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It all began with a strange email

blogs.valvesoftware.com

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Re: It all began with a strange email

#91

Post by mrose »

bmelton wrote: post #31
mrose wrote: post #26

Maybe it's getting late, but I think i could really use an upvoted tdlr for this...

This isn't Reddit, and that sort of behavior here is actively discouraged.

My comment was sincere and I stand by it. The article was quite long and I've often seen similar summary comments for such articles here on HN. I think for really in depth articles it helps to have a good overview before commiting time and diving in (something more than an obscure title and the valve.com domain). In this case, I was initially under the impression that it was part of an ARG, a topic I am very interested in.

I should also note that I don't see anything in the guidelines about asking for a summary.

Re: It all began with a strange email

#92

Post by nemo1618 »

swombat wrote: post #61
lhnn wrote: post #50

>the notion that a computer game company has surreptitiously and quite spontaneously created virtual economies that it comprehends as ‘economies’ (which deserve study and regulation) was enough to write back instantly Does this man believe we should have legal regulation of game economies? Oh wow.

Do you believe we shouldn't? Assume an economy can be sized... so it's a $100m economy, or a trillion-$ economy, etc. Connecting economies together obviously causes them to impact each other. So long as games are connected just to the US economy, and it is much, much larger than any game economy, the impact on the "real" economy is nil. What about a much smaller real economy? Connect an economy the size of Eve or WoW…

That's a good point. I hadn't really thought about virtual economies like WoW or Eve as similar to the Fed in that they can essentially print money.

Re: It all began with a strange email

#93

Post by bmelton »

mrose wrote: post #91
bmelton wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't Reddit, and that sort of behavior here is actively discouraged.

My comment was sincere and I stand by it. The article was quite long and I've often seen similar summary comments for such articles here on HN. I think for really in depth articles it helps to have a good overview before commiting time and diving in (something more than an obscure title and the valve.com domain). In this case, I was initially under the impression that it was part of an ARG, a topic I am very interest…

I don't disbelieve your sincerity, but was simply stating that we discourage the notion of of "TL;DR" here, as a community, whether or not it's in the guidelines.

It's also not in the guidelines (as far as I can tell by skimming) that your comments should further the conversation, but that is another ideal to which the community at large has agreed to aspire. We collude to keep comments on topic and interesting, because that's what the community wants and needs.

I wasn't casting judgement on your post but, as I noticed you were new, thought I'd offer it as advice.

On a personal note, especially with articles like this, if you are interested in the topic at hand, read the article. There really isn't any good substitute.

Re: It all began with a strange email

#94

Post by brown9-2 »

petitmiam wrote: post #15

Fascinating read, just like many of the other Valve blogs. Though, I do wish this guy could explain why real-world money Steam games in the US are often half the price of those in Australia/Europe.

Are there more Valve blogs besides Michael Abrash's?

http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/ just redirects to http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/category/abrash/ and I can't find any way to find a listing of all categories/blogs. The RSS feed only contains this entry and abrash's.

Re: It all began with a strange email

#95

Post by neutronicus »

creamyhorror wrote: post #54
creamyhorror wrote: post #24

Among virtual economies, EVE Online's economy is the real deal. The EVE game economy is I dare say more developed and complex than nearly any other games' - it has many kinds of input factors and stages of production, and many of the production facilities/resources are player-controlled and their fate determines on political maneuvering, war and sabotage between player corporations (guilds). The price of most items i…

[The linking of EVE Online and Dust 514] I wasn't intending to mention this, but I might as well since people are looking at EVE: http://ps3.ign.com/articles/122/1221463p1.html CCP has built a PS3 MMOFPS game called Dust 514. Players play mercenaries battling on planets. The utterly amazing thing is, this game is actually integrated into the EVE universe. Dust players are actually mercenaries being hired and fighting…

I'd be worried either about games of Dust being one-sided due to events in the EVE world, or to advantages in EVE becoming meaningless in order to ensure that individual games of dust are competitive.

Re: It all began with a strange email

#96

Post by jwoah12 »

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…

Sounds a lot like Ender's Game to me, except you are tricked into managing a business instead of wiping out an alien species.

Re: It all began with a strange email

#97

Post by prezjordan »

arohner wrote: post #7
steve8918 wrote: post #4

This is truly fascinating. I remember hearing about virtual economies where money can be injected at any time through gold mining, etc, and that they were inherently unstable. Once you got the gold farming schemes that sold gold on e-bay, it created massive hyperinflation. And it totally made sense that hyperinflation would occur since the creation of virtual gold was limitless and effortless, so the gold farmers did…

Valve's games put a cap on real prices by selling the items through Valve's store. You can buy a new gun for $2, so the price of the gun in "ebay gold" will never rise above $2. (Big simplification for TF2 players follows) Also, in TeamFortress 2 (Valve's biggest virtual economy), it's difficult to farm gold. Logged in players receive 1 gold/hr, capped at a max of 10 gold/week. It's possible to create new accounts, a…

But not every item is available in the store. The ones that aren't - unusual hats, super-rare "glitch" items, community weapons - sell for hundreds and hundreds of dollars.

One such "glitch" is known as a "vintage scrap metal" which only a few exist in the game. They popped up when a user would delete their metal and ask valve to put it back, when they did, it showed up as "vintage scrap metal" with blue text. Such metal has sold for over $1,000.

I feel much of the TF2 economy (these items that can't be bought in a store) is simply players holding onto the weapons and working together to sky-rocket the price. Now, people refer to a "spreadsheet" which is set by a group of individuals. Everyone follows this spreadsheet religiously.

For small items, I think the TF2 economy is very neat. But for rare items? A mess.

Re: It all began with a strange email

#98

Post by arohner »

prezjordan wrote: post #97
arohner wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve's games put a cap on real prices by selling the items through Valve's store. You can buy a new gun for $2, so the price of the gun in "ebay gold" will never rise above $2. (Big simplification for TF2 players follows) Also, in TeamFortress 2 (Valve's biggest virtual economy), it's difficult to farm gold. Logged in players receive 1 gold/hr, capped at a max of 10 gold/week. It's possible to create new accounts, a…

But not every item is available in the store. The ones that aren't - unusual hats, super-rare "glitch" items, community weapons - sell for hundreds and hundreds of dollars. One such "glitch" is known as a "vintage scrap metal" which only a few exist in the game. They popped up when a user would delete their metal and ask valve to put it back, when they did, it showed up as "vintage scrap metal" with blue text. Such m…

After I wrote this last night, I'm now leaning towards the idea that the "rare item" economy is intentional, and working as designed.

In effect, by making it difficult to turn virtual gold into money, and allowing rare items to sell on EBay, Valve is paying a small number of traders to provide a liquid market.

I'm aware of the spreadsheet, but I think you overstate its importance. Sure, people are aware of the book value, but just like real life, people pay more or less than the book value according to their desire.

Re: It all began with a strange email

#99

Post by ricree »

goombastic wrote: post #5

I guess I would be interested in a truly economics oriented game that modeled nations without it being about wars, raids, guilds, spells etc. Not sure if something like that exists though.

A Tale in the Desert is probably the closest I know of.

Its player base is limited compared to most MMOs (around 1000-2000ish, last I looked), but it's a combat free game centered around economic production.

It's also a bit unusual in that it has no in game currency. The last time I played (a bit more than 5 years ago), it was largely a barter economy. However, there was a player run item exchange whose credit functioned as a defacto currency.

I have no idea what the current state of the game is, but if you're curious about a non-combat economic MMO, it's worth taking a look at.

Re: It all began with a strange email

#100

Post by Retric »

tseabrooks wrote: post #9
steve8918 wrote: post #4

This is truly fascinating. I remember hearing about virtual economies where money can be injected at any time through gold mining, etc, and that they were inherently unstable. Once you got the gold farming schemes that sold gold on e-bay, it created massive hyperinflation. And it totally made sense that hyperinflation would occur since the creation of virtual gold was limitless and effortless, so the gold farmers did…

Many games add "Gold sinks" to tackle this. Just ways for players to use gold that completely removes it from the economy. I believe the trick of this is to scale it with the amount of gold in the system. Complete conjecture, but I suspect this is related to things like the increased price to craft gems in Diablo II (bigger gems are more expensive) which was a stark contract to Diablo 2's simple method of "3 small ge…

Diablo's largest gold sink is the Auction house has a 15% transaction fee. If 1100 DPS 1h becomes worth more because people spend more time farming gold vs items then the auction house will just eat a ever larger share of created gold so eventually people spend more time farming items so there are more 1100DPS weapons and the price drops.
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