Financial Exploit

injury log · 05-28-2007, 05:32 PM

In an MLB-style modern day fictional universe:

Just for fun, I decided to set my ticket price at $1,000,000. My market was 'tiny' and fan interest 87/100. Two strange things happened:

-My first game attendance was 4,000, which seems, well, just a bit high;

-after my first game, my gate revenue was reported as *negative* 2 billion dollars. I'm sure the numbers involved were too big for whatever bit representation the software uses for gate revenue, but it was strange to see a negative number for a figure that can't possibly be negative. It seemed to reset to zero after simming forward one day.

I lowered the price to $50,000 per game after the first, to avoid this negative gate revenue aliasing, and continued to average 4,000 people per. Must be a high income neighbourhood. In any case, it was fun to see revenue in the billions two weeks into the season! Obviously it's a minor bug that can be addressed via house rules, but I thought it worth mentioning.

Nutlaw · 05-28-2007, 06:07 PM

Thanks for reporting this. Could you please let us know which version of the game you were using?

injury log · 05-28-2007, 06:18 PM

Apologies- I'm using the latest patch.

Nutlaw · 05-28-2007, 06:28 PM

Tt 3650

Tony M · 05-28-2007, 06:50 PM

Injury_log,

All the revenue fields in the game are 32 bit signed integers thus allowing a maximum value of 2,147,483,647. This means that as soon as you reach that amount it will flip over to -2,147,483,648.

Nutlaw · 05-28-2007, 07:07 PM

Fair enough. Ideally, the game would cap your ticket price at something reasonable, then.

injury log · 05-28-2007, 09:36 PM

Thanks for the explanation, redsoxford- the odd behaviour makes sense now.

And thanks, Nutlaw, for the quick reply and TT. Preferable to a ticket cap would be a corrected attendance/ticket price curve that works for extreme values. It appears that I'm guaranteed to sell at least 8-10% of my seats (at least when my fan interest is around 85/100) regardless of price, which means the model breaks down for ticket prices over about 10 to 12 times the average ticket price; revenue at these prices is guaranteed to exceed revenue at average price, and climbs linearly to infinity as you increase prices beyond that point.

Nutlaw · 08-01-2007, 07:50 PM

This has been marked as a feature that is either not supported or not possible.

05-28-2007, 05:32 PM	#1 (permalink)
injury log Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Toronto Posts: 4,415 Thanked 346x in 168 posts	Financial Exploit In an MLB-style modern day fictional universe: Just for fun, I decided to set my ticket price at $1,000,000. My market was 'tiny' and fan interest 87/100. Two strange things happened: -My first game attendance was 4,000, which seems, well, just a bit high; -after my first game, my gate revenue was reported as negative 2 billion dollars. I'm sure the numbers involved were too big for whatever bit representation the software uses for gate revenue, but it was strange to see a negative number for a figure that can't possibly be negative. It seemed to reset to zero after simming forward one day. I lowered the price to $50,000 per game after the first, to avoid this negative gate revenue aliasing, and continued to average 4,000 people per. Must be a high income neighbourhood. In any case, it was fun to see revenue in the billions two weeks into the season! Obviously it's a minor bug that can be addressed via house rules, but I thought it worth mentioning.

05-28-2007, 06:07 PM	#2 (permalink)
Nutlaw Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2003 Posts: 9,526 Thanked 102x in 62 posts	Thanks for reporting this. Could you please let us know which version of the game you were using? __________________ BJHL: GM of the Manhattan Crime Occasional Contributor to The Cardinal Nation

05-28-2007, 06:28 PM	#4 (permalink)
Nutlaw Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2003 Posts: 9,526 Thanked 102x in 62 posts	Tt 3650 __________________ BJHL: GM of the Manhattan Crime Occasional Contributor to The Cardinal Nation

05-28-2007, 07:07 PM	#6 (permalink)
Nutlaw Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2003 Posts: 9,526 Thanked 102x in 62 posts	Fair enough. Ideally, the game would cap your ticket price at something reasonable, then. __________________ BJHL: GM of the Manhattan Crime Occasional Contributor to The Cardinal Nation

08-01-2007, 07:50 PM	#8 (permalink)
Nutlaw Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2003 Posts: 9,526 Thanked 102x in 62 posts	This has been marked as a feature that is either not supported or not possible. __________________ BJHL: GM of the Manhattan Crime Occasional Contributor to The Cardinal Nation

05-28-2007, 06:18 PM	#3 (permalink)
injury log Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Toronto Posts: 4,415 Thanked 346x in 168 posts	Apologies- I'm using the latest patch.

05-28-2007, 06:50 PM	#5 (permalink)
Tony M Global Moderator Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Here Posts: 6,078 Blog Entries: 3 Thanked 299x in 172 posts	Injury_log, All the revenue fields in the game are 32 bit signed integers thus allowing a maximum value of 2,147,483,647. This means that as soon as you reach that amount it will flip over to -2,147,483,648.

05-28-2007, 09:36 PM	#7 (permalink)
injury log Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Toronto Posts: 4,415 Thanked 346x in 168 posts	Thanks for the explanation, redsoxford- the odd behaviour makes sense now. And thanks, Nutlaw, for the quick reply and TT. Preferable to a ticket cap would be a corrected attendance/ticket price curve that works for extreme values. It appears that I'm guaranteed to sell at least 8-10% of my seats (at least when my fan interest is around 85/100) regardless of price, which means the model breaks down for ticket prices over about 10 to 12 times the average ticket price; revenue at these prices is guaranteed to exceed revenue at average price, and climbs linearly to infinity as you increase prices beyond that point.

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