Game Corner Game Suggestion: Stocks and Bonds

[Pixel]

Just a silly idea that was joked around about in the Cbox that might have a little potential to maybe be interesting to some folks who might like a more passive game. Maybe it's too convoluted. Maybe nobody will be interested. But i had to get it out of my head. Lol.

General Idea:
Invest coins into either the Stock Market or Bonds. Stocks are high risk, high reward, fast payout, and bonds are low risk with lower reward and a longer time before payout. A player can, up to once a week, invest in Stocks and Bonds. Each investment type has a different payout schedule the player will have to track. 

Mechanics:
Stocks: A week after a player invests into the stock market, they may 'check' their investment. 50% of the time, their investment doubles that week. 50% of the time, they lose their whole investment. They may pull from the stock market at any given time, but if they pull before their weekly coin flip, they loose a percentage of the investment (maybe 25%). 

Ex:
Joey invests 100 coins on Friday. The next Friday, his investment doubles, yay! He can choose to withdraw 200 coins that day or stay in another week. If Joey stays in, but chooses to withdraw his coins on Thursday before the investment matures on Friday, he loses 25% of the 200 coins in the investment pool. 

Bonds: Bonds can be purchased for 1 month (Short), 3 months (Mid) or 6 months (Long). (or 1, 2, 3 if preferred—any time frame works) These long term investments have a much better chance of gaining you coins and a lot lower chance of losing them all. The longer the bond takes the mature, the greater the amount potentially gained at relatively low risk of losing money. (But there is still a risk).

Amount of potential loss/gain and time frames is just me spitballing numbers. Bonds are meant to be very passive.

Benefit of bonds is the ability to buy multiples.

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Short Term Bonds: 50% chance of loosing 25% of the invested coins, 50% chance of gaining 25%
Ex: Joey invests 100 coins. The bond matures 1 month later. It grows to 125 coins!

Mid Term Bonds: 25% chance of losing 25% of the invested coins. 50% chance of gaining 25%. 25% chance of gaining 50% of investment.
Ex: Joey invests 100 coins. The bond matures 3 months later. It grows to 150 coins!

Long term bonds: 10% chance of losing 25% of the invested coins. 50% chance of gaining 50%. 40% chance of doubling investment.
Ex: Joey invests 100 coins. The bond matures 6 months later. It grows to 200 coins!

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Game Example:
Joey: 1000 coins in pocket

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Joey's Investments
Date: xx/xx/xx

Joey invests 100 coins into the Stock market.

Joey buys 2 short term bonds for 100 each.
Joey buys 1 midterm bond for 100.
Joey buys 1 longterm bond for 100.

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[At least one week later]
Joey checks the stock market

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MODERATOR
(Rolls)

Joey's stocks have doubled in value! Cash in or stay in?
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JOEY
Stay in
[One week countdown starts HERE so the player and staff don't have to worry about checking in every day]

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[One month after original investments]
JOEY
I'd like to check the stock market and cash in my 2 short term bonds from XX/XX/XX.

MODERATOR
Joey's stocks have crashed! Oh no! Would you like to invest again into the stock market?

Joey's short term bond #1 is worth 125
Joey's short term bond #2 is worth 75

Updating Coins!

[Goni]

It’s an interesting idea! It kind of reminds me of the Neopets stock market, which was a bunch of fake tickers that would fluctuate seemingly randomly. I never really saw the technical details of how their market worked, but you would be able to buy stocks and sell stocks whenever, and they would update every 30 minutes.

I think the idea as it is right now sounds like a very slow paced game with a lot of risk for losing coins, when if you’re active you can play Hi/Lo for a pretty high chance of getting a pretty large return if you’re responding regularly. I could see a simulated stock market working maybe, and have it pokemon themed, i.e. team rocket stocks, pokemon center stocks, pokemart stocks, etc, each with their own random formula which would decide how it behaves, and have it connected to a google sheet or something which you could update with a button maybe, and have it update once a week or maybe each time someone purchases a stock or something? I’m not a google sheets whiz but I think there’s a way to make it so if you refresh a google sheet it will adjust itself with random values. The google sheet could be displayed similarly to how the mod-list is displayed so it’s the same for everyone.

It would be an interesting feature if it were added but I’m not sure how many people actually enjoy that type of random chance slow-burn gambling where you don’t always get to know how things are decided.

50/50 odds seems kind of like hi-lo but with worse odds and it would take longer to check, unless I’m not understanding your idea all the way Simulated markets are always kind of interesting though, but even a once weekly button click update off site is one more thing for the mod team to take care of, and there’s no guarantee that people would ‘buy in’. I think a lot of people play Hi-Lo but not a lot of people play roulette or slots regularly.

[Pixel]

It's similar to hi-lo but with larger numbers. You bet 5 each time with relatively low risk and a moderate reward. Something like this would be as high risk, high reward as you make it. You can bet 1k coins on it if you'd like. You could lose it all or double it. 

And the odds were just sorta placeholders to give proof of concept.

And while an active true stock market would be neat, I'm not savvy enough with fomulas to make a GDocs sheet that would do that sorta auto updating.