As I’m starting this post, I’m struck by how often the phrase “_________ says it all” is immediately followed by a more expansive explanation that includes details that weren’t present in what “__________” was. All of which to say is that the title of this post is an accurate representation of its contents in summary. I got hired (me, personally) by the leader of my Free Company in Final Fantasy 14 to do some work to help make our company projects proceed more smoothly. I’m now the person trolling the markets for the materials we need in mass quantities that our companions haven’t been able to acquire by the time we need to start distributing materials. The leader sets a price cap and gives me the in-game money (plus a 10 percent commission that is meant to also cover sales tax) for however much of whatever material it is he needs and I run around the various data centers and servers buying it all up, keeping whatever money is left once that is all over. We negotiated the details of it over the weekend prior to me writing this (two weekends ago from when this gets posted) and I got sent on my way to buy fifty thousand each of two different things last night (as of writing this). I got my money, did my research, filled out my little tracking spreadsheet (that also calculates profit margins, my current pay total, and the quantity purchased), and spent about four hours buying it all. It was actually a lot of fun! I’ve been interested in how the game’s economics work, from a player perspective, and this was a very interesting glimpse into it that I couldn’t have gotten any other way. While I definitely still prefer to spend my time playing the game, I am kind of looking forward to the next time I get to do a shopping hunt like this one, and not just because it has been the fastest I’ve made a huge amount of money in my almost ten months of playing the game.