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

[Travis Casey]

On Jul 26, 2007, at 1:10 PM, Nicholas Koranda wrote:

> * Original Poster:  Freeman, Jeff
> * Mon Apr 19, 2004 6:29 pm

> There are some key differences in an online game's economy that I
> think tend to be overlooked (either by everyone, or maybe just me).
>
> For example, we have a standard faucet, sink, drain model. Money
> enters the system, swirls around a bit, and then leaves the system.
>
> But I thought about the tracking we're doing and how we're
> overlooking some drains (banned, cancelled and inactive accounts
> chief among them), along with 'sponges' which don't have a
> real-world parallel, I don't think.
>
> As I understand it, when a person put money in the bank in the real
> world, the bank then lends that money to other people, so it never
> really 'leaves the system.' But in an online economy money put in
> the bank is removed from circulation: It could re-enter the system
> later, but it might not do that for a very long time.

Something that occurs to me reading this essay is that a major  
difference between real-world and virtual currency systems, and one  
that I think causes many of the important differences, is the  
portability of currency.

In the real world, currency takes up space and has weight.  Some  
currencies have ways to mitigate this with larger denominations, but  
if you carry too large a denomination, you may run into problems  
actually spending it ("Can you break a five hundred?").  Further,  
carrying currency on your person has risks -- you can get mugged, it  
can get lost, etc.

Every online game I've played on, though, has removed almost all of  
those problems.  How much money you have is just a number.  You can  
carry all your money on you, without it being heavy or ungainly.   
Making change is never a problem in any transaction.  In many games,  
there's also no risk of losing money to a mugging or the like.

For us in the real world, banks provide a solution to many of these  
problems -- if your money is in a bank, you don't have to carry it  
around.  You can issue drafts against the bank (either through a  
check or a debit card) in any arbitrary amount, up to the limit of  
what you have access to.

If currency in an RPG were tracked in terms of actual coins, taking  
space in inventories and having the inconveniences of not necessarily  
having it in a form that can be used for a particular transaction,  
this would encourage the use of banks.

--
Travis Casey
efindel at gmail.com