Fixed: Understanding the Economy 💹🤔

Greetings again, 👋

In the first version of this email, we incorrectly detailed the impact of the economic simulation on the game. We wrote that “The population size 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 changes along with the economic situation". That is slightly incorrect, and we apologize 🙏 for the error. The following is the actual impact on the game:

The population size is divided into outdoor and base population sizes. The outdoor population size is the total number of customers that are outdoors and willing to make a purchase. The base population size is the total number of customers, including those indoors.

The economic situation influences the outdoor population size. Many or fewer customers are willing to come out and spend depending on if the economy is in a growth phase or a downturn.

Each segment has a Base Economic Happiness, e.g. 40 units. Their current economic happiness per time will fluctuate upwards ↗️ or downwards ↘️ depending on the current economic condition.

Example of the calculation for the Parent segment.

Y generates the current economic happiness 😄 value of the Parent segment. You can see the difference between the outdoor and base population size as well as the current and base economic happiness in the customer segment tooltip.

Infusing realism in the business mechanics was vital to us from the beginning. That's why each city in the game has a different difficulty level based on the price of raw materials 🍅🍞, economic situation 📉, and the weather ⛈️.

Like in real life, each city's economy in the game experiences business cycles of economic growth and downturn. Although an average cycle lasts about ten years, we thought it would be fun to implement business cycles in the game as one-year events😎.

This mechanic adds a layer of consideration to your business strategy regarding making capital investments or taking new loans 🤑.

For instance, how do your investment plans change if your city's population reduces spending because of a stock market crash 😱? And alternatively, increase their spending when the government implements fiscal stimulus? 💃

The city has nine customer segments with unique spending limits, and their perceived value of your burger 🍔 & drink 🥤 increases or decreases depending on the economic situation.

Here's how we designed the economic simulation.

Let's take Washington DC, as an example. The graph below shows the annual GDP growth for the US. Despite the micro tremors, the overall 10-year cycle is unmistakable. ⬇️

For our simulation, we picked the US's ten-year average GDP growth rate (2%) to generate the base case scenario of the economy:

The graph below illustrates the outcome of the formula.

As you strive to grow your business, the economic growth percentage will move across the blue dotted line to simulate an economic growth or slow down.

Real economies also experience unexpected spikes and dips in the business cycle. We catered to this by implementing an events mechanic.

Based on the probability of occurrence, events such as technological breakthroughs 💻, international sports events 🏈, or trade wars and taxes will feed the simulation with spikes and dips.

How does this impact the game?

The population size is divided into outdoor and base population sizes. The outdoor population size is the total number of customers that are outdoors and willing to make a purchase. The base population size is the total number of customers, including those indoors.

The economic situation influences the outdoor population size. Many or fewer customers are willing to come out and spend depending on if the economy is in a growth phase or a downturn.

Each segment has a Base Economic Happiness, e.g. 40 units. Their current economic happiness per time will fluctuate upwards ↗️ or downwards ↘️ depending on the current economic condition.

Example of the calculation for the Parent segment.

Lower outdoor population sizes due to economic downturns lead to fewer sales for your business ☹️. You will need to strategize, adjust your price, increase your marketing spending and improve your burger quality to drive sales. Additionally, having enough savings to weather the hard times really helps. 😉

That’s it for today, Cheers 🥂

Don’t forget to Wishlist the game if you haven’t: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1429080/Business_Heroes_Food_Truck_Simulation/

Live Long and Prosper 👋,
Kunal & the team

P.S: Do you have a friend who enjoys strategy games and a good challenge?🤔 You can invite them to flex their strategic thinking in this food truck business challenge. You can even battle for city domination together in multiplayer. 😁

Simply forward this to them and invite them to join our community: https://mailchi.mp/aeee9bdf2b69/join-us