When I first joined Bootleggers ,back in 2006, I thought the core concept of the game was obvious. To smuggle booze and make money while doing so. I mean, the game was called Bootleggers after all. However it took me less than an hour to realize that the game was much more complex than that and bootlegging was in fact just a tiny support element of the game, and back in 2006 it played even a much smaller role than it does now. The fact that finishing the first mission (smuggling a 100 crates of wine from California to New York) paid out less than what I had spend buying those bottles in the first place, made me instantly realize that bootlegging was actually not a good way to move forward in Bootleggers. But within a day of making my first account I found out what the hearth and soul of Bootleggers really was. The OC!
The Organized Crime, although it is far from being the most fun, interesting or exiting part of the game, and sometimes even a bit of a pain in the A hole, was and forever will be the very core of Bootleggers social and economical structure. It is the game's primary source of rank points (these elusive little data dots that no one really understands) and also, of course, wealth. All those bucks spent on bullets and casinos had to come from somewhere and in most cases I can tell you exactly from where. They either came as payout from an OC, or as bank interests, earned with capital originating from OC'ing.
So such a large pillar to a complex society like Bootleggers must in someway give a bit of an echo to the socioeconomic atmosphere of the game at any given time, right? Not mentioning the pure social lubricant it supplies the game. ( I mean what an icebreaker? Be honest, how many of your Bootleggers friendships were originally established through a simple OC?) Well, lets take a look at some old OC trends that might have echoed the Bootleggers of it's time. But keep in mind that this article is almost nothing but speculations and meant for individual interpretation as well as amusement, and also note that the author of this article is basing it upon memories from almost a decade ago. Historical accuracy might not be a 100%
When you take a look at the Classifieds now a days, what you can usually see are advertisements for a one car OC where the outcome is split equally 25% to all, this rule is so common right now that players rarely bother to mention it or even ask about it. You just join and voilà! You get a 25% cut and in return you are expected to use the finest equipment, well except the driver usually gets away with using the second best (the Beauford). Although this seems to be the norm nowadays it hasn't always been so, far from it actually.
When I began playing the game, in the early days of round 5 the scene was a quite different one. The standard setup was something like Leader (30%), Driver with Dusenberg (15%) , Explosives expert with C4 (30%) and Weapons expert with Thompson (25%). Drivers could sometimes drive a Beauford for 10% and the Equipment expert was almost unheard off, much like today. The driver's position was considered the poor man's place. The round was fresh so there was plenty of players but a lot less money. And when there's little money divided amongst the many, two things happen in Bootleggers. Players want to OC and get as much out of it as they can on one hand, and on the other hand players commit petty crimes and auto burglary like there's no tomorrow. This simply means that there are a lot of greedy players leading OC's and a lot of poor, low ranked, players with parkinglots full of cars ready to join the next OC for next to nothing. This is what we call supply and demand at it's finest (a huge supply of cars and a huge demand for OCs). But as fast as demand rises, the supply falls. The inflation of both ranks and wealth the OCs were providing meant that more players had a high rank and good wealth and at the same time fewer players were wasting there time on stealing cars (I mean be honest, why steal cars when the payout is so little compared to the effort and time put into it, and also compared to your wealth and rank? It would be curios to know how many State Don's practice auto-burglary on a regular basis.)
Although the demand for OCs didn't drop, the supply of cars however did, leading to higher prices. Being a driver meant you barely broke out on even, and in some cases you even lost money. And as we know the driver's position is usually left for the lower ranks and the less fortunate. So finding drivers became harder and harder. Players just didn't want to drive unless forced to. Because although driving had become the most expensive position in the OC, players mindset changed a lot slower than the economical environment they were playing in. I mean why should Peter give Paul more then 15% if nobody else is doing so?
But of course this couldn't last forever so slowly people began to offer drivers 20% and as time went by and the inflation went through the rooftops the OC slowly began to become obsolete as the main source of income for a large portion of the player base. Banking interests became an ever larger contributor to the economic growth of the game and just like that, OCing became a chore for the huge amount of players who drew their main income from elsewhere. It became much more of a means for ranking than ever banking. And what happens when people begin to care less about things, like chores for example? They start to “neglect them”. OC leaders and the general player base dropped their OC standards, with cement shoes straight down to the bottom of the East River. “Equipment experts instead of Explosives experts? Why the hell not, whatever gets this thing over with!” Car prices were still going up, so why not just drive a Phaeton? “Who cares? Lets do it!” The equal 25% setup also became a lot more common (because seriously, that's so much simpler than negotiating every position every single time). So in the end, shortly before the reset, players simply had too much money, too few cars to spare, and almost no cares about whatever.
So the next time you join an OC where theres is a drive with a Phaeton, an equipment expert, and then a weapons expert with 4 Thompsons. You probably know it's time for a reset.
And maybe, this game should have been named Bank robbers, not Bootleggers.
