This was in my inbox today:

cnj,

is there a Sim Economy game like Sim City? something more banking / financing focused?

Do you really want to know what kind of dork I am? I’ll tell you: when I was younger, I played a stock market simulation game. The market ticker would scroll by, and news events would appear in a terminal. Occasionally someone would offer you an insider tip for a fee. Of course, there was a chance of getting caught, which would end the game. The game was ridiculous for a number of reasons. There were no economic trends to follow. There was no macro picture. I’m not even sure that there were high probability technical indicators. Also, there was a limit to the downside of a stock. Stocks bottomed at 1 dollar. As a consequence, you could simply “win” by buying as much of a dollar stock as possible, then wait for it to go up. You could get 200% returns quite easily, then just repeat the process. I have no idea why I played that game.

The field of economics is largely the study of decision making with limited resources. In that sense, any real time strategy game is a game of economics. Do I have my little guys mine for gold, sit idle, or build a thing? When do I invade that other guy to steal his oil? Is there a cheat code to give me extra money? Why won’t anyone play with me anymore?

But, to answer the question: I found this wikipedia link. In the non video game realm, I’m a big fan of Ka-Ching! and Pit.

Seriously, does anyone know of any Sim Economy game? Is it fun?