Dragon Burgers and the Great Capitol Hill Baby-Sitting Co-Op Crisis

[major_clanger]

Amazing what you turn up when doing research on informal currency systems for an essay on virtual world money.

Comments

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Link? Or is this something the world was not meant to know?

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

He'd have to PVP-kill you...

[maviscruet.livejournal.com]

I find myself filled with an urge to know as well......

[feorag.livejournal.com]

http://www.slate.com/id/1937/

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

The 'Dragon Burger' reference was to an article in the Washington Post quoting Raph Koster, the chief creative officer at Sony Online Entertainment. Discussing why you might want to limit the way the in-game economies of some MMORPGs might developed, Koster noted that:

"The economies in the real world are designed to grow and progress toward an improved standard of living so that eventually you don't have to slay dragons for food -- you go to a supermarket and get dragon burgers.

"We don't want people to get to a point where they just go out for dragon burgers," he said. "That would not make for an interesting game."


It's an interesting point; one of the advantes of currencies over barter systems is that they increase liquidity and allow wealth to be stored and exhanged, but this can undermine the whole point of a game that is meant to simulate a primitive economy.

The other story is referred to here - unfortunately the original article doesn't seem to be on open access - and recounts an economists experience of how a baby-sitting circle suffered in microcosm from such real-world economic problems as recession. It's a very useful insight into the kind of problems that microeconomies can suffer from, especially when their 'money' is convertible with real-word currency.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Thanks, that makes it all a lot clearer. And the dragon burger thing is actually very relevant to my current project, an RPG about cannibal dragons who gain strength and power by eating dragon flesh. A market in dragon meat is an obvious possibility, and I had to put some thought into reasons for adventurers to go out and find alternative sources.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

What a fantastic quote.

I predict a riot, sorry A:)

[redbird]

Have you talked to headgardener or the_gardener on this? They may still have copies of their fanzine where I first learned about these.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Oh you mean LETS. Slightly different. LETS is trying to take you BACK to barter - virtual world currencies are trying to take you away from barter towards currency exchange..

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

Among the kinds of not-quite-money I know of, there's 1) Josiah Warren's Time Dollars, described in his book Equitable Commerce. 2) Local currency (which I think is aka LETS); 3) The non-physical Time Dollars (not the same as Warren's version) used in nonprofit barter exchanges.