Perhaps my colleagues and friends can help me out, since I neither play Minecraft nor have a deep understanding of computer science, but this astonished me nonetheless. It seems players in Minecraft have accomplished a great feat and made computing recursive by building simple computers within the game world.
Diablo II is a MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game) computer game that came out in 2001. It provides an interesting case study in virtual sporders because it beautifully demonstrates the emergence of money from the market and the impossibility of truly fiat money.
Carl Menger explained the origin of money as a market phenomenon, the unintended consequence of people pursuing their own ends in the market. Money is the result of human action, but not of human design. Here’s how it works: Continue reading
Back in 2008 mineral prices in EVE online reached an artificial bottleneck that the developers had not foreseen. The problem was fixed soon after it was recognized, but the story itself highlights how interconnected artificial economies can become.
There are some basic gameplay aspects that need to be explained before I can proceed. First of all most of the goods in EVE online that players use are produced by other players. These goods are constructed using 8 basic mineral types. The minerals can be sold on markets just like any other good, and their prices tend to dictate the costs of all player made goods in EVE. The most common mineral type is named Tritanium. It is required for the construction of just about all goods, and it is traded in large quantities everywhere in the EVE universe. Continue reading
