Flawed game reveals shocking revelation about financial
systems!
A new board game; uses a computer program in conjunction with the board, cash
and player pieces. Game was designed based on a real life model and after we
started playing it the unexpected happened revealing a hidden flaw we never
would have anticipated.
“The Game of Money” is a hybrid of the Monopoly and Life board games many played
when young. Thanks to technology we were able to compliment the game with a way
to do interest calculations and track transactions and produce random “life”
events both beneficial and detrimental
The game starts out with the players rolling dice to see what roles they would
play. One player gets to be the Banker; the other players become property owners
and get a service role like doctor, plumber, energy producer, farmer, insurance
agent etc. So at the start of the game everyone except the banker owns property.
Just like in real life the Central Bank controls the symbol for value exchange
and creates money out of nothing, it is simply an accounting entry in the game
computer, yet still a valid service. Just like in real life the banker charges
interest on the use of the symbol. Services are paid for in game cash, green
backs and large transactions are done electronically just like in real life.
At the beginning of the game all the property owners must put up some property
as collateral and the Banker loans them money to be able to play the game
trading services and trying to develop their land. The winner of the game is to
first to own all the property and have everyone paying you rent. The first thing
we ran into when playing is that it took on average 16 hours of game play to
finish a game.
The second problem was that after playing it 12 times an unchanging pattern
emerged much to our dismay, the Banker always won the game. At first we could
not figure out why this would be. What good is a game if whoever gets to play
the banker wins? So we analyzed the transactions and what we found is that
initially the banker loans all the players an amount of $10,000 each and the
players put up the property they own as collateral. The players each must pay
back 10% interest each time they circle the board and pass the “New Beginning”
space which is like “GO” in Monopoly
The problem with the game design is that the Banker never actually creates the
dollars needed to pay back the interest, providing only the amount of the
principle to the players and this is the only money that is put into
circulation. What happens is the players need to pay back more money than they
have in their combined possession. For example 10 players combined have
100,000.00 but need to pay back 110,000.00.
This is where the real fun of the game starts! If we do the math it is
impossible for the all the players, to pay back the interest owed to the bank So
they start competing with each other fighting over the available money sort of
like musical chairs. So when the music stops and principle and interest is due
invariably one of the players comes up short and loses their collateral (their
property). The game doesn’t end there though because the banker can loan them
money to buy back their property putting them further into debt.
After about 16
hours the bank owns the deed on all board property and all the players are all
deep in debt. We found though that if we continued playing the banker eventually
loses as well because of a transactional mess and hyper inflation. So the Banker
in reality starts out with nothing and ends up with everything and back to
nothing. The most unsettling thing is the game is modeled after real life and
that is why it was a disturbing revelation. We are still thinking that we may
still sell the game as a practical joke. We wonder how long it will take people
to figure out the banker always wins!
The good news is that we figured out a solution to make the game work we
replaced the intangible backed currency units with tangible asset backed
multiple currency type units, one of them based on energy. The new problem is
that none of the players have been able to win after playing the game over 102
hours it may have become a never ending game with no winners or losers, like in
Infinite Play the Movie. I wonder how long people will play the second edition
game before they realize that nobody can win which is the same as saying
everyone wins because they are playing for the fun of play, not to win.
Biochemical
Stress and Feel Good Aids and
Cognitive Enhancers
|
