Tonight on GeekNights, we consider auction and bidding mechanics in games. In the news, DriveThruRPG chose cowardice, and Microsoft lays of 9,000 people. GeekNights will be live at PAX West with an all new lecture on the same topic as this show! Our talk The Everlasting Game from PAX East is on youtube!
Great topic. I’m not much of a gamer, but I do attend different art auctions and business liquidation actions every month and it is a fascinating arena. Admittedly, I have been burned a few times by overbidding where I either got caught up in the bidding frenzy like an idiot or didn’t do diligent research on the true value of an item. Have also been burned by underbidding where the item’s value far exceeded the realized price.
A couple of things on which I thought you guys could go a little more in depth; the idea of the auction itself being a form of game(or dare I say, game mechanic?), and the psychology at play behind various types of auctions. You touched on both of these in the show, but these aspects are what I find most interesting. Between the seller, the auction house, the bidders and, the buyer, there are different motivations and not all of them are always above board.
For instance, I’ve seen items from particular lots sell for 100x to +1000x their logical value and the only way I can make sense of it is that either something shady is going on behind the scenes or the item’s true value is hidden from nearly all parties involved. When I’ve talked to the auction house after such occurrences, they never use terms like “money laundering” but, it is clear they know something odd is afoot.
As for the psychological aspect of auctions, plenty of research has been published on the various hidden and less than obvious factors that affect the outcome of auctions. The nature of an auction seems to lend itself to the easy manipulation of the human brain in multiple ways.
Thanks for another fun episode of GN.
Yeah, it would just be too long to go into al those auction types. We could do a whole panel on each one.
This is not an auction problem, but a problem related to high priced durable/collectible goods. Especially high priced fine art. Even if fine art were sold at some fixed price, someone would still buy it as a means to launder money.
Meanwhile if you go to the flower market for a tulip auction, you probably aren’t going to see any money laundering going on. The only people there are in the flower business.
Agreed. The liquidation auctions I pay attention to are always very predictable and boring. Everybody there is looking for a deal and to pay less than what they could elsewhere. Not so at the art auctions. At least for me, this is what makes art auctions fun to watch.