Skyrates Economics: Part 1

Hi all, Bowie here. Today I'll be introducing a game I've been playing for quite some time now. It's a flash game that has quite a lot of economics factored into the gameplay, that I think can be discussed in detail on this blog so as to get CA marks share some of my views with you.

Skyrates (currently still in beta for like 4 years already)
http://skyrates.net

"lol what is it about?"
It is set in a world where there are floating islands in the sky, and you are an anthropomorphic pilot trading commodities in the market economy between these islands, fending off pirates as you go along. It is a persistent sporadic world, where you can set a route, close the browser, and still continue playing.

tl;dr: flying animal flash mmorpg

"sporadic play? is it like some kind of delicious food?"
Unlike other "no-life" MMORPGs where it is demanded that you stay in front of the computer and grind for eternity (say, WoW), even if it is slightly economics-related (say, VBC), in Skyrates you can play the game with only five to ten minutes at a go, spread throughout your free times in the day.

There is this "action queue", where you can tell your character what to do for the next n number of hours, and after you update the queue, your character will do those things for you, leaving you all your time to do more important things (like that tutorial you've been daoing)

Of course, there are some benefits of staying and baby-sitting your character, such as being able to respond to price changes and changing your supply at the fastest time possible, as well as a combat minigame that sometimes shows up. Thus, playing the game itself already requires you to make choices that have opportunity cost.

"Do I just queue up my sales and get time to do work or do I babysit my character to get the most out of my sales?"

Well, from a purely trading perspective, it is much better to just queue your actions. Because the game takes place in real time, when the queue says "Fly to X in 2 hours", they really mean two hours. Thus, babysitting the game will consist mostly of staring at your plane bobbing up and down in the sky (as shown in the screenshot above). The opportunity cost of doing just that, would be all the things you could have better spent your time on, say, going out and smelling the flowers. Or mugging. Or even Facebook (gasp)

The opportunity cost for queuing will be the loss of profit due to the change in pricing (which on average only happens every one or two days), as well as not being able to play the combat minigame (in which you won't lose out either, since your character will also fight on his own if you are not around.)

Thus in conclusion queuing has a comparative advantage over babysitting the game when it comes to trading. (For combat and missions, that would be another matter, but I'm focusing only on the trading and economics aspect of the game in these posts.)

On Scarcity

Because the game consists mostly of trading between the floating islands ("Skylands"), it is a brainless observation that all the skylands are scarce for whatever it is that you are trading. But what about the player?

When you start out, your plane is really pathetic. It is called the CR-4P, and had been compared to a floating rock ("and even rocks steer better"). So you might want a better plane. Thus, you trade and whatnot, just to get money to buy a slightly better plane. Just after buying the plane, you will love it lots (because anything is better than a CR-4P), but soon your love will diminish, as you know there are better planes out there, and you want one of those.

Thus, you continue trading and amassing monies, just so that you can get one of those high-end planes..

As your want for a slightly better plane is satisfied, immediately comes a new want and desire for an even better plane, and so on.

What happens when you have the high end plane? Well, that is for you to decide. You can compete on the rankings board, which brings around a new scarcity. You want to climb higher on the ladder in rankings. For example, you are ranked #1000 in profit, and you want to be at least in the top 500. But once you reached rank #500, you might want to aim for the top 200, and so on.

Or, you can run missions and gain influence for your faction, if you have one. But that does not really pertain to economics, so I would probably only touch lightly on it in future posts.

Next: The Non-Introductory Post Where I Actually Talk About Trading, Demand, and Supply (coming Soon™)

---------this is an ad hoc horizontal line------------

(heya people post post post! like, write something about restaurant city or smth)

にぱー☆