Crafting Money (was: RE: [MUD-Dev] Star Wars Galaxies: 1 characte r per server)

[Damion Schubert]

From: Timothy Dang
 
> Both of these ideas come largely from the same motivation, that
> government can't be trusted to manage the currency without
> inflating it. And each has its own Nobel-prize winning economist
> behind it (Mundell for the first, Hayek for the second).

I've frequently seen money replacements be used in dealings and
barterings in online games.  Of notable example, when a bug made
money in Meridian 59 as common as water, players seemed to switch
(albeit almost unconsciously) to using Dark Angel Feathers for their
interpersonal transactions.  The reasoning seemed to be three-fold.

  1) It was stackable and weighed almost nothing.

  2) Its flow through the world was pretty predictable.  There was
  little or no chance of a dupe bug invalidating the market
  overnight.

  3) It had real, practical value in the game as a reagent for
  player killing spells.  And given that the supply was limited,
  that meant that non-PKs found value in keeping them out of PKer
  hands.

While a very interesting occurrance, the idea of using DAFs was
something that fell by the wayside.  We fixed the bug, and the
bugged money went away with time (and a little nudging by us).  But
most importantly, the new players logging into the game didn't
understand the value of feathers the way the elders did, and
eventually they pushed the gold piece back as the standard for the
world.

--d 


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