Episode Transcription

Made by robots, for robots. Only read if you're weird.

Hey man, what's up? Oh wow, hey, have you ever heard of eve online? Eve online? Eve online? Eve online? You know what it sounds like? Even, No, it's eve online. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, Eve is that what you're saying. That's exactly what I'm saying. Eve Online. It sounds like at the Pyramid Scheme website, or um a adult relationship or uh no, actually not even close. Neither of those. Well, actually the first one maybe kind of like a pyramid scheme kind of a wait, before we go too far into this, we have a third microphone set up. Now, we've got something exciting today. So whose voice are we about to hear? Alex say something? Something? That's enough of that anyway, eve online. As soon as we set it up. As soon as we set it up, I'm gonna le him say one one. I mean, yeah, you literally only got me this. You can shut me down right away. Alright, alright, Connor, edit that part out where he's saying more stuff. I'm only sending that to con that one word. I will only send Connor the part where you try to shut me down. It's incredible. Yeah, it says, wow, I hate it already. Look what you a theme song. What are you giving me that? Facebook? I don't know, don't give me that face left for thousands from the one. It's great for referencing this really niche joke, king niche podcast Managin getting fired by somebody and then they leave to do all work things I learned last night. Okay, Eve online is a man simply multiplayer online while playing game. Okay, is everyone named Eve? Yeah? Every character is named Eve. No, it's actually a space game. This is an alien episode. Um no, it's a space game. Uh that takes place like years in the future and like the fictional Eden galaxy. Okay, and so it's name because it's long gone. Yeah, we've destroyed that a long time ago. Um. What tier in the Karna Chief scale are they on? I don't know. Actually, that'd be a fun, fun little exercise. It's worth going to the video just to see whatever weird thing Tim Shoulders just did. Fun little excerci little exercise. It's being a fun little exercises. Oh my gosh, I was gonna bring up what we did last week. Okay, cool, Yeah, that's good. We had a good time. If you're listening to this, this happened like a month and a half ago now, but because we record so far in the future, but well in the past past. Um no, but we just did a thing for Google. Yah, man, I hope we don't screw this up by the time this comes out, because what if, like Google hates us by the time this comes out, We're not allowed to say their name anymore. Yeah, we did a thing for and uh no, they we got down there and did this eight hour live stream. If you have not watched it yet, it was Honestly, I had a lot of fun. Yeah, you can Google Google Play and uh look, you go to Yahoo, you type in Google. You know. I'll be honest. When I was in college and I would be I would got friends zoned, you know, and girls would then ask me for a relationship advice. And I felt the way that Yahoo must feel when someone uses their search bar to type in Google, or when you install Safar or you go to Safari to install Chrome. It's the same thing. That's how it felt to be darn in high school. This is a fun bit. I'm glad we gave Alex. I'm like, um, okay, is it back to eve online? So Evonline? Uh didn't even you just wrapped up the Google thing that fast? Oh, did you have something else you wanted to say about it? You didn't want to say anything that fun about it? Oh, it was a lot of fun whatever. You can go watch it as what I'm saying it was. It was genuinely a FUNI My favorite part about it is it was at a oh we can't say that word. It was a park, uh that that also took over a city park? Was that a park that also has film studios on it? And they gave a couple of tours while they're there, and we're walking around with like the security detail everywhere we got. We were looking thought we were famous. I saw them looking at us, and I'm like, little, do you know Instagram followers? I saw an autograph? Yeah, so I was like James and it was just great. Okay, so eve Online, Uh, this game is interesting. I'll give you a little bit of synopsis and then we'll get into why we're really talking about it. Because the year is twenty one, two thousand two. Yeah, I guess that's two years in the future. How are they going to do that? That's not our problem. But how are they gonna tell? How are the gonna say time? They'll probably just have another christ that they start time probably, I guess every time it's getting too high to keep track, like's what easier to start a new Christianity every time. There's a reason why this game is significant. We'll get to that in a second, but I'm gonna give you a very brief synopsis of what it is. Okay, it's it's a space age simulator. Really. Um So, the the idea is you get dropped into this universe where there's a ton of stuff going on and you kind of have to pick a career and live in this world. And so there's a bunch of options. You can be like a minor. You can be a merchant, you can be a shipper, you can be a soldier. Like there's choose this though when you sign up for it. I mean, it's not like it's like pick your option. It's as you get going, like you're creating your path. It's a lot like real life, like nobody tells you, like nobody getting when they were forming me in the womb. They weren't like a podcaster, you know, there was a perfect words. It was a bunch of options. It was you walking what would you like to play? Choose my outfits podcaster comedian Oh my gosh, Uber Driver, that was the past. Yeah, but we're recording in the past. Okay, Uh so I hate you for that. Um yeah, so you you're you basically are. It's kind of like the SIMS, but if the SIMS took place years from now in a different galaxy, um, and you're just trying to live your life. Uh. What's interesting about it is that it's it's pretty big. They've got nine million players. Yeah, they've got nine million players. Were saying, that's happening now. Yes, the game came out in two three. It's still active. There's still nine million players play. Many people are actively playing RuneScape. Well, let's find out google it. Let's let's can't use it as a verb. Let's being that you just did. You just did the worst RuneScape. Now their player counts fifty seven thousand. Really, what was just a peak? Much more than that? That's so little? All right, Let's see the peak. M M. I don't know this number. This is giving the paying subscribers. At one point one million was the peak, and it says in addition to many millions. That's what I'm saying to access. Yeah, that's what I'm saying, so they only have fifty thousand players now, which doesn't surprise me a lot. I mean, we're scape kind of thought out a favorite years ago. Really, yeah, you're the only person I know who's still interested in I don't still play it. I'm not still interested. I don't think I've logged in and probably six seven years. I mean I logged in like last year or maybe to be like look at my Yeah, sometimes I log in and remember my achievements of the past. But um, that sounds crazy because yeah, there was millions of people who played it. Yeah, there was at a time I was a paying subscriber. Were you really Yeah, you're one of the one million for one point one first of all, and I was the point. Congratulations you're the point. Yeah, so that's interesting. Okay, So there are nine million players current, nine million players currently. Um, it's a modern day Rainscape kind of is um, and it's always in the headlines. I gotta start playing again, then, god one, you know, okay? Cool? Uh? Eve is always in the headlines. What do you give me that faceboo? I don't know, don't give me that phase. King left for seven thousands from the one that was my user name and RuneScape and Subway uh. And my mom texts me when we were doing the Renaissance outfits on the Google Play live stream, and she said, if only Subway King could see you. Now, that's hillarious. I love that your mom knew you're using him. I don't think my mom knew my She paid for the subscription, so I was a sixth rater a credit card and said, congrat Subway King on you. It was too Yeah, that's funny. Um. I wasn't a paying subscriber, so I tried to sign up for one of these games Way to play as Subway King, and the user name was taken and I was like, there's an impostor someone's out there. They're the real Subway King. And I someone someone saw that scar Subway King the RuneScape character at gmail dot com. And it's not them, it's not me. It's someone saw Subway King on Escape and they're like, oh, that's a cool name. And then they went and they set up a Subway King from then on, I guess. Anyways, so this game is always in the headlines for a few reasons. I've never heard of it. Yeah, well you're not looking okay, it's the headlines for a few reasons. One, Um, there's a lot of scams that happen in it too. There, it's in the headlines for in game scams both and too because it's economy is uh basically real Like it's basically the same as our economy. And there there's like a second life situation where kinda um but a little different. But the economy is so realistic that economists will look to decisions that are made in the game to forecast what will happen in the real world when those decisions are made, because that's how realistic it is. But it's only realistic. Yea, it's super easy to be like, yeah, I mean, whenever we're get to a time in the world, this is what's going to happen to the economy. Yeah, I want anybody to think about the economy. Uh. And Third, because they have these um the thing with how is the economy realistic? I guess what will be doing a more definitely okay. Um. And then the other thing is like talking about Rindscape. Rin Escape there was a couple hundred people in a server at a time, which was a lot for the time. That's what I'm saying there's one point one million people. That's what would be like one server, well in a specific server back back then, because they had separate servers a max limit, so you could have what a few hundred in the specific we had a couple of thousands, you know, um, but there was a limit. Eve there's theoretically no limit to how many people can be in a single server at once. So the wars that they have are huge, are gigantic, and so they're constantly in the because they're here. Let me show you actually have a screenshot. This is actual gameplay footage of a war. All these are players in game. I thought you me a dead guy, fully expected it, and so it's just it's absolute insanity because there's those are literally thousands of I guess I don't understand where the players the players are the ships, so they are all the spaceships are controlled by an actual player. So these are a bunch of ships or is this one ship? No, that's a bunch of ships that have amassed and no one to mak a ship. Is that It's like it's like powering, that's what you're saying. They come together. Well, yeah, it's not intentional. They're just flying so close together. They've morphed into a blob of and then this one guy at the end is taking on the blob. It's like, I kind of I could to handle them. This looks like it would be a Nerds desktop background. It's got the color makeup and all that stuff, you know, all it's missing as the little weirdly placed files. Yeah yeah, um yeah. So they literally will have thousands of players in these battles. And the reason why it's making headlines though, is because of the cost of these battles because the economy. So that cost well yeah and no, uh so let's take a look at the economy will come back. Here's the cost of these battles. Many young men aren't getting married anymore. Look at the social cost. That's the true cost of video games is the young uns aren't reproducing anymore and there are a thousand years you know. Okay, so the economy, this is the economy. And this is crazy because the whole thing is played a run. So most games you play, if you wanted to do anything, you're engaging with other with like NPCs that which are not player controlled. Um, and it's like non player characters. I'm not an idiot. Yeah, you're good. Uh, and it's stuff where the developers had set specific prices for items, created quests that you're supposed to go on and mission doesn't happen. Yeah, all this stuff is because it's it's pre assigned. Well, in this every step of the road is done by players through the economy down to the entire supply chain. So there are people who their job is to go out and mind the materials who then they sell it to or they ship it somewhere. That's their whole job. Yeah, what do you do? Every day? I go mind things so that my friend can go to war. Yeah, every day I mind stuff and I go back to my computer wife, Um, who's actually my real wife and real life she's upstairs. That's my wife. That's my life wife. And then my Yeah we're married in the game too. And uh what I would I have chosen something different shirt? You know, but I didn't know when my characters run at the beginning, I was gonna be stuff like this forever. Yeah, I mean like when I got a college, sure, I got a lot of MYSTA made a lot of mistakes. You know that everyone's born rich, Like my buddy who was able to start, he selected rich. What would you like to do? Would you like to be a potter? Do you want to be a woodcutter? Or do you want to be rich? And I chose rich. You know who's gonna fop me for that? And now the porores want to say I didn't earn it? You know, what do you mean? There's people who mind there is there's a job where they go to the asteroids and they mind stuff off the asteroids and then they pass us off to shippers who ship it off to a marketplace where people who run What if shipper people are no? What if no one wanted to be wanting they are? Well, actually there was an issue. There was an issue about this firing signs within the game. We could actually touch on that in a second, but let's go through the full supply chain first. Hey, thanks for checking out this episode. If you like this podcast you want more of it, please leave a review. That's super helpful to let others know who are searching for a podcast. And if you're new around here, we've been doing this for several years and there's plenty of episodes to check out. One of my personal favorites is Agent garbo Is a guy who went to the government during World War Two and was like, hey, let me be a double agent and they were like no, and then he was like, well, I'm gonna and so he kind of went off on his own did the thing. And it's also got some crazy details about World War Two about how the US used inflatable tanks to trick Germany. All kinds of fun stuff. But if you want to go check that out, you can. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. So they actually have there's a full on supply chain. Yeah. There, you're cruise ships too, they've traveled, they get stuck in the canal, let's space canal. They really do? You have people who are mining stuff off the and then shipping it to a marketplace where the marketplace is selling those goods to refinement companies that are refining those minor materials companies. Yeah, and those they refine the stuff ship it off to a marketplace where it's purchased by a CEO refinement company. Yeah, oh really, like you guys, it's it's an e commerce, it's an eve commerce thing commerce and and then they the refiners ship it off to a marketplace. The marketplace then sells it to manufacturers. You manufacture goods for end users, and then that gets ships to actual marketplaces where people purchase all sorts of different goods their bots in this game. No, it's all player. It's all there should be. There should be. There should be bought miners who pass it off to boss shippers. So all this stuff is not player. That's what I'm saying. There's no way someone logs in every day and it's I got a mine so my friends can go to war to work, Cutty, I played a crucial role in the war. Really, what you do? I made the materials, I refined it. We're talking about I mean logically with that, that means someone plays this game and chooses to be a mid level HR executive that just makes decisions on like payroll. Yeah, somebody plays the game and chooses to sit there at a table and mix a podcast and then chime out every once in a while. That was their choice at the beginning. That's somebody's life choice. This is really far down in the street, like drop down then, and they don't get paid for it. I mean they have paid, but not alone, not enough just to his life life life life. So there is that's got to be an hr. There is someone just literally pushing paper in a what is the thing? Because there's full nations that have boundaries of and they call them alliances, and they have boundaries of their territory inside this universe and within yeah, and within those they have elected officials, they have laws, they have leaders through a text based game. I think there's Mike's there's Mike. You think someone is just powerful enough they're like, hello, I will lead you. And there's a bunch of twelve year olds, you know, they're like, okay, like my mom cuts my steak, you know whatever they say. Twelve year olds roll. They're out there like I guess this guy will lead us because he's old. Sir, can you cut your own steak? Yeah? Wow? But it's just it's just a it's another twelve year old going yeah, this is what I sound like because I'm an old man. Yeah, I got my stick all the time. Uh. And so these nations is so stupid, and inside them our corporations that live within these nations, and those corporations have specific tasks like refining materials and manufacturing slowly over time. So what the game developers did is they built this universe with all these kind of parameters around it and then just let the players run wild and do whatever they did. And this is of future second life similar, I guess, but it's much more it's much more realistic. Their full time job is to be in this game now. So that's that's the issue. Which, uh, that's the issue. The issue is that some of these people are devoting fifty hours a week to this and then they have another job and then they're like, oh my gosh, me and my job is just not fulfilling cause I'm a minor. There are people who are to stick at it for another fifteen years. I'll get my pension. The problem is, I don't know if you're making this joke about the person's real life or the game. It's both great. Every day was that every day on mine? And then I go home and mine, Um yeah, so to a wife that's mine and then in my dreams. I that's what I meant when I signed up. But the M and the IN are too close to each other. I said, I don't want to be a mine. I want to be a Space five so bad? Where would it be? We should we should do a mind podcast where we just released a forty minute blocker silence every week the mind gast. I mean, it wouldn't go on Spotify because they check for that. Now, someone released an album that was like an hour of silence and they just told all their fans like, hey, listen to this while you sleep, and it paid royalties and Spotify got mad. Well, we would we would do all the hand motions. Yeah we could. He yes, my mar Wow, that killed me. That was like wheezing over here. I can't breathe. Okay, okay, So where was I your lungs away from the mind, from the So there's a whole I mean. So it got set up slowly over time, slowly over time. Um, and it's it's similar to Second Life, but a little different because of a couple of things. The biggest one being is you can spend real life dollars to get game dollars. They they're called issk, and the exchange rate is uh. It's about six U S dollars for one billion esk. Uh. So geez. So I mean that they're spending the buying power isn't great, so six six dollars gets you a billion ESK. The problem is you can't go from in the game out where a second life you could in this well you can go from in the game out, but not by the rules. Yeah, there are like um like yeah, websites where you can there's paces for rinscape where you could buy a hundred thousand gold coins for or whatever, but they exchange rate is not as good. Like if you're gonna sell on those and you're selling a billion disk, you're not gonna get six dollars back for it. You're gonna get like two or three. Okay, So the exchange rates not the same when you're if you're trying to go from game to real life money. Um, but it's possible. Game doesn't want you to do it. They've talked about maybe doing that in the future, but it's a gray area. But it would just make our economy too shaky. Well, they're they're concerned is that there's I mean, the game has been around since two, doesn't three, and so there's some people who earned a lot of money in this game, and if they all just mad rush to get rid of all their money to get real money. That one, there's the logistical issue of the the publisher having to try to pay out that money. There's a lot, but also, yeah, there's no economy. What about the economy. It's a it's a real thing. Um. And so a few things have happened in this game that are very unique. The first one was casinos, uh space casinos. So a few of these corporations got together and they opened up casinos which worked exactly like casinos. You go in there, you gamble. You maybe making money made the mechanics the games to gamble, while gambling was a mechanic in the game. These people were like, we're corporatizing it, making a casino making a big thing. Hey, but as you know, the house always wins. And so these people made a stupid load of money off of them, um, and a lot of them. By the way, a video game casino a river over here with a speakeasy inside the speakeasy Cassini pouring out cocktails every night. Did you see it was I can't remember what the context of it was, but I texted you and I texted the pouring out drink, pouring out drink, and I don't texted me something. It was an emoji, but it was a drink getting poured out, and there was that reference. And I was like, how is there an emoji for this? There's there's an emojis search emojis poured out. There's one, and it's it's great for referencing this really niche joke in this niche podcast. If you ever need it, it's there. So there's all your friends thanks to the drink. No. So, the casinos were huge profitable, and the casino owners they some of them were getting into that underground a stage world, like taking real money out. Um, because they're making millions of dollars a day this game, this game, the game developer said, right now they are processing within the game's marketplaces over million transactions a day. Uh. It's a massive economy of just stuff getting around currently a million a day. Um. And where is the game based on the internet space? Um, I don't know, let me look, Uh Iceland? Oh Iceland. Yeah, yeah, they're from Uh don't don't don't do this to yourself, Ricky Vick. I gave you the outvick Iceland. Um. Yeah, so yeah, I vacation there last year. I'm very rich. I chose rich at birth. Uh. And so the the casino operators they started actually money laundering within the game. Uh. And so they shut it down. They were like, no more casino casinos aren't allowed. How are they money laundering? I think I think it was legitimate money laundering where they were putting taxes in the game. What do you mean they were money laundering? No, no, no, no, I think it was legitimate money laundering. They were taking real life money, dropping it in the game, cleaning it the casinos in the game, and then pulling it back out and selling it out and pull the money out. So it's like legitimate and Mondey laundering. Not we mean pulling it back out and selling the same thing where we talked about a second ago, where you could you can sell the disk and then get the money out. So they were putting it in to buy disk in the game, cleaning it in the casino, and then pulling that clean cash out back out by selling it in another marketplace. Okay, which is just I don't start a real casino man. And so the game company, you only got six dollars. I need the launder these six dollars. Hey, you're a guy, can help me a laundry six six million, six hundred thousand. So I need the launders seven dollars. Since I think at that point the guy just walks over to a vending machine, puts a dollar and hits coin return and clean the money. That's clean. You just throw that zip lock bag of quarters. Now. Yeah. So it's the some people started buddy lundering and they were like, yeah, we need to shut this down. Casinos all got shut down, and that led to a bunch of issues. Riots in the streets where the casinos in the space streets. Uh so, uh so, here's here's the issue. Number one was the casinos died. Issue Number two that started forming in the game was the game does have taxes. Um, there's a couple. There's a couple of forms of taxes in the game. One there is like a state tax for whatever nation or they call alliance you're a part of, uh and so you pay like a one person tax of your income to these alliances. How do they know to these alliances? They operate these taxes, And what they do is with when you're within their borders. They have their military, which is just other players that friskers. They protect anything that happens within their boundaries. So if you're running a company, if you're mining, they're protecting your company. They're protecting Yeah, it's just like in the other country. Sure, but how do they know how much money you're making? I don't know. They can just r s they have. I don't know. They don't know who the profit is on your corporation. I think they do. I think there is you have to. I think all that stuff gets reported in game, just like it doesn't realize. Again, someone shows middle management for their online game, I guess someone's just a real rule follower. I mean they've got them, They've got the rules in it. I'm a miner. Do you hear my voice crack? It wasn't because it's because I didn't mean like a minor. There are children in the game. So the uh, the tax to the alliances is not that big of a deal for the players. It's like one percent. It's not a huge deal. The sales tax, on the other hand, was a big deal. If you selling it within our alliance would tax you. Yeah, So there was, and when the game first started, there was you could go approach any other player and sell to another player just like, hey, you want to buy this thing? Like you can't? Now, there was this thing do you need invented trade? Like there's this thing where like you could just go up to somebody and be like, hey, you want to buy something, and it's like totally revolutionized the way the real economy works. You can't do that real life. You can't just walk up to someone like, hey, you want to buy something? No one, No one will say yes, they will be They will be like, which one of those you steal it? You steal that? Where did you get it? Should I buy that? Sorry? Do you take cards? Which one of those? Do you think? It's sells things better if we had if we had square card readers, maybe card readers selling the card reader? What are you talking about? What carries cash anymore? Sure? Yeah? I mean yeah, so we would need a card reader agree to buy something without actually selling it. Also, your car today, whether you like it or not, I don't think you you you know I could? Yeah, you can't even open the door. You wanna for a test drive? Yeah? You get to crawl on the passengers? Oh, give me one second, hold on, hold on, reach over there. I'm doing the thing where I'm putting my foot on the door and trying to pull the door, trying to pry it open. Yeah, nick open? Okay, So no that originally you could sell player to player anywhere just by striking a conversation and saying, do you want to buy something? Um, But there were specified market places built by the game within specific locations where you could go there was a major marketplace. Yeah. Within those there was a five percent sales tax. And there's a few reasons the game did that. The biggest one was to take money out of circulation to keep things from getting yea um. But obviously if you're selling a billion dollars for six dollars, so the obviously the ultra rich in the game, we're like, I gotta find a way to get out of this, and so they did. They started building these tax havens, which were marketplaces that these players built inside the bounds of their own nation where they could set the sales tax rate because it was their own marketplace, and then they could with them and all their players and allies, they could come there and do their their business there and get the one percent sales tax instead of the five percent sales tax. Uh. This became a very uh interesting event in the game because once this was figured out, a bunch of people started trying to do it, and then there was this huge competition for these marketplaces, which sparked a lot of war because there were certain marketplaces that were more valuable than others, that either had better tax rates or more customers than others, and everybody wanted to be able to sell their product from there. And so so what product, I don't know, that's their minds. Just like Etsy, you want to buy like Disney ears for your character, we mean their product. It's still part of the game. Yeah, they're just making something up. Yeah, I guess I'm selling this bronze sword that I found and I want to make sure I get the best tax break on it. Were you talking about? And it probably these huge wars UM, Where can you show me a picture of what just gameplay looks like? Yeah, so I can get a better better idea of what this is. Not that picture, tim oh. I also I do have this is UM. In the main markets in the game, they have logs of pricing for everything UM, and so it keeps track of uh, real time prices. So this is a medium, and so it keeps shock of what is happening in the economy and how valuable the goods that you have are. And so it was almost like a stock market where you could get goods escape had the grand Yeah, so yeah, they had the same thing. Great, it's the same game Escape, except run Escape was set in BC. I was gonna set in medieval times, which, depending on what you think about history, may or may not have happened. Let's see here. Um, I don't think history happened, man, you don't know. The more I think about it, I go before I was here, nothing was here, you know, that was none of this existed. There's no way any of this was real before me. So here's here's someone flying through space in the game. Oh, this is like pretty huh. Yeah, it's like good graphics and there this server is big enough to handle all this. Yeah, it's kind of insane. Um okay, yeah, so it's a it's a big game, man, big game. It's crazy. Some people are wanting to fly through space and other people are just sell eliminated on the side of the space rock. There's gonna be someone who's cleaning up the space rock. There's gonna be a janitor. Yeah, there are there are somebody's gonna do it. I was listening to it, and there is. Uh. There was a common tactic in Battle where they would blow up entire moons to create an artificial asteroid belt, so that way reinforcements would have a harder time getting into the combat. That though, it's kind of cool, so, but then the man ensure that moon, my moon, my moon, my space moon. One of the moon is there, Tim, go ahead, Okay, so they're all space moons. I know that's jokey. Hey, thanks again for listening to this episode. If you like our show, make sure you follow us on social at Tilling podcast, or subscribe anywhere where you're listening to right now, whether that's YouTube, Spotify, or Apple podcast, whatever it is. And if you want more, we do have a Patreon you can support us on. In there, you get all sorts of perks like add three episodes, early access to our content, and even a discord with our hosts and producers. So we'd love for you to check that out. All you gotta do is text till into six six six. That's Till into six six six six. But thanks again for checking us out. So these tax havens pop up and these special wars, and what happened was there wasn't specific before the tax havens, the five nations lived at the peace. Is that what you're saying? Kind of there was these specific tax havens. It was safe nations alliances. Are there dozens but the most prominent ones. There's about eight prominent ones. But it really does reflects the world. Yeah yeah, um. But it got to the point where with these tax havens where marketplaces. Um, these wars uh made it to where it was only safe or profitable to use specific ones. So a bunch of other ones they couldn't afford the upkeep, and they fell into disrepair and basically disappeared. Um. I mean they're still floating through space. But how do you how do you fire something in this world? There you go? Hey man, I know, I know this is what you chose at the start. Hey man. Sorry, UM, I asked my mom how to run this business and she said that our revenue is too low and will you you are I'm really sorry about this. To protect the company, and it's just I think that you're fired. They'm ruth sorry about it. What are I supposed to do? I got an eve life? I'm sorry, I'm twelve. I don't have a life. Wife alred eve wife. I don't even know if I want one. Last last time this happened, I applied for the deployment that they didn't grant it. Well, did you? You don't know what unemployment is. My mom's calling. I gotta go. I got homework, managin getting fired by somebody and then they leave to do homework. Hey, lawyers, I know you did accounting for our alliance real quick? Could you help me with my math homework? Are you lead this? Yeah? I am the leader who needs help with thisth homework. This is stupid. Yeah, so so yeah, so that was a big deal, right, the tax havens. And then there was this season in the game where there was just this over abundance of goods because players were playing a lot and then a bunch of goods entered into the economy. But there was more than purchased um and pop yes, shut. And so what was happening was there was just so much out there that it kind of became there was no point to the game because anybody could go get whatever good they wanted. They could mind it, they could get it, and then they could go upgrade shipping within the game. What's the point of it? Got kind of boring, and so what the I'm so rich, you know, and I sit here and like, you know, and now my goal was kind of shifted. I want to give that money back. You know, I would love to. I would love for you to be rich one day. It's very far in the future, so I have you can watch my course yeah on how I got very rich. You can also buy my protein powder mix, rich mix, ch mix. Drink it once a day and you'll get rich one scoopid day. It's more about the mindset of the rich. Yeah, you'll get rich and jacked. Uh So, the developers created an artificial recession. And the way they did that was one they crunched the supply of goods in the universe. So they took how much you could get from mining, and they crunched it down a lot. And so that was it was not as easy to get materials, which over time shrunk the amount of goods in the universe. They also increased the amount of materials you needed to produce anything. Uh so, for whether that was ships or weapons or make a bigger Yeah, yea, I get you. And this created this big recession in the game. Uh And so these three factors, the casinos getting crushed, the tax havens becoming this kind of choke point, and then this artificial recession sparked this massive war in the game where there was now specific regions in the universe where they see each other out in public. That space Imperium one too, and he's like, I should slap that guy. Yeah he's a mom um. This man's being mean to me in the store. Brian, this is awkward. I fired you last week. Visit me alone. I gotta go to practice. Yeah you did. It's a twelve year old, that's what idiot. So I like the idea that was a grown man showing up to a middle school with the stand outside and confront confront the kid. Fired. Honey, I gotta go to Indiana. You know, it looks like I go to Indiana. It's just you know, one time when my spats out, there was a guy this is my my town was there was a guy with a monkey outside our middle school. Just was there a reason or yeah, he's picking up his kid and had a monkey, and all the kids were coming over and like they're like, oh my gosh, she's a cute little monkey, right and uh and then someone called the cops and they were like, this guy is trying to lure Well it's Mount Vernon, dude. Yeah, everyone knew who this guy was. He knows all the teachers. He's not. He's like, he's the guy that owns half the town. Someone was like, oh, that's creepy. He took an ad out in the paper. It was like, hey, guys, that was just me. Sorry that for all the confusion. Did he take an ad out to say? Sorry? That was me? Yes, because he just tell someone? What do you mean tell someone? He told them when the police showed up, they were like, oh yeah, but you said, there's what like, how many people were in your town, like four thousand people? Sure that he could have just talked to everyone individually. Sorry, that was me. Yeah, he's been doing that every day since. He has a coffee with one person a day, you know, someone whom died for ever. That time ten years ago, there was a guy outside the middle school really fast too that time, Remercible, the marketing and that's called the const paper. I was like, hey, that was me. That was me. I'm sorry about it, Like, okay, all right, I'm twelve. I was too a time. Thanks for telling me. He took an ad out on the paper because it's it's a well known person in our town, and anybody in the town knows who it is, but one parent didn't know and made this whole fiasco. Yeah, so then he took on the paper. It was like it was just me and my monkey. I'm safe. So this recession prompted a massive war where you might call it a world war or a universe war, um, where all the alliances in the game started vying for these areas. They have uniforms, colors like how do you know when when you're seeing somebody who's in your alliance, Well, I mean you've got your ships all have like their insignia and stuff like that. Um. And they would have those massive battles like the one that I showed you, and that's where they were getting the screenshots because these were getting financed by in game players who are obviously like they earn a lot of their money and game they probably did put some real money towards it, but the value, like an exchange rate of these battles was in the millions of US dollars, but it was game dollars, you know. So there were these massive because because in the game, like if you die or your ship gets destroyed, it's gone, like you don't get it back and you don't get your life back. Well, I don't know if you get your life back. I'm not sure about that, but I do know any good that you use is gone. So your amm o, your shields, your ship, your citadel's, your marketplaces, like if they get destroyed, they're gone for good. Um and so you're totally out that investment. And so these were massive people were losing a lot of money. They're losing a lot and it's not that that matters a time because there's not a good way to pull that money out. Yet there could be in the future talks of that, but there's peoples have been ruined by this thing, right probably, I would think. So. I mean, there are there are people in here who are like political figures, like they know who they are. There's one nation in there where they have their leader of their nation is like a um hm, like a celebrity because he'll do I mean they all all of the leaders will do speeches and they will have like big like press conferences where they meet with the people in the nation. Because these nations are these alliances, some of them have in for a couple of days. Everyone's like, what happens if the leader dies in real life? Yeah, I don't know, and the word just has to my sudden. One day they will get a message that's like, hey, guys, he wanted me to get on his computer and let you guys know that this was his passion in his life. What it's like an encrypted message on his website. That's what I'm saying. That was the joke. Yeah, that's what I was hoping you were doing. Didn't There wasn't a clear hook, so I wasn't. I was supposed to be good enough that only the real listeners got it. But then you were like, oh, it's like a callback told me quiet pills. So, uh these trying to do art over here, dude, Oh, it's like a colla. Uh So, because these these nations, they are made up of literally thousands, you could have stopped. You could have stopped thousands of people. Um, and they all have roles. So there's been nations who are just gonna obliterated. They're just done. Yeah, they get wiped out pretty quickly because I mean there's a few thousand versus tens of thousands, a bunch more money. Honest, what do you do? Do you just join one of the other ones if your nation dies? I don't know, I don't know. It's probably pretty similar to whatever happens in the real world. You just kind of get assimilated. I guess, um, your culture gets taken over. Uh. But the I watched a gameplay video. Actually it's interesting, like some of the players who've been in the game longer are like the commanders of armies now, and it's very interesting watching it because they I don't know, I feel like you get in most video games and you hear people on the chat and it's just kind of absurd. But in this one, like the yeah, the commander and they know that country, they I know, they're fighting style. Yeah, the commander was on there and he's like he's like, all right, recycle hypercanons one, two, six on this target and then like naming it. And then he's like he's like fire, fire, fire, and he's like hold, He's like all right, and then what a recycling? Just one fire? And yeah, It's like it was very Do you think they practice they have to, because it was like watching it was it was honestly like it was methodical. It was very smooth. Um, do you recruit do you have to try out? You start as a minor and then you get in there where they go to the high school, the space high schools. How many push ups can you do? Run the forty? You know, they do typing tests well to all the characters run the same speed. It's like, well, if you have that mentality, you're not fit for our military. Uh yeah, it looks like you're gonna be a miner. Uh yeah. So it's a studying school. Kids work hard. Otherwise you'd be a miner for your whole life. Um yeah. So it's it's a wild game with an economy that's ridiculously accurate to the real world. They modeled it off the after the NASDAC and it's economists. There's a lot of economists who look at it because that's what's interesting is you'll see these headlines pop up in gaming like websites. But you'll also see these headlines pop up in these like economy and uh yeah about like this economy in this video game is so it goes Nasdack Dow Jones. Let's see what's going on in this Um. Yeah, they're having these recessions and these crashes and the havings. You know, I guess since ever since the war, Oh honey, I haven't been the same since Castle fired me yesterday. That's his real name. Um. They they even Imperium is one of the nations, is the biggest one in the game. During that big war, they even sold war bonds to their people to finance the war. What are you spending on your money on war bonds? Virtual war bonds? Hey, do your thing man? Whatever? Yeah, So, I mean it's a super realistic game. There's a possibility in the future that they opened it up where there's an exchange taking your money out of there. And if there is, there's some people who are very, very rich from the amount of hours that they put into this game. Um, but I guess I should go see if Rinscape has a trade out. I put a lot of time into that game. How much money do you think you could have earned, like you ballpark through the lifetime or how much are I have in my account right now? Yeah? How much? How much money if you could go pull it out right now? How much money do you think you could get? What is the what is I don't know what the question is the money that how many old pieces do I have in my account versus like and then what do I think the exchange rate is? What look up, look up RuneScape GP to U S dollars. Let's see what it is right now? I have probably six point two mill six point two million, Yeah it says right now it is about thirty six U S. Dollars per one hundred million. Don't you got a few bucks to one? Wait? Wait? Wait, wait? Can you buy hard million dollars? There's just a couple of things that I've wanted to buy in the game. And if it's six bucks, man, you're gonna be rolling. I'm gonna drop two hundred dollars rolling. I'm gonna roll into RuneScape with six hundred million dollars. Make a four. Just be a billionaire. I've always wanted to be an Escape billionaire. Well, there's just a couple of items that I've always wanted that has just been out of reach. You know, let me let's do this later. I'm might row I'm might log into all right, Yeah we can, I mean we can fiddle this off. You can go to some pounder Escape a l No, that's okay. Things on the Last Night is a production of Space tim Media produced by Christian Taylor. Audio is edited by Alas Garnett, Video by Connor Bets. Social media is run by Caleb Walker and graphic designed by Caleb Goldberg. Our host or Jarren Meyers and Tim Stone. Please follow us on social media at tilling podcast. That's t I l o in podcast, Leave a review, comment, subscribe wherever you are. Thank you for listening to Things on the Last Night