[MUD-Dev] "On Virtual Economies" by Castronova

[Ted L. Chen]

In response to "On Virtual Economies" by Castronova
(posted by Koster, Raph)

I agree that the "history of the avatar" section was rather
interesting.  He also makes a good point that cost-control by the
governing body is not a necessarily a BAD thing in MOGs (while it's
frowned upon in RL) - just due to the negligable cost of the MOG
admins to absorb any excess supply/demand.  Sadly, no analysis was
given so it doesn't really say whether cost-control is a GOOD thing
either.

It's kinda hard to comment on the rest of the paper since the claims
were rather nebulous and unsubstantiated.  However, I will nitpick
this one conclusion he had.

>    · Economics, on Earth, believes that economic growth is always
>    good. In an avatar economy, however, increases per-capita
>    wealth - which make it easier to accomplish various quests and
>    wealth - which make it easier to accomplish various quests and
>    missions - will lower the challenge level of the game,
>    missions - will lower the challenge level of the game,
>    potentially making it a less interesting puzzle. Growth can be
>    bad.

Actually, economic growth might still be good for MOGs.  Being able
to afford new and expensive things (that pretty much do the same old
things) is the driving factor of any economy - that '03 Civic is
pretty much the same as the '93 Civic.  What isn't good, on Earth
and in an avatar economy, is the accumulation of currency.  That is,
money stuffed under the matress, or excess amounts of money in
savings banks.  The strength of an economy is how that wealth moves
(movement of wealth supports jobs).

So the key might be to offer globally periodic, yet very
incremental, improvements in existing weapons, armor, etc.
Obviously, there will come a time when the new stuff makes tackling
a MOB too easy.  So for every N increments, throw in a MOB that's
balanced for the last of that series.  Of course, have more than one
overlapped tool-use set so players can do something else if using a
low-level tool against a mob is too much of a challenge.  Most MOG
players optimize to an obsessive degree.  Use that desire for the
current "latest and greatest" to your advantage in reducing the
amount of content you need to create and to keep that currency
moving.

A nice side-effect is that balancing may become easier as the
players establish it themselves with the tools they use to take down
a mob.  If the mob is too hard, most will wait for the nth
interation of that tool to appear.  At that point, start
incrementing in smaller steps more frequently.  Tie it to a
mob-population model if you want to have some feedback when it
becomes too easy.

A even neater side-effect is that you can tie the nth generation to
player-events.  The liberation of a twizzlestick factory by the
players leads to a new slew of twizzlestick-enhanced weapons.

Of course, difficulties with this scheme is that the update/patch
rate increases in an absurd way.  Oh well, maybe
twizzlestick-enhanced servers will help there. :)

TLC


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