[MUD-Dev] Re: MUD-Dev Digest, Vol 11, Issue 19

[Chanur Silvarian]

"Freeman, Jeff" <jfreeman at soe.sony.com> wrote:

> 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).

> 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.

> What I think would be more useful to us would be to track economic
> activity.  My thinking here is that money changing hands
> frequently is the sign of a healthy economy, whereas a lack of
> economic activity is the sign of a weak economy.

> The tendency, I think, is for us to track money-in, money-out and
> maybe even total money in the system, with the assumption that, as
> in the real world, all that money is in fact 'in play'.  But this
> isn't necessarily the case.  Probably isn't the case.

I had recently been thinking about economy as well and came up with
a completely different tact on the subject.

What if you didn't actually distribute coins at all?

In our history there was a time when coins were not around and later
they were not the primary means of commerce.  Only in relatively
recent history has minted coin become the primary means of trade.
Now we've evolved beyond even the minted coin to the abstracted
"dollar" that doesn't have a gold backing.

Why did coins gain value in our history?  Well, not because they
were coins, but because of what they were made of.  The metal; gold,
silver, copper, had its own value.  If, in a game economy, you did
not distribute minted coin but left it to the players to determine
the trade value of goods vs. goods then inflation would be
self-governing.  As more swords come into the market the value of a
particular sword may decrease and as more gauntlets come into the
market the value of a particular pair of gauntlets may also decrease
but the sword would still hold the same value compared to the
gauntlets.  So, a trade of the sword for the gauntlets would still
be of the same value even after the market changed.

The greatest damage of "mudflation" is to the newcomer to the game
who cannot generate the massive amount of coins needed to trade for
the sword after mudflation.  But since the sword retains its value
against the gauntlets then the newcomer still has the same chance at
acquiring the gauntlets (and hence the sword) as every player that
came before.  It is the coin that is, in my opinion, the cause of
the problem.

Coinage in these online worlds is too akin to our current dollar, no
backing value.  It is not at all similar to the coins of old that
held value in their own right.  If the coin itself could be melted
down into metal and used in a consumable then it would have a real
value, but currently the coins have no real value of their own.

I think that it would also be interesting to allow coins to be
minted by players from metal that they find and for minted coins to
be melted back down into metal for the metal value.

Now, all this said, you do still need sinks for all of your
resources.  Metal should still be used up in consumables, but this
would give your coins a real value which would help to keep
inflation in check.

Stop seperating gold that is mined for crafting purposes from gold
coins.  They should be the same thing.  That is the only way to
self-govern the value of the coin.

- Chanur Silvarian -
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