Game Theory: The Bolts in Ratchet and Clank are Worthless!

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Transcript

00:00The bolts in Ratchet & Clank are worthless. These shining, floating pieces of metal may

00:05look like they're worth a pretty penny, but in reality, their value is cratering

00:09with each installment, and our heroes are the ones to blame.

00:17Hello, Internet! Welcome to Game Theory, the show that's always throwing an Omni-Wrench

00:22into the works. And today is a very special episode for me, friends. Here on Game Theory,

00:27we love to ruin your childhoods. It's literally our tagline. But for this episode, I'm going back

00:32and ruining my own childhood. While I was always a fan of Nintendo titles like Mario, Zelda,

00:38and Pokemon, I actually started my gaming life as a Sony kid, playing games like Crash Bandicoot,

00:44Spyro the Dragon, and TIE the Tasmanian Tiger. But one of my absolute favorites from that era,

00:49and one of the few Sony mascots that's still going today, was Ratchet & Clank.

00:54This series is what you get when you mix a 3D platformer with a third-person shooter,

00:59and it was so much fun. The story is primarily about this alien feline character named Ratchet,

01:05and his very polite robot sidekick, Clank. Together, they become heroes of the galaxy,

01:10with people seeking out their assistance in future titles. I used to play these games

01:14over and over again, and yet for some reason, my dad could never remember the name,

01:19and so just called it Plinket & Plunket, which 8-year-old me thought was just as

01:24hilarious as the in-game dialogue. Though it wasn't just the dialogue that was punny. Even

01:33the titles of the games lent into this slightly risky humor, with Going Commando and Up Your

01:38Arsenal. Fun fact, the European versions were just named 2 and 3 because of how risky those

01:44names were considered. Won't someone think of the children? However, for me, the best part about

01:50Ratchet & Clank, without a doubt, has to be the weapons that could unleash mass destruction and

01:56comedy on the many enemies in your path. Funny weapons like the Groovitron, which make your

02:01enemies dance, the Sheepinator which turns everything into sheep, and the most iconic

02:05weapon of all, the Rip You A New One. What did you just say to me? No no no, that's what it's

02:10called, the R-Y-N-O, or Rhino. It's basically the ultimate weapon of this series. But the craziest

02:18thing is, in the first game, you are offered this insanely strong weapon on just the 7th planet,

02:24out of 19. By this point in the game, you're only buying weapons that cost 7,500 bolts,

02:30but the Rhino costs 150,000 bolts. So for the rest of the game, you're left wondering,

02:36do you just forget about it and move on, or do you never buy another weapon and save up for it?

02:42It's a pretty tough decision, but what little nerdy me always wondered was how much would I

02:47actually have to save to afford such an insane tool of destruction? In fact, how much are bolts

02:52worth in general? Are they just 1 to 1 with the US dollar, or has this guy been scamming me since

02:572002? Well, now that I'm the host of Game Theory, I think it's finally time I answer 8-year-old me's

03:03question. What is the value of a Ratchet & Clank bolt? Grab your gloves of doom and negotiators,

03:09theorists, because we're about to open fire on the Ratchet & Clank economy.

03:14Let's start with the bolts themselves, because how the games use them to represent different values

03:18has changed a number of times over the years. From the 2016 remake onwards, bolt values are

03:24represented by their colour. Bronze, silver, gold, or platinum. Whereas in the first four games,

03:29the values are represented by what kind of shape they are. Are they a hex nut, a spring, a gear,

03:34that kind of thing. What, you thought just because they were called bolts that they'd only be bolt

03:39shaped? This is a series about interdimensional time-space travel. It was never gonna be that

03:44simple. But as confusing as it might be, for the purposes of today's episode, we're actually going

03:48to focus on those original values, because the Rhino actually isn't purchasable in later games.

03:54Instead, you get it by collecting special items that are found in each world, which I guess

03:58stopped people from farming bolts and getting it too early. Stop telling me how to play my game in

04:02Soniac. Though, if you do want to see how the value of bolts has changed across the series,

04:06or you just want to see more Sony mascots on this channel in general, make like a Lombax and smash

04:11that subscribe button. If we get, let's say, 1,000 new subscribers on this video, we'll definitely

04:17revisit this. But for now, let's just stick with the original games. In the original Ratchet &

04:20Clank, there were only four bolt shapes. A standard bolt, a hex nut, a star nut, and a gear.

04:26These are worth 1, 5, 20, and 50 bolts, respectively. More varieties were then

04:31introduced in Going Commando, like springs, three-way cross-fittings, and six-way cross-fittings,

04:36which were valued at 100, 500, and 1,000 bolts each. And then, up your arsenal, added the acorn nuts,

04:42wing nuts, and double-capped bolts at 3,000, 10,000, and 30,000 bolts each. And we are going

04:49to figure out the worth of each and every one of them, starting with the humble single bolt.

04:55To figure out what this is worth, we first need to figure out what material is used to make it.

05:00The most obvious thing to check is the colour, and do you mind?

05:05I can't figure out the value of this weapon of mass destruction if you're standing in my way.

05:10Yes, I know your weapons are much more cost-effective.

05:14Okay, okay, I'll tell everyone about the great deal they can get thanks to the sponsor of today's

05:18episode, War Robots Frontiers. This multiplayer mech shooter saw me trying to figure out the

05:23real-world mechanics of a fictional currency in a game about blowing stuff up, and decided to save

05:27me the trouble by just incorporating the real-world math directly into the blowing up parts. War

05:31Robots Frontiers prides itself on its authentic physics and momentum, making you really feel like

05:37you're part of the machine you control. Personally, as a theorist, I love playing as the supportive

05:42tactician, planning out the route and taking out the enemy when they least expect it. But, just

05:46like how Ratchet & Clank lets you upgrade your weapons over time to adapt to whatever new

05:50challenges the game throws at you, War Robots Frontiers allows you to mix and match all of

05:54those weapons into one ultimate machine for whatever your playstyle. And you can play in

05:596v6 tactical team combat missions so your different playstyles can complement each other.

06:04Whether you're like Amy and play as a fast flanker, Lee as a stalwart defender, or you're like

06:08Santi and you play as an assault mech that doesn't want to work with the rest of us and just goes in

06:12all guns blazing causing us to lose. There's always one. However, unlike what I suspect will be the

06:17case for the Rhino, these massive tools of destruction won't cost you your entire life

06:21savings. In fact, the game is completely free, and available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox Series S and X,

06:28and Xbox One. So if you fancy blowing up a galaxy without having to sell your robot companion,

06:34head on down to the description and click the link to get into battle and claim some special

06:38free rewards. Thanks again to War Robots Frontiers for sponsoring this video. Now will you move out

06:42of my way so I can see the Bolt's colour? Thank you. So let's see what you're made of.

06:48In the first game, Bolts usually have a greyish silver appearance, which as you might expect,

06:53is the colour of most metals, so not narrowing down the search much with that one. Instead,

06:57I started looking at how the items act in the game, and the biggest thing that stood out to me

07:02is that we can use tools like the Bolt Grabber or the Metal Detector to draw Bolts towards us

07:07from far away and even underground. Kinda like how Sonic can draw in rings with his lightning

07:13shield. Whatever these Bolts are made out of, it has to be a magnetic material. That immediately

07:18rules out obvious silver metals like, well, silver, and leaves us with just a few options.

07:23Iron, Nickel, Cobalt, Steel, Gadolinium, and Dysprosium. But in order to crown a winner,

07:29there is one other fact we need to consider. What this currency actually is. Bolts. Bolts

07:35are used for building machines, robots, and all the gadgets we encounter within the game. Plus,

07:40these things fly all over the place after getting smashed out of boxes or bursting out of robots

07:45that have been blown to smithereens. And yet, they don't lose any of their original shape.

07:50Therefore, the metal used for these Bolts needs to be strong and durable. Immediately,

07:55that puts metals like Gadolinium and Dysprosium out of the picture, because while they're super

07:59magnetic, they are way too soft and malleable to keep their shape after an explosion. Cobalt has a

08:04similar issue, but rather than being soft, it's brittle. Even when combined with a stronger metal

08:08like Steel, Cobalt drill bits are famously brittle and will shatter if not used correctly. And I

08:14don't think we can call whatever this is correct use. Nickel is a little stronger, but it has a

08:20different issue. It has been shown to cause allergic reactions in some people after prolonged

08:25exposure, which isn't ideal for your galactic currency, something that everyone is going to be

08:31holding. That leaves us with just two remaining options, Iron and Steel. And the winner ended up

08:37being Steel for one simple reason. It cheated. Iron is a very strong metal, but Steel is even

08:44stronger because it isn't a pure metal. It's actually an alloy of Iron and Carbon mixed

08:51together. This not only increases its strength, which is why it's the primary metal we use for

08:56nuts and bolts, but the process of adding Carbon turns the metal from a dirty gray to a metallic

09:02silver, the same color we see from the bolts. And the cherry on top of all of this is while I said

09:09most of the bolts are silver, not all of them are silver exactly. Some have slightly red or bluish

09:15tints to them. And if you heat Steel to certain temperatures, you can actually temper the metal

09:21to change its color from yellow to purple to yes, red and blue. So the bolts from Ratchet and Clank

09:271 are made out of Steel. Great, now we've just gotta figure out the cost. At the time of writing,

09:32Steel costs around 74 cents per kilogram, which compared to some of the other metals we looked at

09:37is pretty inexpensive. So good job to the Solana Galactic government for choosing a cost-effective

09:42metal, I guess? But therefore, we need to find out how much these bolts weigh, which means it's time

09:47for the really fun stuff, the math. Calculating the weight is actually pretty straightforward.

09:52We've used this equation plenty of times before. Weight equals density times volume. Density is

09:58easy, as Steel has a set density of 7.85 grams per cubic centimeter, or 4.537 ounces per cubic inch.

10:06The tricky part is figuring out the volume. You see, bolts don't have the most conventional shape.

10:12If it were a sphere, a cube, or even a ring, it would be pretty easy to calculate. But a bolt

10:17is a bunch of different shapes all smooshed together and has all these edges and grooves

10:22going on. So pixel measurements weren't gonna cut it this time. Fortunately, just like my favorite

10:27Pokemon Eevee, we theorists have evolved a little over the years. We are no longer bound by the

10:32techniques of old, and have learned to use the holy tool known as Blender. With this, we can just

10:37take the 3D models from the game and accurately measure each bolt's volume with zero uncertainty.

10:43This reveals that the standard bolt has a volume of 0.0254 cubic meters, or 0.898 cubic feet.

10:51So we just plug that into our equation and that gives us a weight of 199.4 kilograms, or 439.58

11:02pounds. That's the weight of a BMW 650 GS motorcycle. And as someone who has owned that

11:09bike, let me tell you, those things are hard to pick up when they've fallen over, let alone

11:13carrying thousands of them in your pockets. With our original cost of 74 cents per kilogram, that

11:18would make a single bolt worth $147.55, making a single ammo refuel for the Bomb Glove worth $738.

11:29The Glove of Doom would cost you $1,106,625. And the Rhino, the most expensive item in the game,

11:38the item you spend hours grinding for bolts in order to get, would cost you, get this, $22,132,500.

11:51I don't have that kind of cash. I have a hard time buying something that's a few hundred dollars.

11:55This is just a completely unobtainable item. And it only gets more expensive from here, friends.

12:00In the next two games, they decided to change the bolt color from various shades of silver to gold.

12:05Maybe they just couldn't be bothered to keep heating the metal to different

12:08temperatures to get that color change and just said, stuff it, everyone likes gold.

12:12It wouldn't be a bad time-saving measure, but it does mean we have to find a new material.

12:17Although this didn't take me as long as you might think, because we already found the only tough,

12:21magnetic, and golden material in our video about the value of Sonic's golden rings.

12:26It's called neodymium. And with that legwork saved, we can just do our weight calculations again

12:31using neodymium's 7 grams per cubic centimeter density. From there, we can see that a single

12:37bolt weighs in at 177.8 kilograms, or 391.98 pounds. So it's actually a good bit lighter

12:46than our steel bolts, which might make you think that it's worth less, but oh no, friends. Neodymium

12:51is worth way more than steel. In fact, it's worth 125 times more, coming in at $92.51

13:01per kilogram, making the real-world value of a single bolt in Ratchet & Clank 2 and 3 $16,448.28.

13:11The ammo for one of the most basic weapons, the Gravity Bomb, in this game would cost you $822,414.

13:19If you had the desire to turn your friends into ducks with the Quack Array, you would need to have

13:23$3,289,656,000 in the bank. And the Rhino? Well, there's two Rhinos, one for each game. The Rhino

13:332 would cost you $16,448,280,000, and the Rhino 3, or Rhy-three-no, I guess, comes in with the

13:43enormous price tag of $49,343,840,000. That's Jeff Bezos level of money. Maybe that's why he's so

13:56fixated on space. The price of these things is astronomical. Ratchet & Clank must be worth an

14:02absolute mint by the end of the series. Or would they? I'm sure some of you are already calling

14:06this out. We've only calculated the values of the regular single bolts. But at the start of all this,

14:12I mentioned that bolts are actually a bunch of different shapes. Well, if you try to calculate

14:18their values, this whole economy starts to become more shaky than Ratchet & Clank's space-time

14:23continuum. In the first game, based on their 3D assets, the Hexnut is actually worth $156.84,

14:30just $9 more than the single bolt, rather than the full five times the game suggests. By contrast,

14:36the Starnut is only worth $7 more, at $154.52, despite being worth 20 times more. And the gear,

14:45which should be worth 50 times more than the single bolt, is only three and a half times more,

14:50worth just $525.71. It gets even worse in the sequels. With the Hexnut now being worth $17,484.39,

14:58the gear is now worth $58,605.09, a three-way cross-fitting is $58,734.60 and the double-capped

15:11bolt, the highest-valued bolt in the game, is worth just $95,516.58. Which sounds like a lot,

15:21but it's not 30,000 times the value of a single bolt. This would mean that to pay

15:27for the Rhino 3, you would either need 3 million single bolts or just 516,610 double-capped bolts.

15:36The whole system would be broken in minutes. Plus, their actual physical value doesn't align

15:42with the order of their value in the game. The Acornnut is actually the most expensive by weight,

15:47at $136,702.03. And yet, Wingnuts are considered three times more valuable,

15:55even though in reality they are only half the value by weight. The math just ain't

16:01mathing. And there's one very specific reason for that, the type of currency.

16:05See, the way we've been measuring the value of these bolts is similar to how we used to use what

16:09was called the gold standard. Basically, the worth of a country's currency was tied into how much

16:14gold the country itself had. More gold equals higher value currency. It's just that rather

16:20than gold, we've been using steel and neodymium. But if a certain screw, nut or bolt has been

16:25assigned an arbitrary value with no correlation to what it's actually worth like we're seeing,

16:30then Ratchet and Clank's universe is more likely using a system more reflective of what we use

16:35today. And that's known as a fiat currency. A fiat currency is something that represents

16:40a monetary value rather than being worth anything itself. We use pieces of paper to denote what it's

16:45worth. A piece of paper with a 1 on it is worth $1, but the paper itself is actually only worth

16:50about $0.03. The benefit of this in the economy is that the item itself holds no intrinsic value,

16:56and so can only be used for purchasing goods and giving a representation of how much money

17:01we possess and have to use. That's why a spring, which is much lighter than a gear,

17:06can have a higher value at vendors. They are simply representing a value rather than being

17:11based on their actual worth. However, there is one flaw in treating bolts as a fiat currency.

17:17They can be used for more than just currency. Nuts and bolts can be used to construct spaceships,

17:23cool gadgets, yappy sidekicks. That would make this less of a fiat currency and more of what

17:30is called a commodity currency, the exchanging of resources or services rather than pure hard cash.

17:36This can also work with assigned values as a spring may be more useful for construction than

17:42a bolt. We humans have used commodity currencies in the past, but there are reasons we stopped

17:47doing it. The first issue that Ratchet and Clank would likely begin to face is that because bolts

17:51have a real world use, people may hold onto their bolts in case they need to, I don't know, build a

17:57robot that can do their laundry. Or because you never know when you're going to need to repair

18:01that hoverboard. This is known as hoarding, holding onto a resource and not spending it in

18:06case of emergency. And it can create artificial shortages in the market, which then drives up

18:12the prices of goods that use that resource, i.e. inflation. On the other hand, if all the nuts and

18:17bolts are tied up being used commercially to make products like buildings and gadgets, that can lead

18:22to a decrease in the supply of currency because it's being used for other things. And that leads

18:27to what is known in economic terms as supply shocks. This would cause the value of the bolt

18:31to constantly fluctuate depending on how much of the currency is actually in circulation as currency

18:38at any given time. And tracking that across an entire galaxy is going to be hard. And that

18:43circulation problem gets even worse when you consider that bolts can be found all over the

18:48galaxy, in robot enemies you smash up, in hidden stashes, but also on planets that have been

18:54uninhabited for years, like the abandoned mining planet of Tibora and Fastoon. At any point,

19:00someone, and by someone I absolutely mean we, could stumble upon a huge amount of scrap metal and BAM,

19:07we have a bunch of currency. This would suddenly increase the amount of currency in circulation,

19:12and we saw firsthand what happens when this occurs during the California Gold Rush. There was

19:17a huge discovery of gold in that area, and a huge influx of gold meant that more people had more to

19:22spend, which effectively reduced the dollar's purchasing power, and that forced the prices of

19:27goods to increase by an average of 30% in order to keep up. We can actually see this forced inflation

19:33taking effect in the games. Take a look at the prices for the standard rocket launcher in each

19:37game, the Devastator, the mini rocket tube, and the Annihilator. They all do the same basic thing,

19:42fire rockets that auto-aim, but the prices of them have skyrocketed, pun absolutely intended.

19:48But the biggest issue is that the bolts themselves won't last forever. While steel and neodymium are

19:54very durable metals, they do still corrode and degrade over time. Steel contains iron,

20:00and when it comes into contact with water or oxygen, it oxidizes, producing rust. Neodymium

20:06also oxidizes, which is what gives it that golden color. But that also means that over time,

20:11it will become weaker and weaker, making it completely unfit for use as either a physical

20:17bolt or as a piece of currency, just like the steel bolts. This is especially true on planets

20:22like Quantos or the dank swamps of Uzla that have super high humidity that will speed up the

20:27oxidization process. If these bolts deteriorate, that's once again less currency in circulation,

20:33which again leads to a limited supply, which once again lowers the value of the bolts.

20:38All the while prices are going through the roof. So really, Ratchet and Clank's biggest threat

20:44isn't Dr. Nefarious. It's not the dimensions intersecting. It isn't even Captain Qwark

20:49stabbing us in the back for the bajillionth time. It's themselves, smashing everything in their path,

20:54destroying the economy just so they can rip you a new one. But hey, that's just a theory.

21:00A game theory! Thanks for watching, and one final reminder to head on down to the description

21:05to claim those free rewards from our sponsor, War Robots Frontiers. Enjoy the fireworks, theorist.

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