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Re: Economic Research on MMORPGS: A Very Quick Overview

#3
I felt the same way on the EVE economy. The problem is, selling to a blind 3rd party exchange. No matter what you produce, be it coffee or battleships, it makes zero difference strategically. There is no way to blacklist buyers. I guess, for playability sake, maybe it makes sense. But, it also seems weird that if you're in a war with another alliance, it doesn't make sense to sell them your resources because they managed to pay one penny more in the auction. Know what I mean?
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Re: Economic Research on MMORPGS: A Very Quick Overview

#4
That Gamasutra overview is worth reading.

But it's important to note a key difference between the focus of that article and Limit Theory: MMORPGs are about letting many humans interact, while Limit Theory is a single-player game with lots of NPCs.

The difference is that humans can and do act outside of the game world to produce specific effects inside the game world. NPCs in a single-player game don't and won't.

NPCs in Limit Theory will do only what they're programmed to be able to do. Some of those choices of actions may emerge through pseudorandom number generation, but they can't bounce outside of the world of the game (unless they're programmed to be able to do so, which I highly doubt).

This means that a lot of the economic behavior and effects observed in multi-human-player games simply don't apply in a single-player game where many "people" are simulated by rules-following NPCs. RMT is irrelevant to Limit Theory, for example. The economy of Limit Theory will more closely resemble a simulation -- except where affected by the single human player -- than a marketplace whose form and outcomes are the result of many interacting human belief systems... the latter of which is what the Gamasutra article addressed.

There may be a little overlap to whatever extent NPCs in LT are able to express behaviors based on human-like motivations. "Buy low, sell high" is one goal NPCs may have that will probably lead to some amount of advantage-taking in LT, not unlike that seen in human economic systems, including the Pareto-principle distribution of wealth. The design of Limit Theory's economic model could take that effect into account. (Or not.)

But conclusions beyond that, which depend on the many ways that human players can collude outside a multiplayer game with an in-game economy, are, I suspect, less applicable to Limit Theory. Given the highly simulationist nature of its in-game economy, I think "code is law" is not something that will hurt LT. Josh should be just fine designing LT's economy to work (meaning "prices should remain relatively stable once the player starts playing a game of LT") on its own terms, rather than needing to look to multiplayer game economies for problems to avoid.

An awareness of economic behaviors never hurt anyone, though.
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Re: Economic Research on MMORPGS: A Very Quick Overview

#6
InfelixTurnus wrote:I think it could be interesting to have 'idealist' factions which strive for a certain way of doing things separate to the Capitalist mindset portrayed in LT. But that would take too much time, I think.
I'd like to see that as well. That isn't just about giving different societies a different "feel" (although I do like that); it's about enabling different kinds of gameplay challenges. An economic strategy that works with one faction might underperform -- or get you locked up or attacked -- with some other faction.

You could get this kind of gameworld in at least a couple of ways. One would be to brute-force it somewhat by defining a set of "instruments of expansion" -- economic organizing principles that cause the factions who adopt them to express particular kinds of economic preferences. A typical idealistic economic view is a belief in what might be called noble experts -- that there exist individuals who are able to understand an entire economy, to make effective choices for other people, and to prefer choices for everyone that are in their best interest, and that these individuals should have the power to demonstrate those qualities on behalf of everyone. Socialism and communism are two instruments of expansion of this type that have been used by humans; others are possible.

Another way of letting different factions in LT have different economic styles, including some kind of not-capitalism, is to allow factional choices in multiple areas, including economic as well as political, diplomatic, scientific, etc., to emerge naturally from the fundamental motivational style of a faction's controlling NPCs. In this model, noble expert-based idealistic economies, rather than being imposed mechanically as through a pre-defined set of instruments of expansion, will grow alongside the growth of any faction whose leaders are naturally motivated to prefer a collective and perfective view of the world.

Whether they exist because they emerge naturally for a People-oriented faction, or because they're just plugged in from a pre-defined set of possible instruments of expansion, an Idealistic economy will exercise more top-down control over every economic transaction -- for everyone's own good. Unlike a market-based economy (such as capitalism, usually preferred by a Role-motivated faction), the practical actions preferred by a faction of this kind will be to:
  • increase the cost of some transactions (for goods that are necessary but undesirable)
  • decrease the cost of others (for goods believed to be a natural right of all individuals to have)
  • criminalize some kinds of transactions entirely (for goods whose individual possession has been determined to be bad for the individual or harmful to the interests of the collective as a whole).
(Note that the three economic actions listed above, preferred by Idealists, also show up in otherwise capitalistic economies to varying extents, because the real world has no hard-and-fast economic "types." We're talking about a game economy here, though. It can be simplified compared to reality to offer distinctively recognizable kinds of fun.)

Depending on the degree to which such a faction is able to actually exert this level of control over the economic behaviors of individuals, there may be a sizable black market operating within its borders.

Note: nothing I've written above should be construed as an argument bashing some real-world economic model or defending some other model. Humans are imperfect; all organizing principles created by humans are imperfect. (I do personally think some models are demonstrably better than others, but I'm not making any such argument in this post.) I'm not going to get into any debate about real-world economic systems -- the comments above are just my suggestions for ways to allow different economic systems to emerge and have visibly different impacts on play in Limit Theory. Other suggestions are welcome.

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