[MUD-Dev] Re: online economy behavior (was: Self-organizing worlds)

[Robert Green]

On Tue, 23 Mar 1999, B. Scott Boding wrote:

"Koster, Raph" wrote:
>
> 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

Immediately in my mind comes my own personal habits -- I can see where it
would be much more easy to apply the sorts of self discipline to an
character in ways we ourselves would be too self-indulgant to stick to ...
certainly I find it a lot more difficult to put aside a proper amount in
savings in real life, where my "actual" standard of living is affected ...
I doubt many MUDs have any sort of in-game parallel to these kinds of
psychological factors.

Is there more insight on this you can share with us? Economy seems to be a
constant source of difficulties for our balance deptartment, more ideas
and information would certianly be useful ... or at least enlightening...

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           -=-   Robert Green  -=-  mooncrow at lava.net -=-
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