FAN FORUMS FOR WALL STREET RAIDER:
From time to time, various Wall Street Raider fans have set up forums or blogs
for players of W$R to swap stories, exchange ideas and game strategies, and check
for developments relating to W$R.
The current forum, opened in 2015, is at:
WSRUNITED.freeforums.org,
and is provided courtesy of Erick Gragg....
RONIN SOFTWARE DOES NOT SPONSOR OR OPERATE ANY SUCH FAN
SITES, AND THEIR CONTENT IS NOT CONTROLLED BY RONIN SOFTWARE.
Check this page from time to time for links to the above or any other W$R forums or blogs.
Any new releases of Wall Street Raider or Speculator are announced on this page.
CURRENT RELEASE: VERSION 8.0 On September 15, 2015, v. 7.80 was released,
which we expected would be the final significant upgrade, as we are about at the end of
development of W$R, due to health problems (somewhat under control now), dwindling sales,
and having run out of good ideas for any major new features. However, while laid up for
long periods since that release, and unable to do much of anything but sit at the computer
and continue to tinker with Wall Street Raider, we've put in somewhere between 1,000 and
2,000 hours working on what probably WILL be the final version, 8.0, making it much more
realistic and therefore more difficult for players to quickly finagle their way into the
quadrillions or quintillions of net worth. This version cracks down on a large number of
"loopholes" in the program, like the ability to buy futures on, for instance, a thousand
times the actual world supply or annual production of a commodity. (However, I'm sure
some users will still find loopholes, but maybe not quite such large ones now.)
Version 8.0 also includes convertible bonds, a feature we've long wanted to implement,
but always felt would be impossibly complex and difficult to build in, particularly when
it came to doing complex transactions like mergers, liquidations, and spin-offs. We had
built convertibles into our other game, Speculator, but simply limited such corporate
transactions where convertibles were involved in Speculator, to avoid the thorny problems,
since players in Speculator don't control companies and thus can't force such transactions
to occur.
However, after many long nights and much hair-pulling, we finally were able to implement
convertible bonds in Raider, a fun new tool for investing and after much testing and tweaking,
we eventually got the convertible bond prices to behave in a manner that is almost indistinguishable
from the price behavior of real-world convertible bonds, which seemed like an almost impossible task
when we started. Players will find convertibles are not only interesting, lower-risk investments,
but can also be issued at much lower interest rates than a company would have to pay on "straight"
bonds or bank loans, and thus can be a good financing alternative for companies you control.
Another new feature, suggested by a user, was to add stock price alerts, so you will be
notified when a stock you are interested in buying or selling rises above or falls below a
price per share that you specify. Thinking back over past years, here is a partial list
of features we have added at the request of players:
- Put and call options trading.
- Executive stock options and performance bonuses for CEOs.
- Commodity futures trading.
- Ability to invest in and store physical commodities.
- Stock index futures.
- Interest rate swaps (derivatives).
- Stock price alerts, as noted above.
- Automatic "sweeping" of cash balances to pay down a player's margin debt.
- A system where players or companies can put stocks or assets up for sale,
or view a list of stocks or assets being offered for sale (cheap) by other
players or entities.
- Advice ("from your lawyers") as to whether or not you should agree to
settle or go to trial when antitrust suits are brought against your companies.
- An "autopilot" system where you can turn most of the management of
your controlled companies over to the simulation, when you control too many
companies to properly manage them all yourself.
- Cheats that involve being able to trade on "insider" information.
Obviously, we have had a wealth of good ideas contributed by users,
including quite a few that we simply didn't want to take on, like
building in rental real estate empire building and role-playing
features. We have tried to keep the focus in W$R on stocks, bonds,
and other derivative investments.
Click HERE
for details on some of the new features in 8.0.
NEW STOCK TRADING GAME:
I've finally put the finishing touches on Speculator: The Stock Market
Simulation, a "spin-off" from Wall Street Raider that has been a
parallel project for a long time, that I never seemed to get around to
finishing. In Speculator, you are not a billionaire tycoon
who can influence or manipulate stock prices, but just a small, middle-class
investor with a $100,000 inheritance to invest or speculate with. Rather than
having an emphasis on taking over and managing companies, this is a "pure"
trading game (which doesn't let you take over companies). It will that test
your ability to research companies and profitably trade or invest in them.
You may find it a lot more challenging than Wall Street Raider, as you have
to be a nimble trader in stocks, bonds (including convertibles), options
and futures. Besides which, we have made trading stocks or futures
considerably more treacherous and difficult.
For details, or to try out the free (shareware) version,
CLICK HERE. The shareware version (1.05)
now has short sales, options trading and futures trading enabled (but
you have to make some very good stock and bond trades in only 3 years
in the shareware version to become eligible for the more advanced
trading levels -- vs. 30 years to do so in the Registered Version).
W$R YOUTUBE VIDEO NOW AVAILABLE. An ardent fan of Wall
Street Raider has recently been posting very detailed videos on a new YouTube
channel, RakeM, showing users how to play (and win at!) Wall Street Raider,
using versions 7.60 and 7.8x (and probably v. 8.0 soon). These are very well
done, and Rakem (Mark Slatcher) has now completed posting all 55 episodes for
7.60, in which he played a game from start to finish (or to absurdity, with
quintillions in net worth), showing how to maximize the use of various features
and clever strategies. He is a very accomplished player, and found ingenious
ways to generate unbelievable levels of net worth. The creativity of some W$R
players is truly remarkable. (But be aware, that thanks to his discovery of
some massive "loopholes," many of the tactics he shows in v. 7.60 through 7.8x
are now either not possible or have been significantly restricted in 8.0.)
Here is the link to Rakem's newer series on 7.8x, which links to all of his other W$R videos:
Wall $treet Raider YouTube VIDEOS
Rakem has also begun a (free)
video tutorial.
on YouTube. The tutorial series will go through every feature of the simulation, showing how each
works. It is not about strategies, unlike his video series mentioned above.
NOTE FOR NEW PLAYERS -- RONINSOFT.COM TUTORIAL: A (free) step-by-step
online tutorial for getting started playing Wall Street Raider, at:
www.roninsoft.com/tutorial.htm.
(The current release links from the W$R "Game Options" menu of W$R directly to the
RoninSoft.com tutorial.) This is a VERY basic tutorial for new players, like how to
buy or sell a stock, and so it may not be of much interest to experienced W$R "junkies."
ONE LAST NOTE: After publishing Wall Street Raider continuously
since 1986, I suppose all good things must come to an end, eventually, and its
time is about up. Sales fell off a cliff a couple of years ago, and recently
suddenly dropped to near zero, since December, 2016, probably due to another
change in Google's search algorithm -- so our website has become nearly
invisible, despite having hired Web.com and others to promote it in the last
year. W$R has been around longer than any other software program I know of,
but technology marches on, and I lack the programming skills (and resources)
to create an online multiplayer version or a more up-to-date interface, for
Windows or as an Apple or Android app.
I still hope to find a new publisher that would have the resources to be
able to "modernize" the program and still keep it working correctly, to carry
on its development (and market it) for other platforms, like iOS and Android-based
devices. Software firms that have attempted to "port" it up till now, even as
simplified "dumbed-down" versions, have all failed to create a version that
worked, and have given up or run out of funding.
After my continuously tweaking this program to massage every number in it
since I began work on W$R in 1984, it has gotten ridiculously complex, and
it is a minor miracle that it works at all. So I am not too optimistic
about the possibility of finding a well-funded publisher to take it over,
particularly since it is the extreme example of a "niche" program that only
appeals to a small slice of the population -- generally, those with high I.Q.s.
I'll be 73 this month, so I will not be around indefinitely, but will keep
this website going and continue to provide free replacements for at least
the next couple of years (hopefully). To all those of you who have supported
Raider's development with your good ideas and by buying the upgrades over the
years (15 times or more for some of you), many, many thanks for your support! I
never made much money publishing Raider, but I have had a great deal of enjoyment
out of the intellectual challenge of matching wits with users, in my (vain)
attempts to plug every loophole! (Sad to say, you guys always found NEW loopholes...)
-- Michael Jenkins, May 1, 2017
