money game

capitalism is cookie clicker with chrome hearts

i started my career in silicon valley. the whole place runs on one sentence, courtesy of paul graham: make something people want.

then I raised money for a crypto company. i asked what people want and got 🫪

i realized crypto is closer to game development, but with money.

games solve boredom. money solves hope.

& the money game solves the most important desire a human has: to be seen.

capitalism is the largest money game. crypto just make it fun.

the rules of money were written by people no smarter than you. a few people grow the food & write the software. everyone else farms a number: emails, decks, meetings, a salary that goes up if you click enough.

& the number itself is made up. since 1971 the dollar is a story defended by printing presses, good exactly as long as belief is.

click, get cookies, buy an upgrade, click again. most jobs are cookie clicker. we’re just playing it in chrome hearts.

nothing wrong. i love CH. everything below is just my design notes on how to design money games that are actually fun.

money, consensus, vanity

crypto open sourced money. AI open sourced culture. anyone can issue a coin, & anyone can generate a picture, a video, now a game.

as creation got cheaper, recognition did not.

consensus creates vanity. vanity commands money. money compounds consensus.

two watches can tell the same time. there’s only one rolex.

first people agree something matters. then they want to signal they get it. then markets form around the signal. then someone pays $100k for a daytona. then more people agree it matters. desire is copy-paste.

raph koster, a theory of fun: “fun is just another word for learning.” a game takes something hard, strips out the noise until the pattern is learnable, & hands it back as play.

that’s why cookie clicker is the proto money game. as a game designer, you get the money (from VC or revenue), engineer the consensus, & create the status. the three moats are the three corners of the game.

everything is cookie clicker

click. get cookies. buy an upgrade. make more cookies.

farm → improve → progress → farm again.

cookie clicker is capitalism with everything removed except the loop. a number that goes up because time has lapsed, and go up faster because you’ve improved it with “work”.

that’s the floor of the money game. people want to better something. give them something to own & a way to improve it, ideally with a skill ladder.

you want to design a loop:

idle farm → acquire goods → people want goods → demand for scarce goods → status.

counter-strike and capitalism

take the idle farming loop & add three things: tradable goods, other people, & being seen.

cookie clicker is the raw version. you idle, you farm cookies.

counter-strike is multiplayer cookie clicker. the same loop. you shoot people, you farm cases. but you can own the cases and the skins for your guns. When you shoot people, you look cool. other people see your expensive skin and think you are cool.

capitalism is counter strike with more cases. you do a bullshit job, you farm coins. you can own more than skins: watches, cars, chrome hearts. whatever other people think is cool at the moment, you want! in abundance, scarcity migrates, & status follows it.

same game, three sizes. the only things that change are how many players and the complexity.

two kinds of play

if it’s the same game, why does counter-strike feel like a game & your job doesn’t?

because a game is honest about which kind of fun it’s selling you. there are two.

PvE: progression. “i’m getting somewhere.”

you against the system. farm, build, unlock. cookie clicker is pure PvE. so is a salary. the number goes up because you “worked”.

which means PvE is really just waiting. the game is time, & the designer’s job is to make the wait worth it. watching a chart alone is boring. farming with friends in RuneScape is a saturday. the promotion is the same number going up (congrats on a $19k pre-tax increase), it just comes with a bigger title to wait in. the best PvE isn’t faster. it’s social. the question “ it’s “how to make wasting time fun while it does?”

PvP: rank. “i was right.”

you against other players. your read against theirs, settled by the price. trading fungible things like memecoins is the best example: it tests taste & memetic consensus in the short term, & you’re betting you read the room before the room did. win & your number goes up while others go down. winning is addictive not merely because of number up, but because you might break a man’s ego.

money game in a nutshell

cookie clicker: one PvE, zero PvP. you farm cookies, nobody’s watching.

counter-strike: one PvE, one PvP. you farm cases, you fight in matches, & the skin you wear into the match is the receipt.

capitalism: many PvEs, many PvPs. jobs, side hustles, airdrops on one side. real estate, collectibles, the stock market, chrome hearts on the other. every market is a different arena to be seen winning in.

so PvE pays progression & PvP pays rank. the money game pays both: being seen. a promotion nobody notices is a raise. a trade nobody saw is a bank statement. the money game is the same two loops with an audience.

& the audience is literal. by 2003 poker had put a camera under the table so the audience could see the hole cards. a result announced afterwards is a receipt. a visible stake with a line it has to cross is a scene. world series entries went from 839 to 8,773 in three years. same game. the only new thing was being watched.

make money fun

so here’s the whole thesis.

games solve boredom. money solves hope. & the money game solves the core human desire, which is to be seen.

cookie clicker is the raw version: one PvE, nobody watching.

counter-strike added one PvP & a room.

capitalism has thousands of each. a job for every temperament, a market for every skill: real estate for the patient, the stock market for the fast, collectibles for the obsessed, chrome hearts for the loud. & nobody designed it.

that’s what you’re building. not a game. capitalism, made fun

a game with many kinds of PvE & PvP, each testing a different skill, with the same two rewards at the end: number go up, rank, and finally being seen. (ideally you want other people to create their own game within your game. stripe doesn’t run a business; it lets a million people run theirs. the united states doesn’t sell anything; it’s the room every business gets seen in.

If building in crypto is game development with money, I’m here to become the best game designer of money

make money fun. making or losing.