Uplift of Enlightenment

Let’s experiment a little. There was one thing in the game mechanics I was not very happy with: If you buy a share that not many people hold and nobody else is going to buy, your profit should be very small. But if your trade starts a trend on the market – let’s say you buy and several other investors follow your example, you should get the best prices in average. Same thing with selling: if a lot of people hold a stock and you are the first to sell, you should get better prices than those who decide to sell last. I hope to bring more fluctuation on the market and make your decision depending on the trend you expect to see in the future. Of course this will most likely work best with more players, but let’s give it a try now anyway, shall we?

One side effect of this will also be that teams which already went out of the competition and not many people are likely to be interested in are a great risk to buy, because the sell price will only increase if players follow your example. Otherwise the price might even go down, as the buy price is considerably lower now.

Further modifications in this version:

• Fixed a bug: when you sell your complete depot of a share, you were still counted as an investor. This will be adjusted with the next trade each team (only then, because those numbers are only calculated when trading).
• Number of investors are now displayed (this information is important to you so you can make a decision with the changes above)
• Switched position of the tabs “Depot” and “History”, which increased performance (the history loads slower than the depot because it contains more entries and will now only be pre-loaded once you switch one tab to the depot).
• The history now shows the last 100 trade entries when entering the tab. You can load more (if available) by scrolling all the way down.
• The history graph shows the same amount of items that are in the list. Which means it will show up to 100 past trades now (before it was 20). If you scroll down the list of items before and more items are loaded, the graph will display them as well.
• Performance has been increased on all list views.

Please comment on the changes, no matter if you feel they make the game better, worse or not very different at all… Thanks and let’s see how the market develops now with so many teams out of the competition.

The following changes have been just activated:

• Night mode: The buy and sell prices will not be adjusted during the night between 0:00 and 6:00. That means that they stay fixed like they have been at 23:59 until 6:00. If someone makes a trade during that time the prices will be reset and adjustments follow from 6:00 on as usual. This should prevent those who make trades first on a day to make the best deals and distort the price development.
• Sell price threshold: The sell price can never rise more than the actual price plus the number of investors. This should make it more risky to buy stock that most likely nobody else is interested in as you cannot just wait for the price to raise anymore (although a little profit can still be made if you dare).
• New Price calculations on buy: Before, the bank only considered existing investors and shares (including you if you had already some shares) to calculate the average volume of all shareholders. If you bought more than that average, the price has been adjusted to the buy price. If you bought less, the price was adjusted by the percentage of what you bought compared to the average holder’s volume. Now you and your new buy volume is included in the calculation of that average volume.

Changes in the new version:

• The movement of the bank’s buy and sell prices is not limited anymore, allowing a share to really drop if nobody cares for some time. This might distort the market a little stronger (especially over night) as long as there are so few players active for now, but I think this is the way it should be when there are more people playing and I really need to try it during the beta test.
• Adjustment of the final price after a transaction now fully depends on the volume of the transaction compared to the amount investors currently holding the same share. Meaning: Assuming the price is at 500 and you sell 100 for 510 and all other investors hold 1000 altogether. The difference in price is 10 and you hold 10% of all stock, so the final prices after your transaction is 501.
• A news ticker is available on the start of the app, currently announcing the prices the bank pays for all the shares of all teams you still own at the end of the competition. This should encourage investors to now buy the team they think will most likely win.
• The nickname is now synchronizing properly in the preferences.

The new version contains the following changes:

• The bank will sell only a limited volume of stock on each offer.
• The history and the graph will contain the new price (not only the transaction price) from now on.
• The green color has been adjusted for better visibility.

The version 0.3 that i have written about in the post earlier did not yet have to promise to make this game successful, as the complexity especially in the first couple of actions is way too high for the casual gamer. I might think about releasing a gordon gecko edition of this game some day and then you will find the mechanics of 0.3 in some form again (as a simulation) but I decided for the long running test of the game during the Euro Cup 2012 it is more likely to get players attached to the version 0.2 – so I made some minor fixes and tweaks and just released 0.22 tonight.

The database has been reset too so we are ready to see how the market behaves under the circumstances, that there are also matches taking place while the players are trading.

Probably I will have to fiddle around with the attributes a little (how long should a share be locked after trade etc.) but I will do so mostly on your feedback, so let me know!!

If you are not able to upgrade the application because of a certificate problem, just de-install the previous one!

Oh and the more players we are, the more fun we will have, as the market dynamics change depending on the activity! Don’t hesitate to invite your friends and tell them to spread the word too… very much appreciated!!

Kicktrade has been changed entirely in its game mechanics and hereby ready for you to try out. Go to kicktrade.de to find out about the details of the changes. All I will say is, that its closer to a real stock market now. Let’s see how that works. There are not many days left until the Euro Cup begins…

I had to reset the database for the new version, so everyone starts from scratch again. If no major bugs appear until the first match, consider this the official start. If there are exploits that distort the market too much, I will have to reset the database again (but hopefully not after Friday anymore).

Oh and one more thing: With the new mechanics the market is only gaining momentum when there are more players active, so please tell your friends to tell their friends! Seriously! You will have more fun too… send them to kicktrade.de to get the APK file!

Thanks and enjoy!

Its a matter of minutes now. I will put up the new release today and boy, have I been working or what? The game mechanics have changed… almost entirely! Especially the buy and sell price calculation and also that the price changes depending on the volume that has been traded. I think I won’t go into too much detail here, because I would prefer you to try out the mechanics and see if they work for you and let me know about it (also interesting for me: if you understand them).

For questions or curiosity about their details you can reach me as well by posting a comment here or on twitter @kicktradegame.

And you will have to update your client this time or you will not reach the server.

More changes besides the entire buy/sell mechanics included in this update are:

• The history graph is now zoomable and scrollable
• You can share your rank and networth (for example on twitter) via a button from the ranking
• Button and list item clicks have visual feedback
• Fast scrolling on the history now shows the correct format of sections
• Going back to the market from a trade reloads the list
• Users see how many shares all investors have of one stock
• The API does not publish unused values anymore (sorry, tbx!)

The first two days of beta testing have revealed a bunch of minor changes to the game. With the new client v0.13a you will see the following:

• All prices have been made x10 so a single trade which increased or decreased a stock price by 1 will not have such an impact on the price shift. Accordingly the end conditions have been adjusted so that stocks will be bought back by the bank with a price x10 as well (8000 for the 1st, 4000 for the 2nd and so forth).
• Trading lock time has been increased to 2 hours. After you made a purchase, you can’t buy or sell the same stock for 2 hours. If someone else trades that stock however the time is reduced by half.  Also: The time currently remaining is displayed in the market list as well as on the stock trade page. This time might be increased further if the amount of players increases. Be aware that what is displayed is not the final lock time, it can change depending on the trade of others!

• Example: You buy and would have to wait 2 hours. After 45 minutes someone else buys the same stock. So the total waiting time has been reduced to 60mins, giving you another 15mins to wait. A third person trading the stock will give you 120mins divided by 3 = 40 minutes of waiting time. Since you waited already 45mins the stock is unlocked for trade again immediately (and so forth). So even if you see a 2 hour waiting time it is worth to check back before the time ends in case someone else made a trade and thereby unlocked the stock.
• A Price History Graph has been implemented. However, this is still a very early stage and besides displaying a curve there is not much working yet. I just thought it might be helpful enough to be in there already.
• Minor Bugfixes: Depots that are empty are correctly removed from the list now.

I am proud to announce that my hobby project is entering the beta testing phase. For those of you who don’t know yet, Kicktrade is an Android multiplayer game where the players buy and sell virtual stock of football teams that are participating in a real competition. In this case you can trade the 16 teams of the Euro Cup 2012 with the goal to become the richest player. You are invited to try out the free beta now. Head over to the Kicktrade Section (top right menu) and download the apk file now. There you will find also further information on the game itself.

The basic functionality is finished, however there are some special cases that might not be handled correctly, for example differences in OS version, screen resolutions, input devices… This is where you come in: Try everything and report any bugs you can find. The following things will be added in one of the following releases:

• Bug tracking / support ticket website
• Night mode: Trades are slowed down at night between 0:00 and 8:00. You will be able to make only one buy or sell per team during this time or maybe even no trade at all so i can use the time as maintenance period.
• Link to football team websites or other news feed to get live information on gossip and facts.
• Evaluation of winning conditions: This will be implemented toward the end of the Euro Cup.
• Design: The design will be changed completely including a consistent identity more fitting to football and trading.
• Order book: Sell or buy at a set price.
• Display of possible volume to sell / buy.
• Messages/Social: Send messages to other players, form groups of players, collect achievements, facebook wallposts, twitter and the like…
• Better feedback on errors with messages and popups or required updates of the client. Also on the server side there are still some open issues, like how to upgrade the database after making structural changes.
• Localization in different languages
• Oh and and many many more…

BUT: For now I am asking you to help and focus on finding bugs and exploits first.

Now for some screenshots of version 0.11 beta: