Poll Would you want Playable banks if it was possible?

[baz]

Just trying to gage the forums opinion on wether they would like to purchase banks and play them. What you could do with banks and investment banks is another discussion, which i've created a thread for.

[Bigs]

It would be interesting to be able to own a bank. But if that was possible I think it should be priced extremely high.

Here in Sweden IKEA actually got permission to start a bank. As you probably know, IKEA is a furniture company...

[baz]

Agreed, I'm with you on that my friend.

LOL an IKEA Bank, Would I have to build my savings account first
I can't see why they can't though. IKEA is a well respected company, so will probally do well, as they have trust, Which banks have now lost.

Slightly changing the industry subject,
Nokia started as a forestry company in Finland, (and still are I beleive) but everyone in the world knows Nokia as a mobile phone company. They only made communication gear due to distance and line of sight issues in forrests.
In fact you did have Saab, and they make fighter jets, so busines's can span well outside of there initial markets.

[Purifier]

Hmm this is a hard thought

Im not sure if it will fit into the essence of the game. A bank works ofc totaly different then a production and retail company which is set on producing/selling goods. While a bank sells a service (or services), not goods.
If this option is added it also should be made very expensive to purchase one. Owning a bank is a very powerfull tool in the economy so it needs to be worked out very well.
Options would be to give loans, buy stocks, but also to invest in a company gaining you stock or part of the profit (if there is profit)

[baz]

Purifier, thanks for the comments and keep them comming, everything helps.
Do you think banks should be able to buy shares? My own issue with Banks owning shares is, If the bank was part of your company and say you owned 50% of a company via your corp, and then the bank bought 25%, your company would then be able to buy that company. To me, that would make it so easy to buy companies, that it probally wouldn't work. If anything the banks need to be seperate from your company but owned by the User directly. But then you can't own shares by your corp and by the CEO at the same time.
If anything, banks should just lend and store money, as the UK and other countries have found to there cost. In the UK banks and investment arms are been split, to stop the next finacial melt down, when the investment arms went broke and nearly took the bank, with our savings with it. There is an investment bank in CAP2 and CAPLAB, so that could buy shares and invest in companies but the more I think of it, It would still lead to the issue that I mentioned above.
Any ideas how you could own and run banks and investment banks without the issue of you been able to takeover companies to easly or having a cash cow that makes the game to easy?
I would like to be able to do short selling, thru an investment bank or a hedge fund but thats another thread. The game needs balance and re-balance and I have to keep thinking about it. How can we make banks interesting to play ( if they were implemented ) without them just been a cash cow or making it too easy to beat the CPU? All comments welcome, i'm sure someone can find the solution to the things i've mentioned.

[Purifier]

Baz, i doubt what you think is an issue is a real problem.
2 things on that:

1) A bank doesnt have a direct income, like a production or retail company. Especialy at the beginning of a game, the bank would have to wait for companies to draw out loans of which the bank gets the rent. The rent being only a small portion of the rented amount wont bring the bank billions of cash right away but small trinkets, just like a production/retailing company. The same counts for investments and stock trading. The big bucks start to come in, when the bank can offer higher loans (this being based on xx% of the currently available cash of the bank) and investments and stock trading when companies are also making big bucks. Thus also already highering the stock prices, resulting in making it more expensive to buy up large amounts of shares.

2) Right now in cap2, you as a company or with your personal wealth can already take over a company by owning more then 50% of its shares. But you dont get control over the company only its current cash and stock trading option.
With a bank owning a company it is just the same way. you or the bank wont get full control of the company if it owns +50% shares.

2.5) heheh still got another thing to add, regarding a total takeover by buying up all the remaining shares. Bigs already mentoined that it would be (i dont think in many countries though) possible for production/retailing companies to start/own a bank. Why not the otherway around ? In the real world this obviously is to risky for the economic enviroment, but hey its a game.

Continueing on point 2.5; an idea is this: a bank cant do a full takeover of a producing/retailing company only full takeovers of other banks (and research companies?), lets say it being able to buy a max of 75% orso, but a person (the player or NPC) can... the bank will exist beside the producing/retailing company both needing/having another name, but are in control of that person. That way it adds to the gameplay but wont mix up the goods offering companies with the service offering companies. Even in the real world this would be possible if someone is (extremely?) rich and crazy enough to do it :p


Ow and trust me, banks are highly included in the stock exchanges world wide (as well as other investments and loaning ofc). Where do you think they use your stored money for ? :p

[Anonymous01]

I like playing the finance game, so I think banks would be great.

I don't think there need to be any significant limits to banks in-game. Banks get their cash by soliciting deposits, so there's no reason that a bank has to be large or expensive just because it's a bank. The player should be able to set the bank's demand deposit and time deposit interest rates -- the higher the rate, the more deposits the bank attracts, the more cash it has. The player would then of course have to balance a generous interest rate with sufficient returns on lending. A player that couldn't balance his/her deposit interest payments against good risk management and cash flow in their loan portfolio would go out of business.

This would be a good solution to the liquidity problems in-game: credit lines are consistently too small, with large, multi-billion dollar companies only having access to a couple hundred million in credit from the in-game bank. If there were more AI banks, and player banks, all competing for deposits and loan business, companies could grow faster and healthier, and severe recessions and depressions could be guarded against.

[baz]

We need to create a framework on how banks will work for this, There's lots of valid comments, so we need to construct a way of including it, into the parameters of the game.

So for example. Who runs the bank, the user directly or could you employ a CPU CEO to run it.
After that we need a math / spreadsheet solution to work on the mechanics.
For example profit = interest rate repayments - cost
can you guys try and take this forward, as I need to carry on testing the newely released beta. I'll check back where I can and input when I can.
If you can make something from this, i'll definately try and get Davids attention. The Poll will also help so we need as many votes as we can.

[Nebogipfel]

Playable bank sounds good........

As mentioned before, it shouldn´t be a cheap thing running a bank.
Maybe a goal for the later game to achieve. Most games are getting a bit boring once you have established everything to run business. So buying a bank could give later games a push.

One of the goals should be to get the AI borrow money from you. (lower interest rate, advertising for example)
Maybe there´s a chance to create equity funds and place them at the stock market.....
That would be great.

But if the AI could handle this correctly is questionable.

Throwing around with things like credit default swaps would be fun too, hehe.

[baz]

Nebogipfel,

Can you start putting down the framwork for it, Basically what you commented but into single lines. I need a format to follow so I can try and see what the best solution is. I think Banks is going to be a struggle, and thats why I need a simple framework that can be constructed. Then others can qoute and add to it. We need to think of checks and balances to the game, in all that we do. For example, you can't have shares by your corp and your user in a company outside of your own.
So firstly how could we own a bank that can buy shares that dosen't breach the securitys commision.
ie Should the banks belong to the users corp or CEO, if it's the CEO then the CEO will need to make sure that he dosent fall faul to the securities comission.
I need someone to start outling the basis of a bank on how it works and what it can do ( framework) then I need the mechanics ie the way a bank earns and makes money. I really don't have the time as i'm busy beta testing, and answering posts and polls and trying to keep my family in check ohh and working for a living too. Either that or poll enlight on giving me a full time job, then i'd be happy doing whatever it took to implment this aswell as other things.
The problem with banks from my point of view is that, there is so many differnt suggestions that we haven't found common ground on what it is that a bank will do and how it works. I need the forum to decided what that is, I have my own ideas as you know but we need now a common viewpoint.
Let the programmers work out the AI, we need a common view first.