What if we look at games not from the perspective of gameplay, graphics, or even plot?. And from the economics side, real economics, it turned out that I am an economist by training, but I don’t work in my specialty, and I thought, why not combine this? What came of it? I invite you to familiarize yourself.
Below is the full text version. By the way, there is more information in the text version.
The events of the gothic game take us to another world, it is customary to distinguish the era where humanity now lives, for example, you, my dear viewer, live in the era of the information age. And our nameless… Well, it’s hard to judge, some will say with confidence that the events of the game take place in the pre-industrial era. But is it so? Yes, there was no industrial revolution, that’s obvious, will there be one and do they need it??? don’t forget that there is magic in this world and most likely there should be a leap into the master era, what kind of era is this? It replaces the industrial one, when magic comes to the aid of humanity instead of mechanized machines, when a bunch of undead are summoned and they do all the dirty work and enslave the world…
Even though our nameless and no one is just another convict, of whom there are already plenty in the colony, and he’s not the chosen one… still, I’ll tell you something now.
Have you ever wondered what the largest camp is by population?. So I thought, or rather, this will be needed to collect statistics
As you can see, the population of the colony is about 400 hundred people. Which allows me to judge either that Mirtan has a very low crime rate, since there is no one to send to a colony, or the developers did not show thousands of prisoners so that our computer would not burn down back in 2001. Well, maybe crime is still low..
Let’s compare the difference in population strata, for example, in the old camp,
Colony population
So the most numerous camp is the Gomez camp. Question?! Why does the old camp have the largest population?. There are two answers: either the miners simply have nowhere to go and are afraid to join other camps, or Gomez still arranged their life well. But I will answer this question more precisely later.
Let’s take a quick look at the standard macroeconomic indicators that apply to this game, which are:
Let’s start with GDP, gross domestic product, it is very difficult to objectively assess this indicator by camp. But it will be possible to imagine how things stand in percentage terms with other camps.
Let’s take the colony as a whole for the sake of convention, this is 100% of GDP, what % of GDP is produced by each camp in the colony.
Old camp 50% creating benefits such as ore mining, forging weapons and equipment, hunting.
New camp 40% of GDP is already less. It also produces ore, hunts, and collects rice in rice fields. Naturally the value of rice fields is lower than blacksmithing. But on the other hand, they produce booze, rice schnapps, which for some may be more valuable than anything else. By the way, 1 bottle of schnapps costs 15 ore, and a bottle of beer costs 10 ore, very strange prices because you value beer more expensively since it is a product from the outside world.
And of course our sectarians, the swamp camp has 10% of GDP, they produce almost nothing, the only thing is the collection and sale of swampweed, and also blacksmithing in small quantities purely for personal use, or rather equipment for guards.
Next, let’s look at the unemployment rate
This level of unemployment is completely normal in terms of the economic component of life in the colony.
In the old camp, whoever does not work either dies or goes to a new or swamp camp. What makes the unemployment rate close to 0?
A new camp where unemployment is 33.6%; the population is the thieves and robbers who do not work. This has an even more negative impact on the economy of the colony as a whole, because they are taking someone’s income from the old camp.
Well, the swamp camp, 60% of unemployment is novices who go to the camp so as not to work and use swamp. Only a small part of the novices work, and then the work consists only of collecting and selling swampweed.
As a result, the average unemployment rate of the colony is 31%, which is 124 unemployed. By the way, in Russia the average unemployment rate is 5%
Now about inflation, this is more interesting. Inflation, in short, is rising prices
According to the game’s lore, the old camp is deprived of ore production when the mine collapses and is flooded with water, and the old camp, having no reserves of magic ore, is deprived of a source of profit, and Gomez has no other mine at his disposal. This should lead to the following consequences.
Even though there is a mine in the new camp, they are unlikely to want to give the magic ore to the king, and most likely the value of the ore will increase and goods from the outside world will become even more expensive. But what if the water mages arrange ore supplies to the king?? Then in this case the goods will be cheaper or will remain at the same level due to the fact that the value of the ore will be higher.
The only way out of the situation is to combine resources with the new camp, which, in principle, was proposed according to the game’s lore by fire mages, but the centralized economic system that was in the old camp, and which was controlled by Gomez, decided to capture the new mine.
Those who played the game think that bad Gomez can’t solve anything peacefully. Don’t forget where you are, this is a prison after all, and was Gomez’s act really that reckless??
Not really… on the one hand, when capturing the mine, Gomez would destroy the mercenaries, capture the slaves and mine the ore, “less mouths, less waste” this strategy would minimize the costs that could be with the unification option.
When unifying, the following https://chatmagbingocasino.co.uk issues would have to be resolved, such as providing people with the following benefits:
Providing guards and mercenaries with resources: food, clothing, entertainment.
this would be necessary because in a bad scenario, when you are forced to work for someone and they don’t pay you and beat you with a whip, there is a high probability of civil war and a change of power.
We would also have to solve a new problem with the unemployment rate. There would be more miners, the question is what to do with them? These are not slaves, they need to be fed. I would have to feed mouths that had nothing to do. And in the absence of providing people with jobs, the crime rate will rise, or there will be a conspiracy and a change of government
And of course, the loss of a significant share of power, which can also lead in the future to significant deterioration in the economy of the colony, through wrong decisions on the part of the new camp or simply when the parties cannot come to one agreement. My personal opinion is that an administrative command economy is the best option for a colony.
So in the new camp, trade with the outside world does not bother water mages and prices will remain at the same level in the short term.
The swamp camp will suffer the most economic losses since the value of magic ore will increase, deflation of prices for swamp grass will occur, that is, 1 school of swamp grass will almost be sold for nothing, and there are no more cheap goods from the outside world.
Well, what about in reality, the game is completely incapable of reacting to these changes, the inflation rate in the game itself is 0%; any merchant will buy any trinket from you for the same price absolutely always, which naturally spoils the overall impression of the game .
By the way, the inflation rate in Russia is 2.55%, is that good or bad?? Let me tell you, it could have been worse.
Now let’s look at the national income, this is the income of each of the camps
national income
The old camp produces 220 bags of ore per month, of which 20 are used for smelting. And supplies it to the outside world for the sake of other goods. Food, supplies, weapons, whatever Gomez wants.
The new camp is accumulating ore, the quantity is not known, but let’s assume that the mining is carried out approximately alone, here we could even apply some kind of convention, because the miners of the new camp are still working for the idea to get out of the colony.
The swamp camp is maintained only thanks to the swampman; residents of the old and new camp willingly give up their ore reserves. The novices are even given a special task to sell and distribute swampweed. So, for example, I was surprised by an excellent example of marketing, where a novice gives out swampweed for free in order to increase demand for it and find new customers. This technique is often used by many large companies
After I assessed the income of each camp, it would be worth sorting out Personal income, aka the income of one camp resident.
Let’s agree that the income of the miners of the old and new camps is approximately the same: 50 pieces of ore per month. And three rations a day in the new mine, which means the miners of the old camp should be fed no worse… although, who knows..
For example, consider jobs in old mines:
miners 26; guards 20.
They also receive food every month in the following amounts:
20 loaves of bread, which is approximately 0.4 pieces of bread for each person
10 pieces of cheese, 0.2 cheese each
25-30 apples, 0.5 apples each
1 scoop of soup. 0.02 soup
If this was a daily portion, then it’s normal, but the mine manager orders this food once a month, naturally it is impossible to survive a whole month on such a volume of food, given that you also need to work with your hands. Most likely, the developers wrote these indicators on a whim, or there are reserves somewhere, and these goods were delivered just to make our nameless one almost die in the forest on the way to the old mine..
It is also unknown how much the guards receive. And if the main character becomes a guard, no one will pay him a salary. Does this mean that the guards get nothing?? Hardly. The developers also omitted this component, but we will assume that the guards receive a sufficient salary so as not to deny themselves anything.
In the swamp camp, novices receive nothing; they work at a minimum, collecting and selling swampweed for the brotherhood.
The guards of the swamp camp most likely do not receive ore either.
All ore is managed by GURUs, trading with other camps and buying the necessary goods from swamp sales.
And before we get to the most interesting thing, that is, consider the Commodity Exchange System, I propose to first consider an equally interesting thing, that is, the consumer basket of a colony resident.
Consumer basket
For the basis, I took the real minimum consumer basket as in Russia, some items had to be combined since some goods simply are not available in the colony.
The average minimum basket of goods in Russia will cost you approximately 4,000 rubles. But the colony lives according to a different law, the average consumer basket will clearly differ from the Russian one due to factors such as physical labor, one of the factors of production, by the way, is labor, but more on that a little later, in short, hard workers should eat normally so that productivity efficiency remains high, but in reality I think the inhabitants of the colony do not eat enough, so as a basis I will take the indicators from the Russian basket reduced by 20%, in the end we get 979 pieces of ore spent by 1 miner per month only for food.
From the consumer basket of the colony, it becomes clear that the miner’s income level of 50 pieces of ore cannot in any way provide him with a normal life, this is a sure road to death if the miner is completely self-sufficient and needs 979 pieces of ore per month..
Here either the developers will say, well, Gomez provides the miners with everything they need, we just don’t talk about it directly in the game. But this is only a food basket, I didn’t even take into account the expenses on clothes and equipment, even if they work in shorts and with a pickaxe, but these are also expenses. Considering that the population of the old camp is approximately 171 people and this is 167,409 ore per month spent on food according to the minimum basket. Also knowing that the column is approximately more than 20 years old, this is 40,178,160 pieces of ore for food for the entire time, I understand that the population is different all the time, well, let’s agree that throughout it almost did not change and this is the average.
Are such volumes real?? Here you need to understand how much 1 piece of ore weighs. In the game it is completely unclear how much it weighs, but you can clearly understand what size it is. 1 piece of ore is approximately equal to the volume of an adult’s clenched fist. This is approximately 300-350 cubic cm. So this is what 167,409 pieces of ore look like?? An ordinary five-story house has a volume of approximately 11,792,000,000 cubic meters. cm, and the monthly costs of the old camp ONLY for food are 58,593,150 cubic cm of ore. This is approximately one 201 part of the volume of an ordinary five-story building. By the way, the total volume of the five-story building is approximately equal to the volume of ore spent to provide food for 20 years of the old camp.
On the one hand, in industrial volumes this seems to be a very small volume of production, which in principle is real, because these are only expenses for food and much more ore can be mined per month.
But in the game there is an explicit mention of how much the old mine produces per month, and this is 220 bags of ore. So the volume of one bag will be, well, for example, let’s take for example VERY large bags of 1000 liters. And it will fit into 1 bag, taking into account that they completely melted the ore and there was no empty space left in the bag; it will fit 2,800 pieces of ore. They mine 220 bags per month, which is 616,000 pieces of ore = or 215,600,000 cubic meters. cm. pieces of ore per month. In the volume of our five-story building, this is already one 54th part of this house.
And here I am already tired of counting and think that, in principle, the prices correspond to the real ones, the ore issued should be enough to live on, provided that GOMEZ feeds them. But the ore pile in the new camp should look a little different… it should be SOOO big.
But the question of the advisability of using ore as money is very acute, because the ore that Gomez gives out as a salary could go into circulation with trade with the outside world, and in the future you can use an ordinary coin as currency and commodity exchange relations between people will become simpler, because where to store, for example, 1000 ore, it will be taken away in pieces, so there is nowhere for simple miners to store it and, in principle, for traders too.
barter system
And here we move on to the concept of commodity exchange systems.
From conversations with residents, we already know that the colony has been in prison for more than 20 years. And the biggest economic mistake on the part of the developers is the currency. And so we know that the average consumer basket costs 979 pieces of ore. Moreover, even those 50 pieces of ore that miners receive occupy a fairly large area, it is not convenient to transport and trade ore every day, buying some goods from traders.
Perhaps, when the colony had just appeared, such an exchange system could have a right to exist, due to a shortage of coins. But in the game itself, I personally found 11593 coins, they could serve as currency, especially since outside the colony the currency was precisely the coin. Gomez had no need to ask the king to send him coins for ore along with resources, thereby he could create a reserve of magic ore, and the colony would exchange ordinary coins inside. This is the most logical option, because exchange using ore in real life would simply not be possible. At the same time, an increase in the money supply would not lead to a depreciation of the coin, since the bulk of the money would be held only by a narrow number of people, such as barons.
In the Game, along with such currency as ore, there is also a barter system. If you find the right merchant, and if you don’t have ore, you can safely exchange an unnecessary item for a needed one. In the game this system works perfectly, which would be impossible in real life. For example, you can easily find unnecessary trash in the form of a huge number of mugs, coasters, spoons, sticks with nails and exchange them for a good quality sword.
If such a system worked in reality, then each merchant would have his own price for each product, and different merchants would not buy certain types of goods at all. And if they bought it, it was at a very low price. Half of the traders simply don’t have ore, which makes it impossible to somehow get rich and make capital by selling all sorts of junk for ore. This problem could easily be solved by the introduction of a single currency, which was cheaper in cost, that is, these are ordinary coins that Gomez could easily receive and pay to miners and guards. And the New camp could easily sell part of the ore to the old camp. Or just steal them
Of course, everything said earlier would be impossible without the production of goods and services. In any economy of a country, the following standard factors of production are distinguished:.
These are labor, land, capital, entrepreneurial activity.
factors of production
The colony does not use capital as a factor of production at all, and indeed the ruling circles do not want to sponsor criminals and rely more only on themselves, this is also explained by the pseudo-currency, instead of full-fledged money, that is, if a coin currency were introduced, the colony would use this factor of production in the form of investments in small and medium-sized businesses. The absence of this factor is also explained by the presence of a monopoly in trade with the outside world in the old camp, but this is only due to the lack of competitors.
Entrepreneurial activity is very local, this factor of production does not in any way stimulate the growth of economic stability of the colony, which is, in principle, explained by the fact that there is no investment in entrepreneurial activity.
But there are still traders. They buy absolutely everything with a ratio of 1 to 2.
I don’t know how, but the merchants somehow agreed that they would buy everything from a nameless person at one price, and when purchased, any product loses half of the declared value. Naturally, in a real situation, this scenario is simply impossible and was created artificially.
One may mistakenly assume that labor is the main factor of production, but this is not the case, the labor of workers is almost not stimulated in any way, and taking into account that this is a prison, a colony, call it what you want, this factor is transformed into a frightening factor of production, that is, labor out of fear of dying. Which is unique, because in ordinary state economies there is no such concept.
And finally, the decisive factor of production in the colony, ensuring the existence of life in it, is determined by such a factor as land. It’s no secret that the colony survives only on the extraction of magic ore.
If we compare the Gothic colony with real problems in Russia, we can highlight the following similarities
Of course, not everyone needs a realistic economy in games; sometimes its complete discrepancy with reality can become the highlight of the game, and sometimes it can be a complete disappointment.