[MUD-Dev] On balance and reality

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad]

In some of the previous discussions on the list it has been argued
that MUDs are different from the physical world and that you
therefore have to stick to a faucet-sink design (spawn-points and so
on). The assumption seems to be that you cannot design a virtual
world by modelling the physical world. I don't think this is correct
and cannot really find any arguments for the hypothesis.

  1. The ecosystem is not in balance. We just like to think it
  is. For instance the cod population in the ocean changes in
  cycles. When it reach a low level it certainly has impact on the
  fish industry and you get unemployment along the
  coastlines. Governments tries to balance this by setting quotas
  based on predictive population models.

  2. The economy is likewise changing in cycles. The government
  actively tries to maintain balance and the stock market is heavily
  regulated, "macroing" (computer based selling) is for instance
  forbidden when the market cracks.

  3. Trade between nations is not in balance, and when it is, not
  without political intervention. (US response to Japanese cars)

  4. Populations of human beings is not in balance. China and India
  has a growth problem, Italy has the opposite problem. Governments
  try to intervene.

  5. Production does not match consumption. EU dumps lots of
  products to keep farmers in business.

There is no reason to believe that one cannot have simulations that
are fun and are at least as well balance as the systems we see in
the physical world. As designers we have more freedom than
politicians. We can come up with models which are more interesting
than faucet-sink and which balance wise stays within "experientially
acceptable" boundaries.

  1. We can obviously draw on techniques from applied mathematics:
  mechanics, control and signal processing, "computational biology"
  etc.

  2. We can relate the mathematical models to the discrete event
  like nature of MUDs by drawing on simple statistics. You do that
  in ray-tracing (rays are discrete).

  3. We can draw on research on multi agent systems (MAS)

Any thoughts?

--
Ola - http://folk.uio.no/olag/
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