Money Games
a transcript from my speech at Nordic Games 2006 in Malmo, Sweden.
copyright Masuyama, 2006
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Today, I would like to talk about something, almost all of us gathered here have in common, an interest in "Money". Because we live in a world with a diverse sense of values, it is hard to find one subject that interest people all over this planet, extending beyond cultural contexts and personal interests.
Of course, there are some people in the world who are very negative or skeptical about "Capitalism", and there are some people in the world who choose not to conform to the modern monetary system.
A German novelist Michael Ende, probably most known as the author of "Never ending story", considered the current monetary system to be inherently flawed and believed that addressing the system's shortcomings to be humanity's greatest task.
But, fortunately or unfortunately, it is very difficult to foresee the current monetary system changing significantly in the next decade or two.
In a way, I think the monetary system is similar to democracy. I remember the famous remark of Winston Churchill.
"Democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried"
Because the monetary system and democracy are realities today, we need to make the best of them by taking a good look at their faults.
O.K. now.
Some of you may be wondering, hey this is game dev-con, why is this guy talking about politics and economics?
Of course, all of us care about making money. But what has interested me for the past 6 years is not just making it, but discovering the formula behind making money.
Using the theme of "money", I produced 2 computer games and 2 card games. I also wrote one novel. And one Manga story. When that Manga first appeared serially in one of the popular comic magazines in Japan, it had more than 2 million readers, weekly. And as a separate volume, more than 200,000 copies were sold.
I also worked as a guest curator at a gallery called "Inter Communication Center" in Tokyo. I planned and organized an art exhibition called "Credit Game" in 2001.
I teach at 2 universities on personal finance and occasionally, give workshops in elementary, junior high and high school as a volunteer. In those classes, I use original teaching materials which my company developed.
I call myself a writer and producer, to keep things simple. My actual work extends to all kinds of different projects, in different fields and media. But there is one thing
that ties all of them together, and that's this theme of "Money".
Currently, I'm working, as a scenario writer with Konami, on developing a stock trading game for Nintendo DS.
"The game will allow users to readily experience stock trading simulations and searching for stock issues.
It allows users to gain basic knowledge related to stock trading and the expertise in conducting a trade. The software includes stock price data for issues on the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange and TSE Mothers, along wish actual data from Kaisha shikihou, the quarterly corporate report, meaning that useful simulations on actual investment activity can be conducted."
My company has been responsible for the scenario writing and part of the programming on this project. The game will make its debut at the Tokyo Game Show next week and will be released in Japan this December. The release in Europe and the US is as of yet undecided, so please mail Konami Europe and put in a good word. The name of the game, "Kabutore", comes from the Japanese word meaning training for stock trading.
Now I'll give you a sneak preview of Kabutore...
The first scene of the game is when the player happens to run into an old friend from childhood. She invites the player to an internet cafe, where, according to her fortune, something good is supposed to happen. The place they end up is not just any internet cafe, but a stock trading cafe. She is interested, but worried that she doesn't have enough money to invest. The waitress tells her not to worry because there's a practice mode. Relieved, She decides to try it. The waitress, of course, advises her to buy Konami stocks.
At any point during the players can access charts, news and company profiles...
I can't go into great detail because the game is still in development, but I would like to tell you one unique feature of the game. To help players scan stocks, the game will allow players to draw a line, and it will then scan for companies that have similar shapes to that line.
This is the latest project I am involved in under the big theme of "Money".
Now, I'd like to tell you how I became interested in "Money" initially. In order to introduce the story, I have to go all the way back to 1987, 19years ago.
This is a front cover of the book simply called "TV-Games" published in 1988 in Japan. I was one of the editors.
This book is literally separated into 3 parts.
The first part is regular articles on history and various subjects about videogames. The middle part is people and companies. and you can find videogames in the final part. It is designed for readers to flip pages separately, so that you can look for people or games when you read an article and come across somebody or some game unfamiliar to you.
Obviously, the idea is called hyper- linking now, which we are doing everyday for web browsing. It was the editor-in-chief's idea. His name is Mr. Ishihara. Probably, it rings a bell for some people. Later, he became a producer of Pokemon and now the president of The Pokemon company. Actually this book is what brought Mr. Ishihara and Mr. Tajiri, director of Pokemon, together
Getting back to my "money" story, my main role in editing this book was to visit California and interview people in the game industry. It was before NES made big success in the states. I remember a lot of people telling me "There is no home console market anymore....".
And one of the companies we visited was Lucasfilm games division. We only interviewed a game designer of home console games, however, I learned Lucasfilm games will start an operation on an experimental basis of Networking game, called "Habitat" on Commodore 64, one of the popular PCs at that time.
I was very excited to learn that actual people log into the computer network and have chat and play. Since then, networking games have become a big issue for me. I could clearly imagine, we will be able to play various type of games with good graphics online in the future. I just did not know WHEN it was going to happen.
By the way, On the front cover,
the editor of this book was only credited as "TV Game Museum", which has no connection with the standard definition of museum. It was only an idea.
After 9 years, in 1996, however, we had a chance to make a video game museum in reality as an exhibition. I was asked to organize a video game exhibition, not like a trade show, but more from a cultural studies context. So I planned and organized the series of exhibitions called "bit generation" which has nothing to do with Nintendo's recent "dots" games.
The exhibition started from 1996 in Osaka, Japan, and ended in 2001 in Sendai, a city in northern Japan. We had different sub-themes every year and traveled to different cities in Japan.
During that period, from 96-2001, the economic situation in Japan was getting worse and worse. The Japanese business system which had been working so well after WWII became old and could not catch up with the speed of the global economy.
Especially those industries only dealing with the domestic market had a big problem. Construction, distribution, and finance for example. Some of the big companies in those industries went bankrupt during that period, which was very unusual in post WWII Japan.
So Japanese government had to make a big decision about deregulation of financial policy. It was called Japanese version of financial big bang. It became much easier for western banks and security companies to do business in Japan and commission charges of stockbrokers became un-fixed... and so on.
And soon I found it very interesting to look at the foreign financial market and products as an individual investor, because Tokyo stock market was close to a free-fall , and interest rates in Yen were almost zero.
I got to know an American financial advisor working in Tokyo and I started learning about investing and financial planning seriously. That means I was one of the very few persons who was researching the social implication of videogames and studying investment at the same time.
It didn't take very long for me to discover one coincidence in the history of video games. As you know, the first commercial video game machine "Computer Space" appeared in 1971. And it is exactly the same year when the first totally digitalised stock market called NASDAQ started its operation. After I found out that fact, it became kind of spontaneous for me to look at the evolution of videogames and the financial market at the same time.
And very soon, one thing flashed upon my mind.
"Well I have been waiting for online games to become popular for quite a long time, but, the biggest online game played on this planet IS currency exchange!
It was a big change for me that I can look at investing or stock trading as gaming, not as a metaphor but in the same way video games are. You use a computer, there are thousands of players logged in to the net to compete each other. You have a certain goal to achieve, and there is a strict rule of the game!
My next step was simple. I flew to Seattle, WA, to attend a special seminar for day trading! It was the summer of 2000. The stock price of NASDAQ was soaring to twice the current level.
I still remember vividly when I first saw the window on PC that shows actual selling and buying stocks real time. Right after the market opens, it moves so fast you can't tell which stocks are sold at what prices. I did not have any stock trading experience in real time then.
I was like a novice driver dumped into the Formula 1 racing circuit. It was the time I was very sure that "money" could be a good subject in entertainment or cultural contents fields.
I had the first big chance to work on that theme in 2001 when a gallery in Tokyo, specializing in "media art" called ICC operated by NTT(big telephone company) asked me to be a guest curator of an exhibition. At first, they had a video game exhibition on their mind, because of what I had been doing in other museums and galleries.
But, pretty frankly, I was bored with video game exhibitions. I had been doing it for 5 years. So I combined my interest in "money" and their interest in giving a "game exhibition". That is why I named the exhibition "Credit Game".
I would like to show you some of the exhibits of the show.
This is a sculpture of bank notes. There are 100 notes of 10,000yen which is about 8,000 Euro altogether, enclosed in acrylic. The artist told me that it would cost more than 8,000 Euro to take it apart.
It would be just a crazy idea if it is only a sculpture. But the artist put that in the net auction, like ebay. The sculpture was successfully sold at 3,000 Euro, which is less than half of its original cost without labor. However, he made a smaller version, too. One 10,000 yen bank note put into acrylic again. This time, someone bought it in the net auction at 80,000 yen, which means it was sold at 8 times higher.
I really liked how this artist mixed up the value of money and the value of fine art.
This is a set of very bright lights. You will feel the heat from 10 m distance. The important feature of this piece is, to turn it on, you have to put your 1 yen coin(2/3 of 1 euro cent).
And the light will be on about 40 seconds which is equivalent to the cost of electricity of those lights to be on. Needless to say, this piece converts the value of money into a bodily sense of brightness and heat.
We had more videogame like pieces, too. This is closed area networking game with 4 client PCs and 1 server. The game is to simulate short term stock trading. Obviously it was my first inspiration to make a meaningful connection between money and videogames.
I also produced another PC game in my Credit game exhibition, which has more educational purpose. I can not explain in detail now, however, in short, you will learn how rich people become richer, and not so rich people stay the same. In other words, we were trying to tell you "the formula of becoming rich" without using difficult terms or any math.
This is more like an arcade game. There is a surfboard in the middle of a small room with 4 big screens as walls and a floor. You have to surf the computer graphics wave. and the shapes and movement of those waves are generated from the stock prices of microsoft and intel. Surfing and stock prices both go up and down.
In the next year of the exhibition, I produced a PC game called "Money smart", this time as a commercial product, based on that educational game I explained in the exhibition.
This first character is a female office worker who wishes to study art history in Europe. In order to make her dream come true, she has to have 50,000Euro in cash and 1,500Euro cash flow monthly, without working at somebody's office from 9-5. Which means she has to get cash flow from what she invested, and the task of the player is to fulfill this character’s dream. There are 11 characters who have different goals. and the level of difficulty will be varied by the business. When it is good, the stocks and real estate prices go up, and in recession the other way around. You have to sell short to make money in the stock market.
I use this game as educational material when I teach at high school or above. It has been 4 years since we released this game, but it is still selling a little and I don't think it became too outdated to use it in schools. Because the basic rule or formula of business or money did not change.
With the same idea in a different platform, I also produced this "moneysmart" game for mobile phones, too in 2003. Those characters have financial goals along with their dreams.
You will be able to buy and sell stocks and real estate in the game. You need to spend money for your kid and you may come across some accidents, too.
The next project I 'd like to introduce is not a videogame. It's manga. called "M.I.Q." which means "money I.Q.". In Japan where manga is so big both as business and culture, there are various ways to publish your manga.
The easiest way is just to put it on your web page. Next level would be to draw and print it as independent manga and bring it to the comic market, usually called Komike. Some of very successful manga artists started their career in that comic market. If you are serious and want to be a professional, either submit your manga to "a new talent prize" or bring it to the editor of commercial manga magazines.
What I did was the last one. Even though I have been working in the videogame industry for a long time. I didn't have any experience in writing manga stories until 3 years ago. However, as I said, I was so sure "money" can be a big subject in entertainment, I was quite confident.
The process of making manga in the major magazines is like producing pop music. Editors are producers, they pick up artists and writers, give and arrange ideas. and another important job for editors that readers don't care very much is to divide "scenes" and arranging the order of pages.
The first idea I brought to the manga editor is "On line Stock trading is fun, just like videogames". and since the target of that manga magazine is from 12-30, we needed to make it easy to understand. From the editor's suggestion, the setting of the story is a high school...... I will show you.
A seventen year old boy is working in a convenience store when he notices that his paycheck is 4,500yen short. He wants to know why. His boss says that there was shoplifting amounting to 4,500 yen during his shifts. The boy has planned to buy a notebook PC with the full amount of his wages and so begs the boss to give him the money he needs for the computer, blaming the boss is stingy. The boss gets angry and tells him he earns every thousand yen note with his blood, sweat,and tears. The boy must know how hard it is to make even one thousand yen.
Then, they are interrupted by a young man in Aloha attire, coming in to use the copy machine. The boy wonders why he is dressed that way in March as he gives him change. The man asks for B4 paper and as the boy goes to the back room to get the paper,
he notices his boss is in the back room eating expired food. He is shocked that a man in his forties who works all day can only afford to eat expired food. He says himself he will never....
Then the aloha guy suddynly says,”So you don’t want to be like your boss. It is natural that you should feel that way because everyone wants to live a good life without working hard.
But let me tell you something interesting. Do you know how much the headquarters take from the retail store About 70% and it does not finish there."
He goes on to give him a lecture on mark-ups and pricing. As he leaves, he warns the boy that the boys life can be worse than his boss. The boy was offended and ask him "how can you tell?" the guy slowly said
"The rule has changed."
The boy continues to think about this until vacation is over and he walks in to computer class to find that his new teacher
is the same aloha guy. Students are getting noisy and wondering what does he have in his 2 big steel cases.
It is 100 million yen in cash. and the guy said, I am not here to teach you how to use a computer, I am here to teach you young dudes
about money.
Hey, guys do you want to be rich?
Well, it was the beginning of this manga, "M.I.Q.". Unfortunately, the publisher is not going to have an English version. So If any of you are interested, please let me know.
My work is not always telling people how to make money or encouraging them to be rich. The last work I 'd like to show you is not a computer game, but a card game designed for elementary school kids.
It is called simply "the function of money". The client of this project was a society of the consumer finance industry. They are keen on money education for kids, because the industry is often accused of encouraging people to acquire large debts.
The basic questions of this card game are, why did humans invent the
monetary system, and what are its functions?
To answer these questions, we must take a historical approach and go back to the age of bartering, before money was invented. The players are separated into groups such as mountains, rivers and sea... Each group has its own products, like woods in the mountains and fish in the sea. Players are instructed to produce something from raw materials--a house, for instance.
However, the instructions are designed to force players to exchange materials between themselves so that they all experience "bartering". We also wanted to emphasize the importance of "working", to earn special products. The players have to answer a quiz about money, involving questions like "What kind of currency do we have in the world now?".
The first group who can construct what they’ve been instructed to is the winner of the first game.
There is another similar game you have to play right after the first one, but in the second game, players have“commodity money". In the case of Japan, it is rice which players can use as money.
Another important point in this second game is that after exchanging
materials to complete the task assigned, the instructor suddenly stops the game and announces "so much time has passed that some of the materials have gone bad, and only half of the materials remain”.
In fact, that is one of the 3 functions of our money game is designed to
address.
They are "function of storing values", "function of exchanging" and
"measuring values".
Well, this has been a quick tour--trying to fit in all of what I have been
doing under the theme of money for the past 5 years, in only half an hour.
Back in 18th century Japan, before modernization, it was said that the 3 important elements of education were Reading, Writing, and using the abacus.
Actually, the literacy rate in Japan, in that era was fairly high. It was before Japan opened its gates to the world in 1868. And some historians say it is one of the reasons why Japan could catch up with industrialization so quickly in 19th century.
Today, the importance of those 3 elements in education have not changed. You are expected to be able to read/write and calculate to get a good job. However, those are not enough anymore in this digital, information, dogyear, Web 2.0 world.
By the way, I was a little surprised when the president of Nintendo, Mr. Iwata, mentioned the phrase "long tale" when he was explaining a concept of "virtual console" of Wii in his press conference last week. Just because I belong to an "old school" who still remembers how Nintendo hates those buzzwords, like multimedia or virtual reality....
Well, in this new world even Nintendo follows Web 2.0 trends, and I think we need another 3 elements in education.
Those are
Using computers
Communicating in English
and financial literacy.
As many of you know, Nintendo's "Brain Training" game for DS became a big hit in Japan. It could be interpreted as a good sign that the seemingly solid wall between education and entertainment is finally collapsing. From my experience, I strongly believe games can be the media that can give you not only just fun but fun in learning at the same time.