[MUD-Dev] Game Economies

[Timothy O'Neill Dang]

"Koster, Raph" wrote:
> 
> I've usually stated this as "muds are in large part about preventing normal
> social progress." You don't WANT players to advance socially TOO far because
> the end result of advancement as a civilization is peace, prosperity, high
> living standards, and (in a game sense) boredom.

That makes sense, particularly in a MUD where players are primarily
competing with the world. If players are competing with each other (PvP
combat, competing for scarce resources, or just to see who can rack up
the most experience) then innovation is a DEstabilizing force.

True innovation, whether in the real world or a MUD, changes the rules
of the game. In doing so, it can cause a massive effective transfer of
wealth, which is a sure way to cause conflict.

> The reference is just this list. :) Basically, the premise is that what
> people are looking for is social recognition, attention from others,
> respect, interaction. In the real world, subsistence and other factors make
> this a lower priority. In online, this is magnified greatly because there
> generally IS no subsistence. There's many a player on muds who has gone
> inactive in terms of the game, but remains a major figure because of their
> social connections, their position in the community, etc.

I was making a false connection to Herb Simon, who's generally credited
with the concept of the "attention economy" (references in previous
post). It's also questionable how different this is from the real-world
economy, and is certainly one of the things we want to experiment with,
since it's something we *can't* really experiment with in a laboratory
experiment.

There's various studies trying to relate status and economic behavior.
There's Veblen, of course, with _The_Theory_of_the_Leisure_Class_.
There's the potlatch. We're currently trying to recreate a study done of
chimpanzees and reciprocal giving, which indicated that not only were
exchanges reciprocal but that high-status chimps were more generous than
low-status chimps.

To take more concrete examples, both Ghandi and Lenin were technically
paupers.

> > > Two additional systems I have seen in use that had a
> > devastating effect on
> > > the typical play were limiting money found on a monster in
> > relation to the
> > > total amount of money owned by the players.
> 
> We did something like that on UO for a while--the total quantity of gold in
> the system was tied to the total size of the playerbase, and goods/gold on
> monsters (or issued by shops) was tied to how much remained in the "bank"
> (eg, not in play, either on monsters or in players' hands).

I'm not sure whether I misunderstood or you did. I guess it doesn't
matter much, since Marian says the MUD in question is long-gone. I
interpreted it as the amount of loot on a monster was inversely
proportional to the wealth of the player looting the monster, rather
than the wealth of the entire economy. The former correlate to a
progressive income tax (actually a wealth/income hybrid tax).

------------------------------
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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