[MUD-Dev] Game Economies

[J C Lawrence]

On Wed, 9 Jun 1999 14:57:11 -0700 (PDT) 
Matthew Mihaly <diablo at best.com> wrote:

> I'm not an economist by a long stretch, but I've been trying to
> puzzle through some work that came out of the Santa Fe Institute
> in the late 80s and 90s on complexity, specifically as applied to
> economics, done by guys like Ken Arrow and Phil Anderson (both
> Nobel winners I believe). 

I have a fair bit of respect for Arrow's mathematics (as applied to
economics) if not necessarily his conclusions.  His math is
enlightening.

> A lot of it, especially, the mathematics, goes over my head, but
> what I gather is that a real economic system cannot be properly
> modeled from the top down.  

Yup, as you say, emergent and complex systems.  

> We all try to model things top-down, by providing pre-defined
> goals and methods for agents. Any comments on this?

Not quite all.  My approach since day one has been to establish
small simple patterns, feedback loops basically, for various game
systems, and to then let those systems interact in variousl unstable 
and interesting ways.  I don't design the outcome of the interaction 
or behaviour pattern before I start, mostly I just throw bits in and 
wait until I hit something that is kinda interesting once its
running and which is state dependent on a reasonably large number of 
external factors.

Good examples in the archives to look at enclude the Orc
breeder/fighter/noble/king scenario I referenced a few messages ago,
the Trash Collector/TC model that has been described several times,
the mobile migration model, the Princess/Orc interaction scenario
(mostly details simple interactions between two distinct feedback
loops), and the various mana flow discussions (mana particle
creation and attraction mechanics).

XScreenSaver has a module called "attraction".  Run it.  The
mechanics are extremely simple and quite obvious to the eye.  Now
consider that eacy ball is in fact a system value or state in your
game and that your screen is a two-dimenional graph (with
appropriately valued axis for each ball).  All of a sudden, with
very simple mechanics you have rather interesting behaviours for
little expense.

--
J C Lawrence                                   Home: claw at kanga.nu
---------(*)                Linux/IA64 - Work: claw at varesearch.com
 ... Beware of cromagnons wearing chewing gum and palm pilots ...


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