[MUD-Dev] Game Economies

[Timothy O'Neill Dang]

On Fri, 4 Jun 1999, Timothy O'Neill Dang wrote:
> My feeling right now is that in-game economic behavior does
> not vary too much from real-world economic behavior *given the
> circumstances*.

I said that, and it may have been too much of a hedge; it certainly
wasn't helpful enough. Sorry, I'll elaborate. I certainly believe
there's much economic behavior in MUDs which is radically different than
economic behavior in real life. My bias, which I've seen little reason
to change so far, is that the basic economic decision-making processes
aren't very different between real-life and the games.

I've been grouping in my own head the differences in behavior into:
1) Institutional differences. That is, people behave differently because
there's different sorts of institutions for economic exchange. One of
the prime examples is the lack of a healthy contracting system in every
game I've observed (which is limited). The different behavior with
different institutional rules is the primary thing we want to research.
2) Fiction-Reality mismatch. Luxuries are the easiest example of this. A
fancy dinner in a MUD doesn't correlate to a fancy dinner in real life,
particularly if only you can look at your inventory and see "a fancy
dinner".
3) Real universe differences. I'm still unsure on what falls in this
category and what falls in category (2). The fictions can be hard to get
past. In any case, this category is for those differences built into the
game world which make it a truly different place.

I believe, awaiting strong evidence to the contrary, that economic
decisions -- particularly those decisions which are really blatantly
economic -- are made mostly like they are in real life, that there's
nothing special about the psychology of living in a MUD which causes
economic norms to vanish.

On Fri, 4 Jun 1999, Matthew Mihaly wrote:
> You know, I think that the biggest potential factor that makes a mud
> economy different from a real-life one is the sense that nothing that
> happens to you really matters THAT much. Going broke in a mud is
> not a big deal. You can just quit the mud.

Yep, this has to be put into the category of REAL differences. You'll be
more likely to find someone in a MUD giving away their wordly goods
because they're about to quit than someone in Albuquerque giving their
worldly goods because they're about to become a hermit. You could say
that people quitting the MUDs is parallel to people dying, but most of
us don't choose when we die. This is certainly somthing we'll have to be
concerned with when analyzing economic behavior. My current guess is
that these are still anomolies.

On Fri, 4 Jun 1999, Matthew Mihaly wrote:
> I think the difference in psychologies here is very important. I've
> seen players spend themselves into poverty to get that one cool
> item, when I've never heard of a billionaire buying that ONE cool
> item (aircraft carrier maybe?) and leaving himself with barely
> enough money to eat.

This can easily be explained without radical differences in psychology.
Some of it is simply institutional. For instance, LOTS of people go
totally broke buying a really cool, something such as a house. However,
we have social institutions in place which allow you to go broke without
feeling like you've gone broke. Also, MUD economies typically force
every player to be an entrepreneur, and take entrepreneurial risks.

It does also point out a difference I'd like to put in the fiction
category but probably belongs in the real differences. In a typical MUD
the concept of human capital is taken to the extreme. If I'm a level 10
fighter (in AD&D levels) and am completely broke, I know I can make a
decent living just bashing the little monsters in the sewers with a big
stick. It's almost the equivilent of carrying a factory on your back
which can never be lost.

On Fri, 04 Jun 1999, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:
> How much slack does "given the circumstances" buy you?  And is
> there a generic from-here-and-to-eternity in-game economy, or are
> you having a particular system in mind?

Too much slack, admittedly. Trying to clear that up now. As far as what
sorts of game economies, I'm considering any game which has many players
and the ability to echange things between players. I'm particularly
focusing on RPGs rather than more strategy-oriented games, be they trade
or warfare. In a strategy environment, there's pretty clear goals,
compared to the more open-ended fun of an RPG. We can already do good
research in our laboratory when there's clear goals.

On Fri, 04 Jun 1999, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:
> As for luxury... The typical example of luxury that I can think
> of is completely useless items or items with rare, but not
> outstanding, visual features that cost over 1000 times more than
> better featured items.  What you buy is an expensive look, or an
> item that have value as a gift, or an experience as a roleplayer.
> One might argue that this is utilitarian, but...

Yep, those are classic. Actually, depending on the item, I don't
consider them luxuries. A classic from Ultima Online is the
different-colored armor. It's harder to make, functions exactly the same
except it looks different, and it costs more. I file that under
"conspicuous consumption" rather than luxury, but the line can be hazy.
The things which give extra satisfaction to a role-player could just be
luxuries, but if they are visible to others, they could be conspicuous
consumption.

On Fri, 04 Jun 1999, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:
> > If you aren't satisfied then with the behavior of your players, it's
> > likely because the reality and the fiction are a bit too distant from
> > each other. Frequently this won't matter, but it is certainly a big
> > cause of "broken" economies.
> 
> OH OOOHHHhhhhhhh... What do you mean by "the reality"? ;)

Right, good point. The reality is supply and demand. Demand: Does the
player want this item, how much do they want it, and why do they want
it? Supply: How hard is it, in time, money, and skill, to get this item?
Or, if you're talking about the environment rather than an item: How
does the player make use of this aspect of the environment? 

In some sense I mean, what does the thing do, rather than how is it
described? It's not an absolute rule, because a particularly neat
description (or image in a graphical game) can be worth something by
itself.

There's the the example of something not being a luxury just because
it's described as a luxury. More interestingly, I'm thinking about the
*reality* of NPC shopkeepers. If your game has NPC shopkeepers I think
they should be thought of in one of the following ways:
* They're natural resources, like any other, except that they're
particularly flexible. This is the way you should think of them if they
create items out of thin air to sell, and cash out of thin air to buy.
* They're an auction house. This is the way you should think about them
if they just sell to one player the things they bought from another.
* The NPC is the government. In this case, they're not really there as
the primary place to buy and sell, but to help control supply and prices
for items.

NPC shopkeepers should not be thought of as a participants in the game's
economy unless you're willing to invest heavily in AI development. One
other way you could think of them is as import-export firms to some
external economy. This is troubling because it usually turns out that
the external economy is much larger than the MUD economy, yet exists to
serve the MUD economy.

On Fri, 04 Jun 1999, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:
> IMHO the problem isn't fixing the economy, but keeping the world
> interesting and the players happier than when they watch TV.  In
> the physical world, it is sufficient that "players" aren't
> furious and organizing a revolution, which frequently happens
> compared to how long the physical world have been running. ;)  The
> physical world and it's economy can afford to be dysfunctional and
> have a complete shakedown every once in a while.

Yep, and this is the biggest REAL difference, a Meta-difference which
causes many others. The government will change many economic rules if
enough people complain, but the world won't magically become more
fruitful or fair. The many design decisions which are made to keep
players happy while having a functional system will inevitably cause
true differences. My task is to figure out how much those differences
effect.

On Fri, 04 Jun 1999, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:
> Example:
> 1) I have a model of how the physical world works.
> 2) I have a set of random MUDs
> 3) I construct or modify MUDs based on the principles in 1)
> 4) I compare 2) and 3)
> 5) The was/wasn't an effect, the effect was good/bad.
> 
> But:
> 1) I have a model of how a virtual world works.
> 2) I have a physical world.
> 3) I am unable to compare 1 and 2 because the premises are different.

Your first example is what is of primary interest to us. I'm not sure
what you mean by the second example. I agree that there are some things
from the virtual worlds which will be wholly unenlightening about the
real world, the Source-Sink model for instance.

On Fri, 04 Jun 1999, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:
> My system uses limited supplies: each item is available in some
> shop, but when they're gone, they're gone. In addition, when an
> object is scarce, its price rises; when it's plentiful, the price
> drops.

If it works, that's great, and please let me know. My current
expectations are that systems like that will be a problem, because
you're trying to make the shopkeeper act like a real shopkeeper, rather
than a natural resource. The eternal flat-rate sales corresponds to a
rich natural resource that doesn't get harder to extract, and
corresponds to a linear portion of a supply curve. It might tend to
encourage inflation, but not so much confusion.

A crucial question is, how do you restock the shopkeepers? Do they
restock periodically, or do they only restock when something is taken
out of the economy?

On Fri, 04 Jun 1999, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:
> In any case, it should be obvious that -- like just about any other MUD --
> there comes a point where your drain plugs up but the faucet is still
> running. My anticipated response to this is to build a bigger drain: salary
> earned for defeating the enemy will expire after several days, and I think
> this game is way overdue for taxation. ;>

I haven't yet figured out a solution to the faucet-drain difficulty.
I've forgotten who now, but someone is running a MUD with what they call
a "Loan Standard Economy", which sounds like an interesting solution to
the problem. As I gather, there is no major drain, and the faucet is
opened by the game masters upon successful petition, in the form of a
loan. Other than that it's a player-based economy.

Really the faucet-drain issue points out that the macroeconomic issues
of MUDs are stranger than the microeconomic issues. If you wanted
macroeconomic realism, then you wouldn't think in terms of faucet and
drain. There would be resources that could be exploited, there would be
technological innovation and economic growth, etc. However, this gets
messy very fast.

I think microeconomic design can help to alleviate, but not really solve
this underlying problem. One example how: If you have a good system for
inter-player trading in place, you should be able to slow down the
faucet, because wealth is effectively created with every player trade.

Yai. At this point I realize that attempting to reply to several
messages with one message was stupid, so I won't continue here.

------------------------------
Timothy O'Neill Dang/Cretog8
timothy at nmia.com
H: 505-843-6966
W: 505-244-8803
One monkey don't stop no show



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