[MUD-Dev2] stock market mechanisms in muds

[Daniel James]

Yay for the return of mud-dev!

On Tue, 13 Feb 2007, Acius wrote:

> If you're wondering about my sources for the statistics--I don't work 
> for them, but I have friends who do. My information is a little old, 
> so take it with a bit of salt. 

Your statistics are pretty accurate.

A few notes; the doubloon costs are only levied on finished goods, not 
commodities. Commodities (the ones produced by different islands and 
traded via sea) are used by shops ('refineries') to create finished 
goods (and in some cases intermediary commodities, e.g hemp -> cloth -> 
clothes, herbs -> dyes -> cloth). Commodities are always sold just for 
pieces of eight (the attention currency). One interesting note is that 
the refineries require player labour (which is primarily an offline 
fixed amount per player) to produce goods, thus circulating money back 
more widely into the economy from purcahses. We tax purchases of items, 
~10% for the pieces of eight price and 100% for the doubloon price.

Most players lose money on their shops, but many enjoy shopkeeping 
anyway. A few work the markets and make a lot of money. All these 
economic features we included to provide context and high-level 
motivations in what is otherwise a pretty simple and low-content game. 
It seems to have worked, but sometimes we question the development 
investment in such a complex economy (the old 'kitchen sink' problem).

The doubloon<->piece of eight (or 'attention<->cash') marketplace 
surprised us with it's effectiveness. We're using the same model in 
Bang! Howdy and will do in some form in future games, too. I believe, 
though, that Matt Mihaly's Achaea was the first game to do this, so we 
can't claim the innovation. Likewise the commodity system in PP has a 
debt to Avalon, my old MUD.

None of this really constitutes a 'stock market', though. I think that 
would be uber kitchen sink, but might get interesting in a very populous 
and highly developed economic game -- perhaps Eve or Second Life with 
better a global corporate toolkit.

- Daniel

Capn o' Three Rings | http://thefloggingwillcontinue.com/