> Here's another thought, directed primarily to Sam. In the middle of the next Site Market Game, at least one new RinkWorks feature will (hopefully) be released: EquiWorks. Is it feasible for you to code in the dynamic addition of this stock when the feature is launched? One of the neat things about the original game was that the Site Market game itself, as a feature, was an obvious buy for the first couple of days, since participation immediately skyrocketed. EquiWorks' inclusion would be interesting for the same reason, as well as any other features that are introduced during the game's run.
>
> Would it be too difficult to implement a dynamic change in the number of stocks (features in which we can invest) while a game is still running?
>
> That just gave me another idea: what if you could dynamically *remove* a stock from the list during the game, creating a "bankruptcy" simulation? I don't know under what conditions you might want to declare a feature bankrupt either temporarily or permanently (for the duration of the game, at least), but it would certainly cause some interesting ripples throughout the other stocks.
>
> What say you, O master of code?


Good suggestions. Actually I was going to have
EquiWorks show up on day 1 of the next game,
even though it probably won't be ready until the
very end of the month, or possibly not until the first
few days of November. (Just because it's not open
doesn't mean it doesn't get hits.) There's also
the "Things People Said" stock, that would clock
in around $50-60 if a game were going -- an interesting
and largely unpopulated price range. When I coded
the game, I kept the possibility of adding and
deleting stocks on the fly in mind, but I never
tested it, and I don't know if some little thing
would go wrong somewhere. Probably not, but I
never got around to testing it.

As far as bankruptcy is concerned, I could simulate
that by manually causing the stock to go down to
one. (I left in the capability of allowing myself
to manually modify stocks to my heart's content.)
But I think that would upset a lot of people.
But I could force sale before it crashes, if I
expanded the scripts to support that operation.
Dividends might also be an option. But all these
require script changes, whether they are small or
large. I'm not against that, but I'm hard at work
not just on EquiWorks but the next feature due out
in mid-November, so I don't have time to do anything
like this for the next game. My tentative plan
is to play the next game like before, but with a
shorter running time and a smaller starting amount.
The game after that can be a "losing" game, where
you try to lose the most money. And
by the time the game after that rolls around, I
should have had time to decide on features that
require script changes and implement them. Thanks
for the suggestions -- I'll keep them in mind.