Show HN: MoneyGame – Browser-based business simulation game

Gluten 8 years ago |

A short description: in this game you are on a quest to make as much money as possible. Income sources including regular pleb level jobs, speculating currencies/shares, running your own business and gambling.

If you have any questions or proposals, I'm all ears!

sghiassy 8 years ago | |

If you add the ability for plebes to drink beer after work, I’d basically just be playing my own life haha

rodolphoarruda 8 years ago | |

I propose you build a MMO that simulates political parties and presidential elections in third world countries.

NTDF9 8 years ago |

This is so similar to Football Manager simulation series. God knows how many years I wasted on it. No, I can't do that anymore...shouldn't do that...let me just try once....I'll eat dinner later....Washing your underwear inside out saves on game time.

Tech-Noir 8 years ago | |

I may have to give this a miss then. I made the mistake of installing CM0102 (free download since 2002) recently for old time's sake and kissed goodbye to a solid month before finally managing to go cold turkey.

Alongside original Doom it's probably in my top 2 games, and it's brilliant (and productivity destroying) that both still have so much active development and community around them[1][2], 15-25 years after they were released.

[1] http://champman0102.co.uk [2] https://www.doomworld.com

NTDF9 8 years ago | | |

I remember this game. CM was the precursor to FM. This then forked into FM when Sega bought the studio (I think).

Did you guys know that FM used real world class scouts to give attributes to players? The scouts were so good that many of their discovered wonderkids went on to become world class players in real life.

Sergio Aguero comes to mind.

JBlue42 8 years ago | |

Upvote since I was never suspecting to see this mentioned on HN. It's not even a game I can describe to my gamer friends irl and have them understand the appeal.

bigjust 8 years ago | | |

Ok, who here wears a suit for cup finals.

Not me, but I did put a DND sign up

JBlue42 8 years ago | | |

Not I but only because I don't have one that fits right now. I definitely take a breather, make sure to have hydration around, and will hold off on playing a final if I've been drinking.

NTDF9 8 years ago | | |

I would save final matches for the next day so I could think afresh for a few hours before the match starts. Anxiety levels were through the roof.

NTDF9 8 years ago | | |

I concur! Nothing can describe how detailed that game is.

JBlue42 8 years ago | | |

- "So, it's like Fifa and you have a team and play against people?"

- "No, I don't control the players. I try and examine the other team and make sure mine has trained well in their tactics. It's fun though - I negotiated an awesome deal for a striker and I think he'll help us win the Swedish 2nd Division this season. I'm pretty close to getting a backup left-back from England but not sure he'll fit in my tight wage structure"

At this point, everyone has walked away

SheepSlapper 8 years ago |

I'd play with this if it had SSL enabled so I'm not passing info across the wire unencrypted :/

Gluten 8 years ago | |

That's a bit of an embarrassing shortcoming for now. I'll try to get it fixed in the near future.

DKnoll 8 years ago | | |

I'm curious, why lighttpd and not nginx?

Also certbot doesn't directly support lighttpd but you can still automate the whole Let's Encrypt renewal process with a brief script on top of it.

Gluten 8 years ago | | |

Been running this lighttpd server for ages for small sideprojects. One day I will have the motivation to switch this server to nginx as well.

fiatjaf 8 years ago | | |

Use Cloudflare SSL. It will disguise your lack of SSL perfectly.

eat_veggies 8 years ago | | |

I've been wondering--is there any disadvantage to doing that? Cloudflare's SSL at least guarantees no MITM, right?

Tech-Noir 8 years ago | | |

I too am somewhat confused about Cloudflare. They provide an SSL option called "Flexible SSL", about which Cloudflare itself states:

    [Flexible SSL] is less secure than [even no SSL],
    and could even cause you trouble when you decide 
    to switch away from it[1]

Then why even offer it? Particularly when they have "Full SSL", which can be used with a self-signed certificate, or "Full SSL (strict)", which can be used with Cloudflare's own freely provided "Origin CA"[2].

I don't know if flatjaf's post is just referring to Flexible SSL, but if there are any issues with either of CF's "Full SSL" options I'd be interested to hear them (genuinely, in case that sounds like insincere sarcasm).

[1] https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200170416-W...

[2] https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-ca-encryption-origin/

fiatjaf 8 years ago | | |

I believe Flexible SSL is a good thing if you're not doing user sessions, storing private user data or anything like that. It's good for information-only sites, as you'll save your visitor from their network administrator, ISP and lower-profile hackers.

For more serious things it shouldn't be used, but I like the fact that it is there.

Maybe browsers should distinguish it somehow for the user: "your connection with this site is safe from everybody except the site's administrators" versus "your connection with this site is safe from your neighbor, ISP and network administrator".

But perhaps that would be meaningless, as all servers may be hosted anywhere, and their SSL private keys may be anywhere also -- for example, if you're serving SSL from Heroku you must upload your keys to Heroku, which means Heroku folks can see your connections if they want. Am I wrong?

quickthrower2 8 years ago | | |

Some people just want a padlock symbol.

fiatjaf 8 years ago |

> realistic, fully player-driven economy.

Got interested, but don't have time to play it right now or in the next weeks, so I'll probably never play it.

---

A question: I've thought about "fully player-driven economy" (not necessarily realistic) games in the past, and my problem was that I wanted to have a nice and beautiful way to have winners and losers and concrete goals.

The best solution I could imagine was: make everybody start with zero money ( without which they can't do anything) but offer then the option to take loans. The loans should be somehow very hard or impossible to pay. Instead you should just roll them. If you default you lose.

I'm just sharing this.

Gluten 8 years ago | |

Tbh it's not really "fully" player-driven, there's still the magical government aspect in the game that sucks out money at one part and spits it out in another.

bemmu 8 years ago |

Here's a group for HN: http://www.moneyga.me/community/group/34

beaconstudios 8 years ago |

seems interesting and I've just signed up, but am I right in thinking that rent is automatically taken every day but money is not automatically earned? So if I have $100 and a $10/day rent and take 10 days without playing, I'll have $0 when I come back? If that's the case then it's a shame as it's rather offputting, which would be a shame as the concept is very appealing. Just asking for clarity.

Gluten 8 years ago | |

Yes, that's how it works. Making $10 isn't that hard though, just check back a little more often than once every 10 days.

beaconstudios 8 years ago | | |

it's not the difficulty that concerns me, it's that your game is arguably punishing me for not playing it every day. I know it's a common practice to try to maximise DAU on games these days but I won't be playing it if I'll be penalised for not being super-active. I still play http://urbandead.com/ because I can drop in every now and then casually.

AdamSC1 8 years ago | | |

It's not "punishing you" it's just the mechanics of the game. If you want a more casual game, play a more casual game.

The guy is making a simulation based game, and is free to make it however he wants.

beaconstudios 8 years ago | | |

That's a non sequitur, it's not like I'm lobbying politicians to take away his rights to make the game. I'm pointing out something I don't like in a game I otherwise would likely play - or is audience feedback now a bad thing akin to telling someone how to make their game?

ghthor 8 years ago | | |

Thank you for defending game mechanics. The goal of mechanics are to generate some type of behavior, it isn't to make everyone happy or everyone a player.

beaconstudios 8 years ago | | |

I think the idea of game mechanics is to be fun, "generating behaviour" strikes me as very cynical.

phillc73 8 years ago | | |

As game mechanics they seem about right to me. The landlord's going to take the rent whether you're working or not. If you don't work (play the game) you don't earn.

beaconstudios 8 years ago | | |

Or for example time could pause on days you don't visit. If I play a browser game it's going to be a very small part of my life and I'm not going to be concerned with making sure I visit daily because the game wants me to.

nestorherre 8 years ago |

Got really interested, too bad I'm not allowed (by myself) to play any games that require some considreably time spent on them, at least by some of the upcoming years.

Good luck with this, hope to play it when you launch it on VR in some years!

dsr_ 8 years ago |

No privacy policy visible.

Not obviously fun. Is it fun?

BeefySwain 8 years ago | |

I got a couple friends to sign up with me and we are having a blast.

BeefySwain 8 years ago | | |

Update: The fun wears off quick when you realize that the markets are manipulated by the dev to the point of being impossible to compete in.

Gluten 8 years ago | | |

The General X companies won't be increasing jobs available anymore, so the wage market will be freed up. Other than that the market shouldn't be manipulated in any negative way, or would you disagree with that?

Bromskloss 8 years ago | | |

> Other than that the market shouldn't be manipulated in any negative way

So, they are being manipulated?

Gluten 8 years ago | | |

A "government company" buys electricity and cement at a cheap price, since their demand by players is not high enough yet.

ilikerobinhood 8 years ago |

woah, this seems like a really fun game to play. I will check it out soon!

ggggtez 8 years ago |

Can I start the game with a small loan of $1million, so it can more accurately simulate real life?

aliasxneo 8 years ago | |

FeelTheBern