[MUD-Dev] Learning from the Sims

[Eric Rhea]

On Wed, 21 Mar 2001, Nathan F.Yospe wrote:

> Eric Rhea <eric at enkanica.com> said:
>
>> http://www.thestandard.com/article/article_print/0,1153,22848,00.html
>>
>> I think that the psychology of their economic model is intriguing:

>>   "More subtly, the Sims Online will allow players to bookmark
>>   retail objects. For instance, if you see a cool chair at
>>   someone's house, you bookmark it. If you buy the chair, a
>>   commission flows back to the person from whom you bookmarked it,
>>   and the person from whom they bookmarked it, as well as the
>>   creator of that object. This motivates people to buy expensive
>>   stuff and throw parties. It also makes it economically attractive
>>   to buy one of every chair in the Sim universe and open a Chairs
>>   "R" Us showroom. Imagine a world where you could earn an
>>   Amazon-style affiliate commission for every product on your
>>   homepage it makes retail into a massively multiplayer game."

> Pyramid Scheme Online?

This may be an optimistic view, but I think it a good thing that some
developers are taking the stance of developing the economy of their
product to be attractive to people who might have interest in starting
up their own virtual business of sorts. Many current generation
M__+-OG have taken a stance of introducing minor elements of business
opportunities for their players, such as trade skills, while in other
systems folks have resorted to mixing nonvirtual elements such as
ebay. The bottom line for both cases is that individuals are creating
nearly total virtual businesses from these games using the tools
available to them.

I think I'm just waiting for the day when VC find themselves in a
position where people are asking for seed money to start a totally
virtual business within an existing online world and to see a
proliferation of virtual market economies springing up around us.

This could raise a number of fascinating questions. Would the
designers of the game be responsible (more-so) for the health of their
economy, or in other words, would they be the virtual fed - cutting
interest rates on whims? It has the potential to even offer an
additional model of funding for troubled M__ companies. By introducing
a game wide taxation system, the builders of the M__ may find
themselves able to subsist on the game alone.

An interesting scenerio there would be to allow players to introduce
taxation on sold goods from merchants within player run towns. Talk
about incentive for keeping your township under serious protection. :)

_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev