I hang out a lot in online games, being social without being social; me and a bunch of strangers just running around and doing shit in a communal world; it's like going to movies where you can be around people and everyone's able to both hang out and stay away. the game is a fantasy-themed one, magic and wizards and the whole thing with that deal.
What I mostly do is put my head in the game's market system. You can hang out in different towns and cities and set up a company so that you can sell a product in the large, intricate player market. Everyone constantly needs new gear and resources and they usually procure those at the market. The basic, most commonly used items in the game are often made and sold by other players.
So, you do that, you set up your company. You hire workers (you get to choose between an assortment of mythical creatures, each species imbued with different work-related strengths and weaknesses. Giants are slow, but have the highest baseline strength. Goblins are fast, but tire quickly. And so on. It sometimes feels sketchy, somehow.)
Once the workers are properly set up, they begin collecting the resources you will need to manufacture a product. And to legally gather those resources you have to visit local authorities in each town to buy a permit for installing a work force in that area. Every step of this is a whole thing.
I needed to start making money, so I had to choose the product I wanted to make. To your character who has to live in this world and who has bills and expensive habits, this is a big choice. This determines your financial future.
I began to research the player market. For a few days I just sat and stared at the sales activity page as players bought and sold a variety of items- everything from horse gear to magic trinkets to weapons.
I needed to sell something that would be purchased at a steady clip, so that I could quickly produce and sell an item and begin generating revenue. But it also needed to be scarce enough to fetch a decent price.
I observed the market. I put a work team together (which involves not only paying for their lodging, but also providing them with a steady supply of beer...a consumable that [somehow?] enhances worker productivity and that you make at your own expense. Really. This is the game that I play).
After much anguish and second-guessing, I finally decided on a product to manufacture.
I was going to mass produce wagon covers. This was going to be my thing. Wagon covers. The white, blankety kind you associate with hardscrabble prairie life. There were a ton of farms in the game and I frequently observed other players transporting their goods in old timey wagons (which, like all gear, has a durability rating that decays over time, necessitating a trip to the market for a replacement.)
My workers would have to collect a ton of shit for this. They would have to constantly collect the maple planks and iron ore and other items that I would need to crank out the wagon covers (you of course have to rent a warehouse in order to stockpile the resources, but I will spare you a description of navigating the point distribution system used for arranging and managing the Kafka-surpassing bureaucratic ecosystem of building permits.)
The workers dutifully worked with very few breaks and I kept their inventories full of beer (as my cooking level went up from the brewing, I was able to produce a higher quality beer that enhanced each worker's stamina rating) and meanwhile I rented a (licensed) factory built to produce wagon parts and I hired a laborer to stand there and make the covers. The worker was a goblin with really good construction speed stats, he was doing like 15 minutes per, really my top speed mother fucker, I still think about him once a day, even when I'm not playing. You don't put an arm like that on tree chopping, the goblin is a specialist.
Anyway first part was up and running...resources collected and stored in a local warehouse...goblin mother fucker waiting for me to give the go ahead for the work.
It took about a three (real, whole, actual) weeks of activity to get enough resources to actually start the manufacturing process. At that point, the goblin began making covers and when I had enough in storage, I was finally ready to put a few on the market to see if there would be any takers. If they sold and I could keep posting more at a steady rate, I'd have a reliable source of funds. If they didn't sell, I just wasted a month of my time.
I posted three wagon covers on the market. Nothing happened the first few hours, so I was starting to get morbid about my chances. I was like, "Wagon covers. Nobody wants this shit. What was I thinking?"
But eventually- it took about half a day- all three sold. So I continued to post them in batches of three, and for a bit the whole plan seemed to be working. My covers were the only ones going up (which allowed me to ask for a higher price) and they were selling.
It was at this point, and it still eats at me, but another wagon cover producer entered the scene. A few days into this, someone posted a single wagon cover at the lowest allowable price. And 100% they did that to fuck with me. And when it sold, that player immediately posted another one at the same price. They did this repeatedly, so that no one ever needed to consider buying my higher priced versions.
Someone was tampering with the wagon cover market. It was intentional and it was a plot and I believe this. God help me I believe this. I told my girlfriend about it. I explained that it can't be a coincidence that a single wagon cover at the lowest price was posted seconds after the last one sold-
four times in a row! That's fucking impossible. Sinister machinations.
A little bit it got in my head. I thought I could outlast them. It takes real effort to stare at the market page devoted to wagon items for hours at time and repeatedly post one cheap item the instant the previous one is sold all so that I can't make money and afford health potions.
Eventually I just said fuck wagon covers and I just accepted that this is what it is. I cannot control this scene. I started mass producing magic ovens. It's fine. The money's not as good, but it's fine. That's been going on for awhile. Everyone needs an oven, right?
