The Best Part of Grand Theft Auto V Is the Stock-Trading Platform

[Liberty]

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/09/gta-vs-stock-trading-platform.html

 

:P

[racemize]

I'm not sure that guy knows how insurance works:

 

[bought] twenty shares of Augury Insurance (which sells auto insurance — a good bet, considering all the cars I've been wrecking)

 

Although this article seems to be the opposite, I've wondered for a while about how good gamers would be at value investing.  Take Diablo 3 for example, where there is an auction house.  There are lots of "flippers" who go and buy items that are far too cheap for their worth, and then immediately put it up for sale at the "rational" price.  In fact, most of them are far better at doing this than I am, which is pretty annoying.  It is amazing how hard it is to deal with an opaque and relatively more inefficient market, found in games.

 

Sometimes I feel like telling the gamers they could do the same thing with companies, but then, why introduce more competition?

[nnayyar]

I'm not sure that guy knows how insurance works:

 

[bought] twenty shares of Augury Insurance (which sells auto insurance — a good bet, considering all the cars I've been wrecking)

 

Although this article seems to be the opposite, I've wondered for a while about how good gamers would be at value investing.  Take Diablo 3 for example, where there is an auction house.  There are lots of "flippers" who go and buy items that are far too cheap for their worth, and then immediately put it up for sale at the "rational" price.  In fact, most of them are far better at doing this than I am, which is pretty annoying.  It is amazing how hard it is to deal with an opaque and relatively more inefficient market, found in games.

 

Sometimes I feel like telling the gamers they could do the same thing with companies, but then, why introduce more competition?

 

Can you give an example? How does one know an object in Diablo 3 is "far too cheap"? Very interesting.

[racemize]

I'm not sure that guy knows how insurance works:

 

[bought] twenty shares of Augury Insurance (which sells auto insurance — a good bet, considering all the cars I've been wrecking)

 

Although this article seems to be the opposite, I've wondered for a while about how good gamers would be at value investing.  Take Diablo 3 for example, where there is an auction house.  There are lots of "flippers" who go and buy items that are far too cheap for their worth, and then immediately put it up for sale at the "rational" price.  In fact, most of them are far better at doing this than I am, which is pretty annoying.  It is amazing how hard it is to deal with an opaque and relatively more inefficient market, found in games.

 

Sometimes I feel like telling the gamers they could do the same thing with companies, but then, why introduce more competition?

 

Can you give an example? How does one know an object in Diablo 3 is "far too cheap"? Very interesting.

 

Well, it has a lot to do with knowledge of viable/popular builds of characters being played.  For example, a seller might be aware that something is a nice item (e.g., because it has all the requisite stats to be nice, such as vit, all resist, dex or str, etc.), but not be aware that all of those + high critical chance takes it from being nice (let's say worth 1 million) to being incredible (let's say worth 100 million).  Let's say they post it for 5 million in the AH.  Then, someone with that knowledge purchases the item and reposts it at ~100 million.  I always find it humorous because there are people who spend huge amounts of time doing this in the game, and have no idea how to do investing, or that they are basically doing value investing, but not making any real money. 

[Phaceliacapital]

It's the same for the Auction House in WoW, on less populated servers you could even corner the market

[mikazo]

This reminds me of an interesting blog that I read a while ago about an economist that was allowed access to economic game data at Valve:

 

http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/

[wachtwoord]

For instance two players (one of them named, and I kid you not, "Eddie Lampert") managed to pull of a ponzi scheme in the game that netted them around a trillion of the in game currency, equivalent to about 38,000 USD. (I do hope this isn't what's actually going to happen at SHLD!  ;D ;D)

 

http://evenews24.com/2011/08/12/one-of-the-biggest-scam-in-eve-history-ponzi-scheme-empties-over-1-trillion-isk-from-players-wallets/

 

The most famous (not biggest) Ponzi scheme in Eve online is by "Curin Trading". The person running the scheme actually posted a full confession and explanation how he did it afterwards which is an amazing read:

 

http://web.archive.org/web/20091026234156/http://geocities.com/currintrading/

 

epilogue: http://web.archive.org/web/20091021193732/http://geocities.com/currintrading/bank.html

 

 

[muscleman]

I'm not sure that guy knows how insurance works:

 

[bought] twenty shares of Augury Insurance (which sells auto insurance — a good bet, considering all the cars I've been wrecking)

 

Although this article seems to be the opposite, I've wondered for a while about how good gamers would be at value investing.  Take Diablo 3 for example, where there is an auction house.  There are lots of "flippers" who go and buy items that are far too cheap for their worth, and then immediately put it up for sale at the "rational" price.  In fact, most of them are far better at doing this than I am, which is pretty annoying.  It is amazing how hard it is to deal with an opaque and relatively more inefficient market, found in games.

 

Sometimes I feel like telling the gamers they could do the same thing with companies, but then, why introduce more competition?

 

Can you give an example? How does one know an object in Diablo 3 is "far too cheap"? Very interesting.

 

I heard that in the early days of diablo 3, a few flippers could make $1000 a day from those trades. :)

[mikazo]

For instance two players (one of them named, and I kid you not, "Eddie Lampert") managed to pull of a ponzi scheme in the game that netted them around a trillion of the in game currency, equivalent to about 38,000 USD. (I do hope this isn't what's actually going to happen at SHLD!  ;D ;D)

 

http://evenews24.com/2011/08/12/one-of-the-biggest-scam-in-eve-history-ponzi-scheme-empties-over-1-trillion-isk-from-players-wallets/

 

The most famous (not biggest) Ponzi scheme in Eve online is by "Curin Trading". The person running the scheme actually posted a full confession and explanation how he did it afterwards which is an amazing read:

 

http://web.archive.org/web/20091026234156/http://geocities.com/currintrading/

 

epilogue: http://web.archive.org/web/20091021193732/http://geocities.com/currintrading/bank.html

 

Very interesting, thanks for this!

[ItsAValueTrap]

For instance two players (one of them named, and I kid you not, "Eddie Lampert") managed to pull of a ponzi scheme in the game that netted them around a trillion of the in game currency, equivalent to about 38,000 USD. (I do hope this isn't what's actually going to happen at SHLD!  ;D ;D)

 

http://evenews24.com/2011/08/12/one-of-the-biggest-scam-in-eve-history-ponzi-scheme-empties-over-1-trillion-isk-from-players-wallets/

 

The most famous (not biggest) Ponzi scheme in Eve online is by "Curin Trading". The person running the scheme actually posted a full confession and explanation how he did it afterwards which is an amazing read:

 

http://web.archive.org/web/20091026234156/http://geocities.com/currintrading/

 

epilogue: http://web.archive.org/web/20091021193732/http://geocities.com/currintrading/bank.html

 

Very interesting, thanks for this!

 

I see some similarities between the investors in the Eve Online Ponzi schemes and investors in TSX Venture stocks...  :o