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It all began with a strange email

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Re: It all began with a strange email

#121

Post by javert »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #21

Four years ago one of my first startup ideas I pursued was setting up an arbitrage between virtual economies. I believed then (and still believe) that it is a huge chunk of the future. Everything that is tangible now will become software and intangible in the future. That means the virtual economy is set to eclipse the current one. I spoke with some somewhat famous startup-type people; several I met on HN. None of th…

Given what you've said, what do you think about bitcoin? If you are so interested in virtual economies/currencies, this should be right up your alley.

Re: It all began with a strange email

#123

Post by Tossrock »

Simucal wrote: post #85
xb95 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've played off and on since 2003. The corporation I'm part of now has built an ERP and manages a trillion ISK (which at the legal rate is $35,000 USD in assets). We have production facilities -- several of them. We have distribution facilities. Transportation units (local and long-haul). We have combat pilots to protect the transportation. And we have the final delivery points where we actually sell goods -- both re…

I think it would be interesting to build a game like EVE which maps the management of spaceships and cargo to the management of real world businesses like a toilet seat manufacturer in Iowa. While users of the game are creating distribution networks and building custom ERP solutions they would really be managing businesses (without their direct knowledge). If you were really successful in the game then you would find…

This was actually touched on in Neal Stephenson's novel REAMDE.

Re: It all began with a strange email

#124

Post by chmike »

tvorryn wrote: post #122
Tichy wrote: post #114

What games does Valve have that have virtual economies?

Team Fortress 2 and DOTA 2 are the ones I know of. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Fortress_2#Free-to-play http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dota_2#Free-to-play

One can exchange items, but not sell them. There is no money account in TF2. So I don't see any relation with a real life economy.

Re: It all began with a strange email

#125

Post by yk »

lotharbot wrote: post #45
yk wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the real data should contain noise, compared to a true hypothesis. For example, you could predict that a certain (for the purpose of the example, small) percentage of all players will buy a certain ship. But many of them just stop playing by chance, then your prediction fails even if the underlying theory is correct. [1] I believe the main advantage is, that you can get rid of sampling bias. So you can look at t…

> "But many of them just stop playing by chance" I suspect this will be one of the significant weaknesses in trying to translate anything learned in a game economy into real economies. You have much better data in a game economy, but people do grow bored or decide they're just not good enough, and move on. Or people decide they've taken a stupid path and reset their account, and build from scratch. In real life, most…

Great, I learn by being misunderstood :) I did think about people who stop playing because of outside events, like a new season of "Game of thrones" or a girl, not about ingame events.

However, there is of course a fundamental bias in game economies. Another example would be, that in game economies people use unethical tactics, like simply killing competition. ( I did not hear of Bing-hordes raiding the Google HQ.)

Re: It all began with a strange email

#126

Post by stretchwithme »

tatsuke95 wrote: post #116
stretchwithme wrote: post #109

An economist finally admits it why they fail so much. "let’s face it: Econometrics is a travesty! While its heavy reliance on statistics often confuses us into believing that it is a form of applied statistics, in reality it resembles computerized astrology" "the reason for this unavoidable failure? None other than our inability to run experiments on a macroeconomy" The theories are never tested. They just get implem…

> "An economist finally admits it why they fail so much." What do you mean by "so much"? Because they can't accurately, regularly predict the future? I think you'll find that, in reality, economists know their fallibility and limitations. It's the proletariat that doesn't understand the under-pinnings and assume economists should be 100% accurate when they make predictions, and are upset when they are not.

We're not in the current crisis because the people expect 100% accuracy from economists. Its that economists have bad theories.

Most economists fail to offer theories that accurately describe reality. Keynesian is the current disaster.

And politicians can only pick from the available theories and tend to pick the most shortsighted of policies, as they are trying to get re-elected.

Its not that a bunch of unforeseen events have occurred. Its that theories being followed are bad. They ignore many very real things. And the consequences that most economists have been denying all along are happening.

For example, they analyze the multiplier effect government spending but ignore the effects of removing those resources from other parts of the economy. They don't analyze what happens where the resources are being taken away. But those resources are real things that people no longer have and cannot use.

Re: It all began with a strange email

#127

Post by msfd »

antman wrote: post #118
msfd wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to know a little bit about this gentleman than I (and the rest of HN probably) know, could you tell us more about his (correct) predictions ?

I have attended one lecture-seminar-debate for economists. He was a spokesman and his ideas can be summarized in 2010 here [1]. His work regarding european crisis [2] [1]: http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2010/12/17/the-modest-proposal-in-... [2]: http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/euro-crisis/

A little late, but thanks!

Re: It all began with a strange email

#128

Post by primitur »

xb95 wrote: post #90
primitur wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I ask what platform/language your ERP is coded in? Is there a sufficiently well-evolved in-game development environment for such things, or is it just your corporation membership have hacked something together in ruby or .. ?

EVE Online has always had what we call the "in-game browser". It used to be this rather terrible system that was a custom built environment that had maybe 15 HTML tags supported. It was not a very good system. Eventually, CCP made a deal with someone (I forget which framework they went with, I want to say it's webkit based?) and they embedded a modern browser with JavaScript support. They've also done some modificati…

Wow, that is really fascinating. Thanks for explaining it to me - its a very interesting thing to see a whole sub-internet exposed in such a fashion, predicated around a virtualization of galactic trading/warfare. Of all places to observe a sub-/-sub-internet ..
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