|10 years ago
consideranon|10 years ago
This only really works because the boom/bust cycle is too predictable and consistent, so it really just becomes a 'how fast can you click' game. It would be better if a) more random boom/bust points, duration, and rate of rise/decline, and b) buy and sell in bulk.
Cogito|10 years ago
My strategy was to initially buy high/sell low to get net value up so I could purchase higher value properties. By the time I could buy the most expensive properties I had stopped selling anything. Whenever a recession ended I would simply buy as many of the most expensive thing possible before the price raised too much. Similarly I would cancel any debts, and do any maintenance as soon as the bottom of the recession hit. Buying properties seemed to cancel the need to refurbish, but I haven't looked at how complex the logic is so I'm not sure.
unknown|10 years ago
[deleted]
unknown|10 years ago
[deleted]
Cogito|10 years ago
1. have the boom/recession cycle independent for each city
2. make the cycle more complex, potentially by adding multiple cycles of different periodicity together (wave addition)
These could be combined to, for example, have long period boom/recession cycles globally, and shorter term local cycles.
Was really fun overall :)
kristianp|10 years ago
sireat|10 years ago
Just like the similary addictive classic Drug Wars (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drugwars) game you just have to buy low and sell high which is not so easy in RL.
empy|10 years ago
blazespin|10 years ago
emsy|10 years ago
xavils|10 years ago
I'm probably biased cause my wife created the music.
gcb0|10 years ago
abvishek|10 years ago