[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Active and Inactive Currency

[Caliban Darklock]

On 7/31/07, Peter Keeler <scion at divineright.org> wrote:
>
> Is it desirable to encourage the use of banks? Are banks fun?

It depends on how you implement them. Banks that pay interest are fun.
You put money in, and you take more money out. Banks that charge
interest are not fun. You put money in, and you take less money out.
Banks that do both should be susceptible to balance.

> I have a magic money card. My money is nothing but a number I can
> look up by going to my bank's web site. When I want to buy
> something I just show my card, sign the receipt, and I'm on my way.

Most smaller stores charge you extra to use that magic money card.
They may charge 29 cents, 50 cents, or even as much as $1.50 for the
privilege of using your card. They, in turn, pay a fee to the bank for
the convenience of not having to collect the money. When you go to one
bank to withdraw money you keep in another bank, you pay a surcharge
of up to $2 for that privilege.

That's not fun, so we took it out. We provide the convenience of the
magic money card, but not the cost. And throughout most game designs,
we do the same thing: let us take a system that works, and remove the
parts that are not fun. Unfortunately, these are frequently the parts
that make the system work.

> The problem is that inactive currency doesn't work the same way in
> games as it does in real life. However, forcing people playing a game
> to have to use a bank is not the right way to go here.

I don't think it's as complex as you make it sound. I think the
problem is that banks in games don't work like banks in the real
world. Banks in the real world don't take money and sit on it, they
invest it in profitable activities. Villains in the real world don't
just magically appear pre-stocked with a set amount of money, they
have to go out and get it somehow. We're modeling the behavior we want
- monsters with loot and banks that pay interest - without modeling
the system that creates that behavior.

Your example of having the money in a bank pooled to supply the
faucets is a start, but it doesn't actually model a system that works.
Effectively, your bank is taking the money people deposit and either
giving it away to monsters or abandoning it in out-of-the way places.
This is not exactly a good business model. The bank should be doing
something that increases its supply of money, so it can pay interest
and salaries and the imaginary rent on the massive building where it
does business.

In the Real World, the bank makes loans, and charges interest on those
loans. This effectively manufactures money, since the interest comes
out of thin air. They hand a small portion of that money to the
depositors, which encourages them to keep their money in the bank
instead of carrying it around. Carrying it around is inconvenient and
represents significant risk: it may be lost or stolen, and no interest
is being paid on it. Keeping it in a bank protects it from loss and
theft, as well as paying interest.

But in games, you don't really lose anything. Ever. If you pick up a
Grishnak horn in the Valley of the Weird, you will have it until you
either choose to do something with it... or die. It will never just
fall out of your pack as you're climbing up Mount Pestilence. You also
don't really get anything stolen; while people do tend to like the
idea of playing a thief, most games don't let you take things from
other players so much. And interest? Don't make me laugh! I can walk
out into the wilderness and come back with thousands of gold coins in
a couple hours. What are you going to pay me? Three percent? I hand
you everything I have, and tomorrow you're going to give me what I
made in ten minutes? Ha! I spit on your three percent.

The incentives simply aren't there. The original incentive to use a
bank was protection from loss and theft, and the bank charged YOU for
the privilege. THe concept of paying interest to the depositor was a
brilliant idea hit upon by moneylenders, to increase their operating
capital. And a moneylender is the natural response to scarcity of
currency, but we don't have that scarcity in games.

The system isn't effectively modeled. That's the root of the problem.
We've handwaved a lot of important questions like what does the
shopkeeper eat, how many children must he feed, what does he pay for
the house where he lives and the shop where he trades - because in the
Real World, when the shopkeeper doesn't have enough money, his prices
go down. When he has more than enough money, his prices go up. But
instead, we've said "a longsword costs 25 gold" and we're done. If I
buy all of the shopkeeper's longswords, the price of a longsword
should go up - not that it matters, because when you want to buy one,
there won't be any. Likewise, if I sell the shopkeeper a whole sack of
longswords, I shouldn't get as much as if I offered him one... because
theoretically, I should be sick and tired of dragging this sack of
longswords all over the place. I should want the money more than I
want the longswords.

Essentially, we don't have this in games because it's not fun for the
player. But there are fun things that fall out of this, and until
we've built it, we won't really understand what all those things are.