Access to trade secrets of competitors

[David]

We have received the following user suggestion:

Why do we have easy access to market share and size numbers like always, i feel like we could have a data analysis over the market company that we could pay a certain amount of cash to have access to these reports, there's no way in real life you're just getting these numbers without any costs. i feel like that could make the game more realistic. We could at least have the option to play like this, build own own data analysis team to have deeper access into our own company's reports, market share and size studies, special graphs for detailed market understanding.

Currently the game can be set to either show or hide competitor trade secrets. What are your opinions of adding a new market research department in HQ in which you have to pay to acquire trade secrets of each competitor?

[cantdownloadit]

I always play with trade secrets disabled, as I do not consider being able to see such info as very realistic, I would favour having even more info hidden by default.

For example we shouldn't be able to see how profitable individual AI's firms are unless they are group companies, or if they are a candidate to be acquired from bankruptcy.

A market research department would be a good idea, I think its should be mandatory to see what prices AI's are charging for products in there stores - there is a cost to finding this info out, it should allow an estimate of how profitable the AI firms are, but not hard figures beyond what a company would publish in its accounts or could be found publicly.

I feel its a common problem among games, where the player is given access to loads of into they wouldn't really be able to access.

You could also then consider features like, when headhunting staff, there is a chance to find out what they were working on.

[Djohaal]

This calls to my mind the dwarf fortress mechanic of having a noble dwarf assigned to stock keeping. Until they get their job done (and keep doing it), you only get approximate guesses on your goods stockpiles and can only delegate so much to the job manager.

But I'm in for adding a dimension of bookeeping (and perhaps corporate espionage) to the game. For the competitor data I think there could be layers of knowledge you can unlock, perhaps attached to either corporate espionage, market census and your participation as a shareholder. It could start with a gross estimate of the profitability of their businesses which improves as your intelligence grows.

I'm trying to remember another economic/simulation game that had obfuscated self performance data as a mechanic that I did play, but I can't remember at the moment. If I do, I'll do a follow up post with my experience.

[rafaeltodero]

I like it the way it is. If the player does not want to see company information, simply indicate this in the options before starting a game.
When I want to buy a company or analyze a certain market, I like to have the information. If any research or something like that is necessary, I think it's frustrating, because of the time it will take

[Stylesjl]

This new feature of paying for information would in some respects make the game more realistic. Normally many games are designed to give the player a level of information that would not be possible in real life (for instance a military game where you can see all of your own units in real time is certainly not reflective of what an actual military commander experiences). But very often games do this for a reason: Real Life can be quite tedious and boring or complicated (few would want to go through learning how to become a professional military commander just to play a game).

In the real world you would have to pay for information to be gathered and presented in a meaningful fashion and some information would be impossible to obtain or only possible to obtain illegally (Capitalism Lab never really lets you break the law, even if it is an actual part of how many real-life businesses work). But I think overall this availability or non-availability of competitor information is a reasonable aspect of how the game should work - otherwise you may have issues with too much micromanagement. But I suppose this depends on how the feature is implemented.

A suggestion I have then is to create multiple difficulty settings that could control this for players:

Difficulty Setting Name: Competitor Information

Options:
- Always available (equivalent to Trade Secrets = Yes)
- Researchable
- Never available (equivalent to Trade Secrets = No)

So when Researchable is set what should happen? I have some rough ideas:

Initially game mode will start as if Trade Secrets = No.

New Building: Market Research Centre (or HQ)

When you build it you can do the following:
- Reveal Tech, spend some money and get a report a few months later on that company's tech levels.
- Reveal Profit/Revenue/Owned Securities/Debts/etc (for Private Companies only, Public Companies are required by law to reveal a lot of their financial info for shareholders). Normally this is all revealed when trade secrets are off, but I think for private companies this info should be concealed if trade secrets are Off.
- Reveal history, i.e a list of events for this company such as purchasing tech, research of a new product (like a Camera Phone), someone buying or selling shares, opening or closing firms, etc.

For individual firms:
- Reveal Research Project (for a competitor R&D centre) or better yet maybe it is revealed when you headhunt talent as cantdownloadit suggested.
- Reveal Profit/Loss of a firm (normally this is publicly available but I don't think this should be the case, even for a public company).
- Reveal Imports/Exports (for Import/Export Company). Note: Currently Import Company info is revealed even when Trade Secrets are Off.
- Reveal Banking/Insurance info (HQ level) such as customer wait times, staff training, training budget, service quality. Note: All of this is currently revealed even if trade secrets are off in the current game.

Anyway just some thoughts of mine.

[cantdownloadit]

I like it the way it is. If the player does not want to see company information, simply indicate this in the options before starting a game.
When I want to buy a company or analyze a certain market, I like to have the information. If any research or something like that is necessary, I think it's frustrating, because of the time it will take

But you shouldn't be able to see this info, especially in a hostile takeover situation which is mostly what capitalism lab is at this point.

Don't see it would affect you though, if you play with show competitor trade secrets enabled you would be able to see everything still ? but i still think a lot more should be hidden if players are choosing to hide secrets.

[David]

I updated this post with a poll. Please feel free to vote or comment.

[cantdownloadit]

I would suggest

Show Competitor Secrets
Do not show Competitor Secrets
Advanced Competitor Secrets

Of the 3 I would continue playing with Do not show secrets unless things change significantly.

[rafaeltodero]

I think I have a practical solution to this matter, from my point of view.

In the real world, when a company is interested in acquiring a competitor, it also does not have access to the company's data, unless the company is a publicly traded company, in which case it is obliged to show investors its financial reports. Therefore, when a certain company is interested in acquiring a competitor, the acquirer signs an exclusivity contract to acquire that company, and then has access to the company's documents. In the middle or at the end of the process, if the company gives up on the acquisition process, it pays a fine to the company it was trying to buy.

Technical details for implementation:

If a company has shares on the stock exchange, we could only have access to the financial reports and balance sheet, as well as the index reports and graphs.

If the company does not have shares on the stock exchange, in this case, the player would only have access to the “Product Details” and “Products” of these companies.

In both cases, whether it is a company with shares on the stock exchange or a private company, the player would not have access to which technologies the companies are researching. Maybe this part doesn't make much sense, however it does, because when trying to acquire a technology from another company you will know the level, but you won't know if it has 9 scientists researching that technology, nor when it will finish its research.

Another situation, if you obtain 75% of the shares, you would have access to all information, especially because in this case you control the company. Perhaps 50% of the shares would be correct here, especially because when you reach this percentage you have access to the company's cash.
Someone might even think that the value of the fine is high, but I tell you, it is not, because if the player proposes to buy a competitor, he already has a good amount in cash.

As for the fine, I don't think it can be too low or too high, because otherwise people would lose interest. In fact, since you don't see this information, I think you would be much more curious, and want to know the competitor's numbers in detail.
I believe something like 50% of the previous year's profit.

In case of "signing an agreement", we can say this, the player would have access to the competitor's information throughout the year. When "signing an agreement", the value of the fine would already be stated if he did not purchase the company.


If my idea is good, I can then spend some time and catalog with images of the game where and what the player would have access to.

It seems simple, but it contains a lot of details that would have to be addressed and discussed