I’m playing Virtonomics, an online business game. Here I’ll report every now and then on my proceedings
In my previous post I had some growing pains.
Stable money stream
After nearly going bankrupt, described in my previous posting I worked hard to get a stable situation going on. I might not always be around to micromanage every aspect ( some traveling needs to be done sometimes ) so with my warehouses and factories I wanted to get to a point where they would almost run automatically, me only needed every few other turns to fix the supply stream on one or two points. This can by now be considered almost done
Economics of scarcity
In Virtonomics certain companies (mostly raw material companies like mines, farms etc) can only be bought with ‘real’ money, converted into virts in the game. This means that only a select amount of people will be controlling these; the ones willing to pay for an online game (and the more addicted). The effect of this – interestingly – is clearly visible in the economic model.
In stores it’s not a such a price competition in most product, but more the battle who can fix the most supplies at the best price/quality in order to retail profitably. This is where warehousing comes in handy. Usually I now have 4-5 times the amount of contracts standing out than what I would need on any turn. In case one factory or the other might ship something at a good price.
It shows more in my factory business. The underwear division had major problems getting the daily shipload of raw materials in order to produce. Not producing is losing money and thus losing ground so you need to accept almost any offer. That’s where the power of the raw material producers come in.
Other trends
Since last report the turnover more or less ten-folded. Due to a lot of expansion, pushing most of my factories to 5000 workers and opening a few new stores.
Norway revenues indeed became a fraction of what they were due to severe competition both in price and quality. Now it’s on par with the stores around Turkey, amounting a small amount to the profits but functioning more importantly as stable sales outlet for my factories.
And I’m waiting again for my stats to increase so I can support even bigger factories and more personnel.
Signed from the boardroom,