It’s remarkable that the same concepts that allowed me to be effectively retired by my mid-twenties allows me to frequently become rich in video games. That’s the nature of compounding. It is a law, exactly like gravity.
This weekend, Ashly and Ian drove in from Columbus to visit – they are thinking about relocating to this area next March so that she can work with us on the businesses and he can work as a nuclear engineer at a nearby facility. Right now, she’s a risk mitigation analyst at a well-known bank, so her skills would be a useful addition to the staff.
Anyway, as we were out having Chipotle and Coldstone, we stopped by a nearby video game store and went in just to see if anything was new. I came across a game called Fable 2 and, having seen the preview of the original fable on the XBOX 360 Live service, it interested me. Long story short, I picked up about $100 worth of games and merchandise, figuring I’d get to play them when I had time. Given the fact we’ve quintupled the number of e-commerce sites under our control in the past six months, that seemed like a long, long time away, frankly.
The Premise of Fable 2
The premise of Fable 2 is simple. As in life, every choice you make influences the quality of your soul and the outcome of your journey. Your choices are pretty much like those that every man and woman has when they are born – be good by giving money to orphans, helping those in distress, donating clothes, charging below-market rent to those in poverty, and working to rid the world of evil, or you can be evil by murdering innocent people, having unprotected sex and catching STD’s, terrorizing cities, gambling, stealing, sacrificing people … you name it.
When I say there are practically no limits, I mean it, even in details that are absent in other games such as growing fat if you eat too much food or your character’s sex life (e.g., you can raise a family, go the church (in the game, “The Temple of Light”), and become known as a prude, or you can have homosexual orgies, get drunk, and vomit in the town square after a night of pub games during which you amassed large gambling debts). Before I continue: For those who think games like this are offense, that’s irrational and unjustified. We, as humans, have these same choices in life. It’s called free will. Why is it okay for us to have the God-given right to self-determination in the physical world, but demand punishment for software studios that do the same in virtual ones? It’s a mental malfunction to think like that.
Sometimes You Just Have to Accept Who You Are – And I’m a Capitalist
The first three days I played Fable 2, I did nothing but work in the game, earn money to buy real estate and businesses, and then for the rest of the time, didn’t need to exert any effort because I was able to live off the dividends generated from these assets. It mirrored the precise course of action I followed in my own life beginning with my decision to become an investor when I was ten years old.
Here was my plan for becoming a millionaire without cheating …
Secrets to Making Money in Fable 2
1. When you first begin the game, get a job as a blacksmith.
The blacksmith job is the most difficult way to make money in Fable 2 but when you start out, it is the most readily available. Work your way up to a 5 star Blacksmith until you’ve earned roughly $50,0000 to $60,000. If you’re any good, you can do this in a couple of hours at the most and even then, it shouldn’t be that difficult.
By purchasing a couple of intelligently selected houses and the Pants! store just off the city square, you can earn a base rate of $450 per 5 minutes in real world time. If you do this before you go to bed, you can wake up the next day, go to work, and come home 24 hours later to find that your character has amassed roughly $129,600. As in life, by using your earnings to first buy cash generating assets, you can save decades of work later.
3. Use the earnings to buy the pub, blacksmith shop, and some more houses.
The pub and the blacksmith shop will boost your earning capacity substantially, doubling or tripling the amount of gold you make every 5 minutes of real world time. At this point, you can proceed with the game and use your excess cash to buy additional real estate and businesses as money becomes available. The next store on my list would be the furniture shop so you can buy furniture to improve your rental units, increasing the rent you earn.
4. Viola! By the third of fourth day of playing the game, money will never again be an issue.
By following this recipe for making money in Fable 2, you shouldn’t have to work another day in the game. You can avoid the misery of spending hours upon hours pounding out swords, cutting woods, or pouring drinks. It’s very much like real life. If you spend your teenage years, twenties, and thirties buying up cash generating assets, you don’t need to worry because there’s a constant stream of cash that comes into your life with very little additional effort on your part.
This is no different than me owning stocks in high dividend companies or private businesses such as our e-commerce sites. In the time it took to write this blog entry, my character on Fable 2 made roughly $42,623. As we speak (so to speak), my money is earning dividends and interest, my companies are generating sales throughout the world, and the assets the businesses owns are appreciating. It’s just not that hard.
Maybe I enjoy Fable 2 so much because, like my character, I had to basically start with nothing other than what God gave me in terms of intelligence. I was the first to graduate from college in my family, the first to really own any stocks or other investments, the first to write a book, the first to move away from home (as in, halfway across the continent), the first to … okay, you get the idea. As a result of my past, the idea of anyone starting from scratch and building a fortune resonates powerfully within me.
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I'm a private investor who loves architecture, furniture, clothes, history, philosophy, books, cooking, and music as much as I do finance. 
