*dramatic voice* War.
War never changes.
Oh look, shaving!
Cool!
*Intro theme plays*
Hello Internet,
welcome to Game Theory
and to the conclusion of what I'm going to lovingly call our apocalypse trilogy.
I mean think about it,
You had Mad Max, Fallout, and FNAF 4.
Yup,
three games symbolizing the fall of rational humankind.
First things first, just in case you've been living deep underground
in a surprisingly clean, roomy, and self sustaining bomb shelter for the past month and a half,
as part of a series of games announced at this year's E3 conference
which left many a gamer weeping for joy
Bethesda grew my cold, scientific heart 3 sizes that day
probably through radiation more than love,
when it announced Fallout 4 isn't only a real game,
but that it'll be here before the end of the year.
Now THAT is how you make an announcement.
Take that, vague Kingdom Hearts 3 trailer!
But for one gamer out there this wasn't just super exciting,
it was the culmination of almost 8 years of careful and diligent work.
Sort of.
In case you've never done yourself a favor and played the Fallout series before,
the games take place in an alternate universe where among other things
World War 2 never really ended.
Everyone is afraid of getting invaded by China
and in 2077 a nuclear war takes place
which wipes out civilization as we know it.
Humans that haven't mutated into deadly monsters or zombies
live in small communities that dot the radioactive wasteland.
And instead of printed money people have taken to using discarded old bottle caps for currency.
Knowing this, a little over a month ago a clever Fallout super fan named Seth
who goes by GatorMacheteJr on Imagur,
so as not to get him confused with GatorMacheteSr, obviously,
sent his collection of bottle caps to Bethesda.
A whopping 2,240 caps,
aka 11 pounds of bottle toppers,
aka the remnants of an entire undergrad and masters degree worth in parties.
All in the hopes of preordering the game using the franchise's own currency.
Shortly thereafter, employee Matt Grandstaff confirmed
that Seth would indeed be recieving a copy of the game
when it's released on November 10th.
Unless they decided to pull a Scott Cawthon and release it,
like, a week ago.
Now, other than being an extremely cute enouraging story,
about how seriously Bethesda takes the dedication of their fanbase,
this got the wheels in my head turning a bit.
Just how much are bottle caps from the Fallout universe worth
in real world US dollars?
And how many of those bottle caps would it take
to actually reach the real world monetary value
of a brand new copy of Fallout 4?
Aka $59.99
plus tax.
With exclusive instore preorder bonuses
like dirty brown, skin 1,
dirty brown, skin 2,
useless rifle that you'll feel compelled to keep,
since you've got it as an exclusive preorder instore bonus,
AND your own real world pip-boy.
OK, now that last one is actually pretty cool.
*tuba*
So, saddle up, strap on your power armor and grab your laser tommy guns
because now I'm going to use my patented version of mind vats,
to walk you through exactly how we're gonna figure this out.
To understand the math behind bottlecap cash,
you first have to understand how currencies work.
When you think of money you'd probably think of pill-
pills, hah okay
When you think of money you'd probably think of bills and coins as having worth,
but a bottlecap?
It seems absurd, right?
But really, it's not.
That piece of paper you hold in your hand is just as meaningless as a bottlecap.
They're both useless objects.
In fact, the bottlecap is probably more useful.
The only difference though is that we've all agreed that the paper has some sort of
greater symbolic value and that the bottlecap is
just trash.
I mean, did you know that just a few years ago
dealers were using tide detergent
as an acceptable payment for drugs?
Seriously, laundry detergent,
the stuff that your whites whiter and your brights brighter
was the go-to currency for your heroin fix.
Brings new meaning to the term "money laundering" am I right?
Brings new meaning to the term "money laundering" am i right?
right?
*tuba* Alright...
Or think about the classic example of cigarettes
having value in prison.
Currancy is merely an agreement that some object
like a bottlecap, or a jug of tide, or a set of objects
like a piece of paper and round chunks of metal
has value.
Historically, these items were really just kind of an IOU,
the bill that you held in your hand was backed by something,
it represented some amount of a more valuable resource.
Walk into the bank, hand over your money,
and theoretically you could walk out with your rightful amount of that resource,
most often, gold and silver,
which, it's also worth pointing out, are two metals that, again, are only valuable,
because we've all agreed they have value.
Seriously,
What are you really going to do with a big brick of gold?
Bludgeon someone with it?
door stop?
bicep curl??
today though most money is what is known as fiat money
no not the saving you put away for your fancy Italian car
Its money that not backed by anything,
in the fallout games this isn't a problem
because bottle caps are backed by another valuable resource
Water. Water is the valuable resource in the post apocalypse,
Why bottle caps?
well the reasoning behind bottle caps was that there impossible to counterfeit,
No bottle cap factory's existed after the word ended
That also means that they're in limited supply which preserves their value against inflation,
A huge issue we discussed during our economics of world of war craft episode,
So what is the value of a bottle cap?
Well since we can't put a firm price on the value of water in the fallout universe
we have to compare them to something that's generally considered to be a valuable resource across all of history
the aforementioned gold.
In the fallout new vegas add on dead money you can collect 37 gold bars during the "Heist of the Centuries" mission
each one can be sold at an optimum value of 10,539 caps,
This also tells us that gold is a good standard to compare against
because this is one of the highest valued items in the game.
Meaning that even in the post apocalypse gold is still something people value
now the carry weight of each of these bars is 35 pounds
so all we need to do to find the value of that gold is to convert it to bottle caps and we have our answer
to begin the value of gold is most often measured in ounces,
But not ounces that americans know them were there are 16 per pound rather troy ounces
a unit of mass specifically for gold and other precious metals and gemstones.
A troy ounce is actually heavier then the united states ounce
which isn't even its official name technically u.s. ounces are called
''Avoirdupois'' ounces
but just saying that word makes me feel pretentious so let's move on.
Doing the conversion of 35 pound gold brick is actually 510 troy ounces
but that's not all, we also have to consider how pure the gold is,
Loyal theorists will remember when we calculated the cost of minecraft diamond armor using the four C's of gemstones
one of those c's stood for carat or weight of the diamond gold is also measured in karats but this time with a k
a word originating from the carob beans that old merchants used to use to weigh gold carob with a 'C' not a 'K'
and karat with a 'K' now measures gold purity not weight like carat with a 'C'
despite it originally being inspired by a measure of weight
Ya ya know what they really just (*bleeped*) the whole system up...
So 24 karat gold is pure gold this can also be expressed by saying that its 999 out of a thousand parts gold
which again isn't technically pure 100% since there's that one missing thousandth but whatever gold merchants are dumb,
So in fallout we see the gold bar being marked with 999.9 telling us this is a pure chunk of 24 karat gold
as such thankfully we don't need to do any other funky calculations,
so the price per gold in the fallout universe is
10,539 caps
divided by 510 troy ounces or about
21 caps per troy ounce of pure 24 karat gold
now to finally relate it to something we know the price of gold in dollars,
And I wanted to do that as accurately as possible
which meant pinning down the exact year the fallout universe completely diverted from our own timeline,
Which according to developers is when culture essentially froze where it was
after reading as many interviews as I could find the best I could conclude that the split occurred sometime around the 1950's
But here on Game theory I'm not satisfied with just rough estimates I had to get a little creative,
The only real connection I could find between Fallout's universe and our own reality besides a few dialogue references and landmarks
was the music that plays on your in game radio on the various stations you pick up on your pip boy
so I organized all the real world songs into a list
and after checking the original release dates of each recording
the most recent song on either of the games soundtracks was a cover of the classic song 'blue moon' by Frank Sinatra
witch plays on radio new vegas in fallout new vegas and places the timline split a little later then I expected
squarely in 1961 more specifically January 3rd
So armed with a date some gold and a fist full of bottle caps we can finally reach our conclusion,
In 1961 the cost of gold was about $35 dollars per troy ounce
that would mean each bottle cap would be worth $1.67
wow that's surprisingly expensive actually, those are some valuable caps
in other word GatorMacheteJr by paying 2,240 caps you technically over paid by
$3,680.80
Whoo, hope you get plenty of play hours out of that one
in the words of an old timey person from 1961
"You kid, ya' got a bum steer."
but that's just talking about 1960's money
how about in today's economy how does this all translate to 2015 dollars
well gold nowadays runs for the astronomical $1,095 per troy ounce
Oh ho, what a difference 50 years can make right? and you can see where this is going GatorMacheteJr you got hosed
at those prices each individual bottle cap would be worth $52 dollars
you practically could have bought the full pip boy edition with 2 measly caps,
but by handing over all 2,240 of the bottle caps in your collection
in the world of fallout you actually paid... get this
$116,480 dollars
hopefully Bethesda throws in some DLC for ya buddy
*cricket sounds*
seriously for that price you could've bought something useful like a house
or...
this picture of mount dogmore that i found
Etsy is a weird site...
now I've done this enough times to know that some of you in the comments will complain about me using comparisons to in game gold
"ohh it's fictional currency"... ba ba ba
okay fine,
So let me run one last calculation
finding out how much real world bottle caps are worth today
and figuring out how much GatorMachete actually paid
well here's how dedicated I am to you
I got in contact with Crown Holdings, the company who originally founded crown cap enclosers
the bottle caps you see featured in the games and asked about the composition of bottle caps made by the company in 1961
a very helpful women named Sheila informed me that at the time caps were made from 100% carbon steel
for more research I found that a single steel bottle cap weighs between 160 and 190 milligrams
or about .005 pounds
to calculate out the current monetary value of a single bottle cap
I went to a website that I absolutely love, called Quandl
Which is basically a search engine for numerical data, Which yes I recognize makes me sound incredibly nerdy
and checked the current market price of steel
which as of June 11th 2015 is about $100 dollars per metric tonne
or approximately 2,204 pounds, one metric tonne is equal to one billion milligrams so just in case your having trouble doing the math in your head
just divide that by the weight of one bottle cap which averages out to be 175 milligrams
and we can see that to get $100 dollars worth of bottle caps aka one metric tonne of them you'd need
5,714,285 caps
divide that by the $100 dollars and we can equate 1 U.S. dollar to
57,142 caps
That is quite the collection,
Which makes a $60 dollar pre order for fallout 4
worth 3,428,571 bottle caps
our pal seth and his big bag of real world caps
paid less then a tenth of a percent
of what he would need for a straight trade
seriously, he paid like 4 cents for the game, so good trade GatormacheteJr
I'm sure you've made Gatormachete senior proud
and hey lets be honest 4 cents for the game
that's a whole lot more then what he would've gotten had he traded it to game stop
or if you wanted to hang on to all your bottle caps but were still felling a little rumbly in the tumbly
then consider a trial run of nature box
from my favorites to chipotle maple almond
strawberry lemonade fruit stars and
mini belgian waffles, Mini belgian waffles there so tiny and cute,
Nature box has over 100 snacks to choose from that get delivered straight to your door step
Radiation free, no less
and if your a completionist like I am
there's always more to try because they're constantly releasing brand new options every single month,
Meaning that your taste buds are never gonna get bored
and right now you can enjoy your first box of nature box snacks on them,
but only at naturebox.com/matpat
m a t p a t
and only if you act fast,
so save your hard earned bottle caps and head over to naturebox.com/matpat
right now to unbox a world of taste,
They are vault boy approved isn't that right vault boy?
Vault boy and I were talking about it the other day, he likes parmesan garlic pop pops
one last time that's naturebox.com/matpat for your first box of hand picked snacks
sent directly to your post apocalyptic door step, on them.
and now to close us out remember
That's just a theory, a game theory!
Thanks for watching!
And by the way want more fallout action? Click here for my theory on the science of how you could survive a head shot
as depicted in fallout new vegas, or
maybe your in the mood for some other post apocalyptic theorizing. Get a preview of the new mad max game and my theory on how to survive
the car-pocalypse and repopulate the world in your image, by clicking right here ,
Now if you'll excuse me I've got one final date with FNAF
and this peanut butter nam nam, nam nam nam nam nam
*Thunder*
*creepy music plays*