Researching Prices for a Fictional Fortune

The simulator needs one clear value for every Buy button, while real markets usually offer a range. A laptop changes price with memory and storage. A watch changes with reference, condition, and availability. A house changes with location and size. A factory or launch campaign may not have a public shelf price at all.

For that reason, the displayed number is a representative game value, not a quotation or appraisal. The method page explains the source categories and the date of the latest review. The product card keeps the number short enough to understand during play.

I separate prices into four groups. Published retail prices use a manufacturer's public store or product page. Market-range items use recognizable public listings or research datasets. Large projects use public budgets, filings, or reported comparable programs. Clearly fictional items use an explicit gameplay estimate.

This classification matters because a six-dollar coffee and a Mars project do not deserve the same level of certainty. The site should not imply that a fictional concept has a verified market price.

The game rounds many values so players can compare orders of magnitude without parsing awkward precision. Rounding is more aggressive for uncertain or fictional projects than for ordinary retail goods. Taxes, delivery fees, finance costs, regional price differences, and resale values are excluded unless a specific item says otherwise.

All numbers are stored in whole dollars. This is both a technical decision and an editorial one: the game avoids cents that would create false precision without improving the experience.

A price is reviewed when its source category changes, a major public value becomes clearly outdated, or a player sends a reliable correction. I compare the suggestion with the original method before changing the game. A new number is not automatically better just because it is newer; it also has to represent the same configuration and category.

The public methodology page lists the main source families and explains which values are fictional. Corrections can be sent to the contact address with the item name, proposed value, and source URL.