Corpshare Stock Market
A way to have a stock market that doesn't break game

However, a stock market is still useful in multiple cases. I'm going to outline the general plan for the Corpshare Stock Market below. This is JUST THE PLAN. We haven't implemented all of this and it is not, at the time of this post, available in character other than stock tickers which will SHOW the price of a stock. There is no way to currently purchase/sell CorpShares.

Goals

The goals of the system are straight forward:

- Create a game within the game that allows corporate players to have a reason to plot and plan together or against each other with a monetary prize at the end

- Make the system resilient to abuse

- Integrate the system with many aspects of corporate culture (stock tickets everywhere, SIC announcements, share price being a reflection of corporate standing)

- Add a new layer to corporate play that opens up new avenues for recurring RP and plots

- Allow the plots that GMs or players run to have a visible effect on the game world and on people in the game (those invested in stock trading).

Share Price Fluctuation

The share price of a corp will fluctuate based on in game systems to a degree. These changes will be similar to real world changes one might see in stock prices. Buying stock may cause it to go up while mass sell offs will cause it to go down. In general, the system will determine the overall trends in a corporation's share price, with inputs from the players and GMs having an additional effect on the share price. This means there will always be SOME fluctuations in share price that are not attributed to player or GM interactions, and are just the system determining NLM should go down a bit while VS should go up a bit, on top of any other IC inputs.

RP Opportunities

Imagine some of these scenarios taking place across the corporate landscape and the ramifications they might have on all aspects of corporate interactions (involving corpsec, affecting share price, creating rp):

- A player hires a mixer to kidnap a high ranking exec for a rival corp then makes sure that information is leaked

- A player hires someone to molotov the office of a corp

- A player leaks a new product launch to someone in another corp for a price

- Players soliciting info on corp dealings from each other

- Share price being a badge of honor/dishonor among corpies

- Players within a corp working together to do things that will raise their share prices

GMs leaking stock tips to players at various corps based on plots, friendliness w/ NPCs, charisma, etc. These tips might be legit, or they might be fake.

- Players leaking stock tips to purposefully manipulate the market 'NLM has a new show coming out soon that is testing really well' even though NLM does not.

- This could even be integrated with the $chatter system so people can purposefully push out fake or legit stock tips to $chatter, similar to what we discussed with the ability to spread rumors through bartenders

- A player/group of players setting up a stock tip network where you can get stock tips from someone who understands the market really well, or who is really well connected.

- Players paying attention to news articles, and goings on around the city as they could have an impact on share prices

- WJF being bribed to fuck with people/corps

- WCS being bribed to fuck with people/corps

Things that might affect share price

- Corporate acquisitions

- Corporate mergers

- New Products / Releases

- Kidnappings

- Terrorist Attacks

- World Events

- Data Leaks

- Espionage

- Theft

- Buying shares

- Selling shares

- Hiring

- Firing

- Good / Bad PR

GM Controls

The GMs (non-SGM) will have mechanisms to affect the stock price of a corporation. This will be similar to how faction rankings work, but more obfuscated. Instead of choosing to raise the share price by a specific amount, they will choose an event that has happened (data leak! kidnapping! terrorist attack! new product release!) which will then have an affect on the share price. This system has the potential to be integrated with $chatter as well as Grid 3.0 news posts, so that auto-generated news articles and chatter entries can be pushed out.

Events

We will create a command that allows GMs to create new events so the system can be expanded dynamically. This may involve general events that apply to all corps and specific events that apply only to a specific corp.

There will be system events which are automatically triggered by the system to simulate real world market activity (good pr, bad pr, new product release, product failure, recalls, etc).

Then there are GM events which can be in response to plots (terrorist attack, bad PR, kidnapping), or player actions (really popular NLM tv show, corporate defection, etc).

Stock Tips

We will implement a system in which $chatter has stock tips available through specific NPCs behind a money or charisma gate of some sort.

We will also provide a system where by GMs can provide stock tips to players through RP. Of course, both these systems will have some 'fake' stuff in them too.

YOU CANT MAKE MONEY OFF THIS DIRECTLY

To solve the problem of making money directly off the market, we aren't building this out as a system you can profit from directly and infinitely. Instead, corporate employees have the potential to get bonuses based on how well they do playing the corpshare market.

Quarterly Bonuses

Each quarter, before the quarterly reset, a ranked list of the most profitable CorpShare accounts will be created on a per corp basis. Quarterly bonuses will be paid out based on the rankings. These are STATIC bonuses, for example 50k (just an example, amount may change) for the TOP earner at each corp, 25k for the second best, 10k for third, 5k for 4th, etc. We can tweak these numbers so they are appealing to the people playing.

Quarterly Reset

Each quarter the value in each CorpShare account, including any owned shares, is zeroed out. Allowing for a fresh start to the quarter, with everyone on the same page.

Expected Progression / Play Style

There will be many different types of people 'playing' the market, including NPCs, who will automatically make trades with varying degrees of success / skill. The is an OPT IN system. No one working at a corporation will HAVE to take part. There is no penalty for doing nothing. In fact, you could do nothing and still win, if everyone else sucks really bad and simply holding on to your original shares nets the biggest gain.

Aggressive Traders

These traders will take their CorpShares and sell them right away, turning their shares liquid so they can buy shares in other corporations that they hope will rise in value so they can sell those and buy more shares in other corporations. They will make connections at other corporations and trade information back and forth in hopes of climbing the rankings. They may even pay people flash for this info, or, pay folks to take actions that may negatively or positively affect the share price of a specific corporation, so they can profit.

Non-Traders

These people will not interact with the system much if at all. They will just leave their CorpShares untouched. That doesn't mean they can't win or profit though. Some aggressive traders are going to lose their shirts in this system and that means that the non-traders and NPCs will be in the running for winning some bonuses each quarter. Non-Traders can focus on doing things that increase their corporations standing, so their own share prices go up.

Fairness

Because any corp employee can own shares in any corp, it reduces the risk of people claiming unfairness when it comes to GM run plots that affect share prices. Just because NLM stock goes down does not mean every NLM employee is punished. Those in the know at NLM may have sold their shares before the event took place.

Only for Corpies?

This system will only be available to CORPORATE employees. Anyone else looking to get involved will have to get involved as someone who trades tips, or helps make changes in stock prices happen for a profit.

Next Steps

The corpshare market has been created, as have corpshare events, and stock tickers. The market is currently running and share prices will begin to change over time. I won't go into a ton of the details about how the system works. Imagine it works somewhat similar to a real stock market, only the events are 'scripted' to an extent by the system, with additional events added in by the GMs based on plots / players actions.

The next step is to create the corpshare terminals that allow for selling/trading by corporate employees. This will be coming in the next couple of weeks / months as I hash out that part of the system.

Following that will be $chatter integrations.

I welcome feedback/thoughts/questions.

-- S

Each corp will grant its employees a set of corpshares each quarter. This will be the same across all corps (at least that is the current plan). Meaning everyone will start at the same spot as everyone else.

This is great. ♡

This will make the game world feel so so much bigger topside. Fucking up will now carry very real consequences and wins will feel much bigger. It'll be a great way to get the admin feedback I know I want in a way that's ic.

Explain your idea to me. I am trying to imagine it.

Make people move to the stock exchange location, so that they get out of their cubes.

I think three places to the right of the decimal point would be plenty.

@villa No, it is not fully implemented yet. It's a WIP for the time being as I've had to shift focus to other areas of the game that needed my attention. I'll shift back when time allows.

The markets move slow. Changes happen over days, not hours. You don't need to be around all the time to get info and play the markets. And again, that isn't the point of the system. It's here to provide a backdrop for RP. Bragging rights to the corp with the highest stock. And it resets every three months so that the playing field is level. There is no requirement to get in and play if you don't want to.

The admin review player generated events/actions on a weekly basis and use them to generate market events that have positive and negative effects.

I'm a well-connected agent at NLM, and I'm running a plot to retrieve some competitor tech. My contact the mixer was able to take possession of the SK McGuffin through violence. Everybody at work thinks they're going to give it to me and SK's going to scream with rage. I spread this rumor relentlessly, that we're about to learn the secrets of this breakthrough artistry chrome. My coworkers are all loading up on NLM corpshares.

At the last second, I instruct my contact to sell it on the side to Saedor instead. I blame the filthy treacherous mixers, but secretly I knew this was going to happen. I bought SK as soon as the item was secured. I laugh maniacally and light a cigar.

This player should be rewarded for manipulating things, probably a lot more than somebody boringly trading momentum every day. But a couple things are needed for that to happen:

- The timing of the corpshare price change should coincide with the moment SK makes it public that they have recovered their item. Ideally that's immediate, and GMs with plots should be empowered to set things in motion at the time of the event.

- On the other hand, if GMs meet and trigger events weekly, then they should make sure SK only announces their grand victory (and NLM bosses their "how did this happen") after the event is triggered.

- The amount of the price spike has to deliver more for the manipulator and their chums in that single moment than they would've made on a "watch trends" strategy.

1. I think at the current state of the corpshare meta, it is extremely difficult to catch up if you are not one of the leaders. This creates a strong disincentive to play if you either come in late or make the wrong decision and fall off. You are essentially waiting for one of the leaders to make a mistake.

2. Success in CorpShare is pretty disconnected from your company's success. If your rival corp is doing well, what matters is that you recognize the trend. Also, more often than not it is an NPC company which is the best performer at any given moment.

Now, in terms of improvements -- several have already been suggested, and I have an idea or two of my own:

DECREASE CYCLE TIME

Like has been said elsewhere, decreasing the cycle time would make the 'reset' come faster and allow more people to participate. This seems like a no brainer

TRADING WINDOWS

Several people have proposed allowing a limited number of trades per week. There are some implementation issues a little bit to this; setting up a portfolio requires multiple trades, so it probably does make sense to call it a 'window'; during that 1-hour window, you can make as many trades as you want, but you only get somewhere between 1 and 3 windows a week.

To be honest, I'm not confident that trading windows would have the effect people think they would, though. I think the always-watching data driven players would have the same basic edge they have today -- they'd be waiting for the right moment to switch stocks and then would trade. Success in CorpShare doesn't come that much from moving your stocks around multiple times a week; instead, it comes from moving stocks the moment the trends seem to shift, and that isn't going to be addressed by trading windows.

NEW IDEA: GRADUATED REWARDS

I think it would be a strong incentive for more people to participate if -everyone-, not just the leaders, saw a profit incentive from playing. Right now, all corporate citizens get a portfolio worth 10000 cred at the start of a cycle. I think giving prizes to the leaders is still a good idea, but what I would propose is this:

1. Decrease the amount of the 'leader' prizes by some percentage -- perhaps 20 percent for the leader and a little more for #2 and #3, so that they become 80k/45k/25k or something like that, though there are arguments for other numbers.

2. Award anyone who plays corpshare a bonus based on how much they improve their stock over the course of the cycle. If prizes are reduced by roughly 20 percent, I would make this as a percentage of 20k.

Imagine the leader ends the cycle with an account balance 15000 credits. She takes home 20k from 'earnings', plus her prize. The second place person ends, perhaps, with 14500 credits -- 96% of the leader, so the second place takes home 19.2k + their prize, The third place person has 14000 credit -- around 93% -- so takes home 18.6k+their prize.

The #4 person, however, with 13500, has earned 90% of what the leader did, and so they take home 18k -- now a strong incentive for them to compete, even if they don't get the full payoff of an MVP prize, and so on down the line.

This system would leave the leaders with roughly the same prize payouts (#1 would get 100k, #2 would get around 60k, and #3 would get around 40k), but it would mean that suddenly even if you are out of the MVP prizes you have a reason to play the market -- and also, if you are hired mid-cycle, you still have a reason to play the market.

I think this would strongly encourage participation, which in turn might start to make some of the other things (paydata, etc) flow more rather than it being just the top three people crunching numbers.

I'm not sure what would encourage me to come back to playing in CorpShare. I'm not even interested in the gossip of who's in the lead.

I think the problem, in my eyes, isn't the time invested or anything like that, but rather, the inability to plot from it. It's more of a funnel for plots to go into and pile up until they pay out to some people. Maybe that's fun to some people, but I'd rather spend my time on more character-driven pursuits.

Presumably, as automated trading continues its upward trend, the real-life stock market will eventually be as profit-stagnant as the bond market already is. This is also because of automated trading, but the math is easier, thus it has already narrowed to the point it has.

All of this is to say, that by 2106, trading stocks for large profits may be on outdated and unrealistic endeavor.

Food for thought.

Cheek aside, very fair.

Maybe making the swings small, proportionately makes it boring and makes the predictions less useful. I am going to look at adding a volatility setting to corpshare, something I can adjust. Like 2x would mean any change let's say it was going to raise or lower the price, would be doubled so 1.0 becomes 2.0. 2.0 becomes 4.0, etc. A normal volatility of 1 would mean whatever the change is is just applied directly.

Then we can tool around with the volatility until the numbers are shifting in such a way as to be more visible and fun. That, coupled with Macguffin system, maybe make the system more fun to mess with it for players.

So I wanted to bring up some ideas because I still don't think the corpshare system is much more than a numbers crunching game. And I think a way to revitalize it would come in a two fold system with major key points.

1. Cut the system into two parts.

a). significant bonuses for all employees of the 'winning' corporation, regardless if they participate in the terminal function of the corpshare market. A winning corporation is the corporation whose stock market makes the most gain and impact in consumerism/public relations. Put the majority of chyen bonuses into this rather than the 'winners' of the terminal portion of the corpshare exchange.

b) keep the corprshare exchange, significantly reduce monetary winnings to maybe 20-25% of current winnings or offer other types of winnings like temporary perks/benefits, special treatment packages from corporations, etc.

2. We've got PRI as an option for employment but not in the traditional standard corporate citizen mold. But, I think by allowing PRI employees to get bonuses in the same sense of the above mentioned point 1.A, it would include Red sector more in a revitalized corpshare market. Should the bonuses for these employees be as much as standard corporate citizens? From a theme standpoint, no, the topside PRI employees (the ambient population) would take the chunk of the winnings, but the mixside employees could still get a bonus large enough to be of some impact.

3. Cut down the corpshare from quarters to two months, going from four periods per year to six periods per year.

4. Don't include the WJF in any bonuses in terms of in-house bonuses for 'winners' from a corporate perspective, but allow WJF characters to continue to participate in a significantly decreased terminal reward system. Leave it to the four major corporations currently employing people in NT, NLM, VS & PRI. Players from those corporations plus the WJF PCs can decide whether or not to assist people from corporations or get assistance from the WJF and monetary compensation on this end could be worked out non-codedly.

As I wrote to start, the corpshare system is genuinely for the most hard a number's crunching simulation. I think people don't participate in it heavily and I don't think corporate employees or anyone in the game has any real investment in the prices of stock share prices except for the occasional social comment on it.

The macguffin system was introduced, to my understanding, in part to help create opportunities for conflict, theft and sabotaging other corporations and trying to involve people in doing tasks with some risk. And I think in the same vein changing how corpshare works would complement and enhance the macguffin system and the theme of the game: encouraging players to compete against each other and sabotage competition and a tangible reward system where everyone feels the benefits, instead of just the top three in the current terminal system, within a corporation would see an increase in involvement and participation by everyone. Because it'd no longer be number crunching for buy and sell, it wouldn't be doing small or big RP to hope it influences a stock and you buy or sell the stock at just the right time.

It's adding a layer to corporate pride, adding a layer to want to see your competitors crash and burn, it makes it so you can go to PR and say 'hey, we're about to do this terrible thing to embarrass our competitors, get a statement prepped to make it even worse for them' and both parties in that workplace know they're increasing their chances of getting a bonus. Rather than just who plays the market at the terminal exactly right at the right time.

And I don't think this detracts from inner political turmoil and backstabbing within a corporation themselves, rather it just adds an additional nuance to the competition against other corporations. And it includes Red sector players to an even bigger degree, because not only now would they be hired to help corporations fight against each other, but we'd also have Mixers who could earn a bit of a bonus for themselves by -wanting- to actively themselves sabotage other corporations rather than just wait on a call from a corporate citizen offering them a job. Which sometimes doesn't always get a person to want to take the risk.

Mostly, I just think something needs to change. And I'd like to think people who benefit from the system as it exists now would also agree. It's basically the same thing for the most part every month, and that's not inclusive or really creating a lot of RP.