[MUD-Dev2] stock market mechanisms in muds

[Johnicholas Hines]

Hi,

I don't know much about what "stock market" mechanisms already exist
in muds, so in mud-dev tradition, I will speculate and propose an
idea. If you have experience with market simulations in muds, would
you please reply? (to me or to the list)

I say "stock market", but I mean more of a commodities market. Please
forgive my inaccuracy.
There are reasons to allow and to forbid stock-market-like things.

One reason to allow it is so players can play traders inside the game.
Some people might enjoy that.

Another reason to allow is to increase liquidity - the ability to find
someone willing to trade. If you have an elaborate economy that
requires miners to sell to gemsmiths who sell to mages, it can be very
frustrating to try to be a miner, gemsmith, or mage when you can't
find buyers or sellers at any price.

 A third reason to allow a stock-market-like mechanism is it makes
adding NPC economic actors (NPC miners, gemsmiths, mages) easier.
Instead of writing bot code to move them around, meet and negotiate
for prices, you can just add market code to simulate their effect on
the market.

Why disallow stock-market-like things?

For some games, it might be damaging to the atmosphere of the game
(heroes are above petty commerce). If the economy is already out of
the devs' control, adding a stock-market-like mechanism might have
unpredictable effects. Perhaps as a matter of principle, the devs
might want to forbid people earning any benefit without being
connected (and unidle) in the game.

Here is my idea for adding a stock-market-like exchange to an existing mud:

1. Players can buy "brokers", NPC proxies who can conduct trades with
PCs or other brokers even when their owner is offline.
2. A player can combine an item (say an axe) with a broker to yield a
broker with one additional "axe" slot. At this time, the player can
set the "internal value" of that slot to that broker. The internal
value is just a number.
3. If a broker has 3 axe slots and 5 sword slots, the broker can hold
up to 3 axes and up to 5 swords. That broker's owner has access to
this inventory (can put and get from it).
4. If a broker is offered an exchange (say 1 sword for 2 axes), and
the deal is advantageous (comparing the internal value of 1 sword with
the sum of the internal values of the 2 axes), then the broker will do
the exchange.

How would a miner use this facility?
They would mine ore, sell some ore (the old way) to get gold. Buy a
broker, use some ore to put slots in the broker, use some gold to put
gold slots in the broker. Set the internal value of ore to be what
they think is a fair price for ore. Set the internal value of gold to
be what they think is a fair price for gold.

Then they fill the broker with ore, and release it. If people (or
brokers) buy from that broker, then eventually it will fill up with
gold. (If the price of ore drops below what the miner thought was a
fair price, the broker will fill up with ore.) Then the miner logs
back in again, and empties their broker, mines, fills their broker,
logs out, etc.

The benefits of this market implementation would be:
1. No additional market code to support new items which are added to
the game later.
2. The market serves as a slight resource sink (players pay cost of
brokers and slots).
3. The market does resource "sequestration". Analogous to forests,
which do carbon sequestration, the market as a whole is an inventory
of weapons, armor, gold, etc. If the inventory gets bigger over time,
it is like a sink.
4. Though a player can make money while offline, there is an upper
limit (the number of slots they have bought) on the amount of money
they can make.

Thanks for reading this, and please tell me what you think.

Johnicholas