[MUD-Dev] Self-organizing worlds (was: Elder Games)

[Koster]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Nicholas Lee [mailto:njl25 at hermes.cam.ac.uk]
> Sent: Monday, March 22, 1999 3:45 PM
> To: 'mud-dev at kanga.nu'
> Subject: RE: [MUD-Dev] Self-organizing worlds (was: Elder Games)
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, 22 Mar 1999, Koster, Raph wrote:
> 
> > UO did a lot of this. It wasn't very tolerant of typical 
> player behavior,
> > and basically blew up. I've since learned that it was an 
> utterly predictable
> > manifestation of the "Tragedy of the Commons" among other things.
> 
> One figure I heard was that 90% of the total possible animal 
> population
> ended up in the stables.
> 
> This obvious effected both the memory footprint, and spawning rates.

There's a couple of economics researchers who are working with us here to
actually try to pinpoint the differences between human behaviors in virtual
economies as opposed to real world economies. Turns out there are some
fairly significant differences which make traditional economic models tend
to fail. Among these differences is the savings habits of players (eg
hoarding). A lot of this went over my head, but apparently the economists
feel that even with an accurate economic model (eg one with huge ongoing
expenditures) there's enough of a difference in the psychology online that
people will not do the same things they do in the real world.

-Raph


_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev maillist  -  MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
http://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev