It is interesting how a tragedy impresses itself upon the
human collective conscience, how it is transformed, in rather unexpected ways.
From the holocaust we have books, films, plays. From the financial crisis and
its various extensions of financial meltdown we have gotten a Margin Call, a movie with a rather loose
grip on reality (as is the case with
most movies) and, I now find, a game called Market
Meltdown.
What is it?
The game appears to be based on the antics of a number of
rogue traders. In Market Meltdown the
players are traders who must make ever bigger bets (as the money they owe
increases) in order to stay afloat. The losers are those who go bust first.
Just some fun
It is likely the board game is just good fun, amoral. That
is what it is intended to be. It is hard to tell if the game will succeed,
whether perhaps people will find it distasteful. But if kids can play computer
games pretending to be evil overlords, why not have families play games pretending
to be reckless traders. It could be used as an exercise in moral instruction –
don’t do this in real life.
But in our hearts
The fact is that there is something about these rogue
traders that captures our hearts. Sure, we’re angry with them for being
heartless human beings, extensions of a merciless financial sector. But it’s
not our money they lost. What a
thrill it must be to place such huge bets, to waver between being ignominious Kweku
Adoboli or glorious George Soros. (Admittedly Soros was no rogue trader, but
his bets were massive and if he were wrong his ignominy would have been as
great, if not necessarily prosecutable).
Social commentary
In some sense, the game, with its simplified rules, its
exaggerated nature, is a kind of mockery. What
were they thinking? We give them, those rogue traders, immortality, not by
their reputation, but by frequently reliving their defeat, and laughing at it.
Perhaps that, too, is a kind of punishment.
Out of sight
Despite the financial crisis’s impact on people, it being
discussed everywhere. Despite the fate of Greece and the entire Eurozone hanging
in the balance, I do not think that it is a ripe source of creative
inspiration. There are a number of other games inspired by the crisis. Still, I
would not imagine that many books of fiction will be written about these times
once they are past, that many more films will be made (though there will
undoubtedly be some). The halls of finance are just too hard for people to
imagine, the dealing and wheedling too obscure, the language too foreign, with
certain obvious exceptions, it’s just not exciting enough (although I may be
wrong).
It is a pity. Perhaps if we could bring the world of finance
to the hearts of people, we could place some heart in finance.
Some references
The game:Some references
- Clarendon Games, 2012a. Market Meltdown. Available at: http://www.clarendongames.com/product.php?xProd=19 [Accessed December 29, 2012]. Clarendon Games, 2012b.
- Market Meltdown Intro. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lq_AdyyiQx4 [Accessed December 29, 2012].
- The Economist, 2012. Financial board games: Playing the markets. The Economist. Available at: http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2012/12/financial-board-games [Accessed December 29, 2012].
- Wikipedia, 2012a. George Soros. Wikipedia. Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soros [Accessed December 29, 2012].
- Wikipedia, 2012b. Kweku Adoboli - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Wikipedia. Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kweku_Adoboli [Accessed December 29, 2012].
