[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] *Starting* Real Currency Based Worlds

[Nick Koranda]

William Leader wrote:
>
> For a working example. Consider Second Life. The Virtual Currency in 
> Second Life is the Linden ($L) They have setup the LindeX which is a 
> fully functional money market. Check out 
> https://secondlife.com/currency/market.php. Last year they allowed the 
> creation of Free (no monthly fee, but can't own land in game) accounts 
> in Second Life, and as you would imagine they got a great deal of new 
> residents (they/we aren't exactly players) Each of these free accounts 
> was granted a stipend of some amount of $L I think it might have been 
> $L100 but it don't remember exactly. As soon as they opened LindeX 
> they price of $L started to fall dramatically, and they ended up 
> having to remove the stipend from the free accounts. Once they did 
> this the price of $L leveled out at ~$300L to US$1 it floats up and 
> down and is currently trading at L$275 to US$1. The lesson here is if 
> you are going to try to create a working relationship between in game 
> economy, and the real world, you need a money market, and you need to 
> be extra carefull about sources of money in game.
>
I think one of the things that I am stumbling on regarding starting a 
real currency based world is how to handle players who want to play for 
free.  Can a game exist that allows for players to play for free with 
the opportunity to earn real money?  The above example gave "free money" 
to players when they signed up.  It was a small amount but still some 
amount and that started to ruin the economy of the game.  So can you 
allow a free player to earn money in the game?  I suppose they could 
earn money but you could not give any money to them when they start.  So 
then how would a free player start out?

There is an requirement here that there are players who pay to play in 
the form of monthly fees or once in a while payments to get some in-game 
gold.

In order to turn the virtual money into real money without the developer 
footing the whole bill, you would need a way to channel some of the 
incoming funds into the "world bank", that is to pay off the dept of the 
world.  So if the world started with 100 trees, worth $0.01 each, and 
the developer put in $0.25 of the $1.00, the game would have to take a 
percentage of the incoming money to pay this debt ($0.75) back in order 
to have real money backing all of the resources in the world.  That 
isn't too hard since you can drain money via taxes, item decay, exchange 
fees, etc.

I can see a real currency world existing pretty easily if all players 
paid a fee, I think it just gets tougher when you allow players to play 
for free as well and still let them earn money.