Rodrigo Bazaes

March 16th

Finance Interactive v0.3 is Released

Click Here to try it now (it's free, only your email is required).

Summary

Version 0.3 is the second major update for Finance Interactive.

Companies can now print money (i.e., issue stocks) and buy back shares from the public.

Anti-trust regulations add a mechanism for stopping companies (and the players) from becoming too big.

The game now simulates "The Economy," which is intertwined with interest rates and affects companies's revenues (and stock prices).

Finally, the game now has a self-patching feature, so new updates can be downloaded directly from within the game.

Main Features

• Stock issuances and buybacks. This adds new ways for companies to raise money and pay dividends (cash dividends were already introduced in v0.2.1).
• Anti-trust regulations: companies will be forced to divest assets (either selling subsidiaries or selling projects) if they ever reach more than 50% of market share (as % of revenues). This feature is connected with the benefits derived from economies of scale (introduced in v0.2.1). In a nutshell, being big brings better and better improvements in margins, so companies have lots of incentives for acquiring market share. As of now, achieving 50% of the total market share is difficult (without cheating), so it will hardly ever be triggered. In future versions, companies will belong to specific sectors, and the anti-trust (and market share benefits) will depend on each sector, so it will play a much bigger role.
• "The Economy": The game now simulates the GDP growth of the fictional nation where the game lives. This number will be loosely related to the different interest rates present in the game. The main impact gameplay-wise is that GDP growth (both short, medium, and long-term) will affect companies' revenue growth. This, in turn, impacts earnings and stock prices.
  Also, company projects are affected differently. Younger projects depend more on short-term economic movements. As the project matures, more and more weight is allocated to medium and long-term economic growth (as of now, the long-term GDP growth is fixed at 3% per year). This will make the movement of the market index more dynamic and interesting.
• Self-patching: this is a technical feature that will allow the game to update itself without the need to download new versions every time I update the game. For the player, it is a convenient feature, while for me, it will allow me to distribute the game more broadly (it can be annoying to have to download new versions every time).
• All the features are already included in v0.2.1​

Note: Previous saves are not compatible with this version.

Coming Next

• In-game encyclopedia.
• Separation of companies by industries.
• Events.
• Check the Roadmap for a full list of what's coming.