Gaming/virtual economies (EVE online)

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jacob
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Gaming/virtual economies (EVE online)

Post by jacob »

The more I learn about this game, the more fascinating it becomes. EVE Online has been running for a good 17 years and has a few million players ALL on the SAME SERVER. This has made it possible to build an economy that is so realistic that it mirrors many aspects of the IRL economy. Even better, it does so faster than the IRL economy as can thus be seen as a sandbox that's better than any model that ecomists can build. For example, blockchain is NOT considered a valuable innovation to the economy: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/04/ ... need-nfts/

Here's an overview of the game and its economy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrW6p5ns8K8

No wonder that it's described more as a "lifestyle" than a game. You can literally have a job in the game, e.g. a ore freighter, and since the server is always running, the game might ping you at 3am in the night.

IIRC, the black market exchange rate (people are not allowed to sell the ingame currency, called ISK, for real dollars) is something like USD2/ISK1B, which means it's possible to put a real price on individual space ships, game GDP, and space battles.

However, players are allowed to buy the ingame currency and in that case the exchange rate is USD6/ISK1B, which gives us

Rough figures:
Individual spaceships can cost as much as a used car (~$5,000). Note, losses are permanent, so if the ship is destroyed, you won't get it back.
The largest space battle (of 2018 IIRC and which is what the game is most famous for?) destroyed about $1,000,000 worth of ships.
The GDP of Imperium, the biggest alliance, is about $7,000,000/year!

There are people in this game who would be dollar millionaires insofar they could cash out their ISK for USD.

Another reason this is interesting to me is that Jorgen Randers (of Limits to Growth) predicted an increasing move to virtual worlds and by extension meaning as the natural world diminishes. This would to my mind look something like Ready Player One with people deriving more of their meaning via their online life than their real life where they might be on UBI, working minimum wage jobs, and generally unable to do much due to lack of funding or resources. Some in the first world already live like this.

Going back to the first point, it's also interesting how people who see capitalism as the source of all evil still manage to reinvent many of its features (or bugs). A result of emergence? For example, proponents of gift economies and moneyfree living still desire something akin to money, only they call it "social credit", to trade with geographically distant "other-groups".

Here are a few more vids of about these ingame emergent behaviors:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6j_UsGJnkQ (war bonds)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2t25bsqlTM8 (tax havens)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijhAILUNz_s (downside of efficiency)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lte3JOnyXlo (engineered recessions)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQRzr2zU2Xw (robots taking our jobs)

jacob
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Re: Gaming/virtual economies (EVE online)

Post by jacob »

But it's also clear that CCP takes its responsibility to manage EVE Online's economy seriously. In a 2014 DICE Summit talk, CCP's then-CTO Petursson discussed how he spent months of real-world time earning enough money for a ship rather than just using his privileged access to grant himself a ship out of thin air.

"This is a fundamental test from the universe," he recalled telling his wife. "If I make a spaceship out of nothing, then that spaceship isn’t real. If I bring something unreal into the game, the whole thing is gonna crumble. I might not get caught, but… I will always know the game isn’t real."
CCP, not to be confused with the Chinese Communist Party, refers to the people behind the game. What I find the most interesting is the question of how real does real need to be in terms of gains and losses. How would one react to losing a ship that one has spent months of clock time working and saving for. To what degree would this transfer to real life behavior? For example, would losing a $5000 spaceship lead to rage-quitting? Cf. having one's car stolen IRL, where rage-quitting is harder as a coping method? Is meaning validated differently in the game compared to IRL? Also see viewtopic.php?t=12476 which I find closely related.

Will humans increasingly be finding their meaning virtually insofar they can no longer find their meaning IRL?

white belt
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Re: Gaming/virtual economies (EVE online)

Post by white belt »

jacob wrote:
Sun Aug 07, 2022 1:31 pm
Will humans increasingly be finding their meaning virtually insofar they can no longer find their meaning IRL?
Yes, I think so. I think in a lower energy intensity future this could be even more critical.

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Jean
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Re: Gaming/virtual economies (EVE online)

Post by Jean »

People do rage quit IRL too.

The Old Man
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Re: Gaming/virtual economies (EVE online)

Post by The Old Man »

Jean wrote:
Sun Aug 07, 2022 3:55 pm
People do rage quit IRL too.
Suicide?

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Re: Gaming/virtual economies (EVE online)

Post by jacob »

Rage quitting IRL and "starting over" elsewhere is easier in some situations than others. E.g. one can probably rage quit a restaurant job and get a job in another restaurant or another city, whereas rage quitting a position in a field where everyone knows everyone else nationally or globally is a burned bridge. The inability to rage quit does create some conformity to the rules. One reason for the terrible tone/behavior that is seen online cf. IRL is maybe due to the [presumed] possibility of starting over with a fresh account. Indeed, some may have spent so much formative time online that they grow up thinking that IRL has a restart button as well and thus free of consequences.

What I'm interesting in is whether such virtual worlds would have an entirely different morality because of this or whether humanity will slowly co-opt the virtual world as more people start living in it... kinda how the internet is turning into cable news.

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Jean
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Re: Gaming/virtual economies (EVE online)

Post by Jean »

Rage quitting is as difficult as how you value what you invested in the game (or the part of the life you are ragequitting from).
One aspect of ragequitting in most game, is that by leaving the game in the middle, you make it impossible for the other to enjoy the game.
Some game have a matchmaking system in which they match ragequiter with one another, so that they can ruin each others game.

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C40
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Re: Gaming/virtual economies (EVE online)

Post by C40 »

I had fun playing World of Warcraft many years ago. I think the economy on a single server was quite a lot smaller than EVE Online. In addition to all the more normal gaming stuff, I also enjoyed making profits by buying and selling things and I guess I learned some things about economics and pricing. I found that by focusing on specific items and categories of items I could influence/control the market prices of specific items (by creating a lower limit for the price of certain items by buying anything posted for sale under that price, and posting mine for sale at the price limit and at various levels above that.

I also had done some buying/selling when I played Ultima Online even more years ago. That game did not have an automated auction/sale system, so buying and selling was done only by people yelling out in the town squares, and also they could set up an NPC vender at a house they owned. One thing I did was while I was out around the world, especially at certain more remote venders of players, I'd buy some of their items that I knew I could resell pretty easily by yelling out in a town square. In that case, I only focused on items that were high value and also very commonly wanted.

In these games with significant economies and ways to convert between 'real' earth currencies and game currencies/items, one result is a significant amount of people in very LCOL areas 'play' those games as work to earn money in their 'real' world currency. In World of Warcraft, that seemed to be a lot of Chinese folks who would play the game like robots to earn as quickly as possible. They'd sell gold to players who enjoy the game but didn't want to spend a lot of their free time 'grinding' to earn money in the game (and would instead trade some of their time they worked at their own 'real world' job for in-game wealth that was earned by someone else who's 'real world' job was also an in-game job. There were also 'power-leveling' jobs which was essentially using $usd to hire a Chinese guy to work in-game for you - to play your character and level it up.

steelerfan
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Re: Gaming/virtual economies (EVE online)

Post by steelerfan »

This game is crazy in that they actually have diplomats that represent the various factions, In some cases the diplomats were diplomats IRL...

See: https://www.wired.com/2012/09/vilerat/

People merginig this game with the real world. I dabbled with it briefly but my real life won out. When I retire I may go back in.

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Re: Gaming/virtual economies (EVE online)

Post by steelerfan »

Remember the MTGOX crypto hack? That was originally used as a card exchange aka Magic The Gathering Online Xchange. The backbone of these online games is underpinned by real money,

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Re: Gaming/virtual economies (EVE online)

Post by daylen »

Runescape is one of the oldest MMORPG's still running with an interesting economic history. Initially, trade was unregulated and had to be done by repetitive typing in a public place (bank or town center). Then the "grand exchange" update set strict price ranges(*) on items and allowed people anywhere in the world on any server to trade with ease. Later, item bloat become a big issue and so the invention skill was released that allows items to be disassembled into components that can then enhance other items or create non-reusable items. This significantly helped to balance out supply and demand issues.

(*) That were later removed.
Last edited by daylen on Sun Aug 07, 2022 8:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

steelerfan
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Re: Gaming/virtual economies (EVE online)

Post by steelerfan »

It is appropriate that ISK is icelandic krona in real life. CCP is based in Iceland.

zbigi
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Re: Gaming/virtual economies (EVE online)

Post by zbigi »

jacob wrote:
Sun Aug 07, 2022 6:05 pm
What I'm interesting in is whether such virtual worlds would have an entirely different morality because of this or whether humanity will slowly co-opt the virtual world as more people start living in it... kinda how the internet is turning into cable news.
I don't think there's one definite answer and that it'll depend strongly on the mechanics of the game - people respond to incentives they were given and environment they're in. It's one of the most challenging areas of game design BTW.

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Re: Gaming/virtual economies (EVE online)

Post by zbigi »

C40 wrote:
Sun Aug 07, 2022 8:27 pm
In these games with significant economies and ways to convert between 'real' earth currencies and game currencies/items, one result is a significant amount of people in very LCOL areas 'play' those games as work to earn money in their 'real' world currency. In World of Warcraft, that seemed to be a lot of Chinese folks who would play the game like robots to earn as quickly as possible. They'd sell gold to players who enjoy the game but didn't want to spend a lot of their free time 'grinding' to earn money in the game (and would instead trade some of their time they worked at their own 'real world' job for in-game wealth that was earned by someone else who's 'real world' job was also an in-game job. There were also 'power-leveling' jobs which was essentially using $usd to hire a Chinese guy to work in-game for you - to play your character and level it up.
According to somewhat reputable internet sources (Forbes), this was sometimes done by forced labor - chinese prisoners were forced to grind WoW gold during their sentences.

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Re: Gaming/virtual economies (EVE online)

Post by OutOfTheBlue »

I've thought to share this quote on a number of occasions/threads lately. I guess this is a good place as any…
Eventually, however, with Western man’s abstract relation to the world becoming objectified in a whole complex of apparatuses, a whole universe of virtual reproductions, the path towards presence paradoxically reopens. By detaching ourselves from everything, we’ll end up detaching ourselves even from our detachment. The technological beatdown will ultimately restore our capacity to be moved by the bare, pixelless existence of a honeysuckle vine. Every sort of screen coming between us and reality will have been required before we could reclaim the singular shimmer of the sensible world, and our amazement at what is there. It will have taken hundreds of “friends” who have nothing to do with us, “liking” us on Facebook the better to ridicule us afterwards, for us to rediscover the ancient taste for friendship.

Having failed to create computers capable of equaling human beings, they’ve set out to impoverish human experience to the point where life can be confused with its digital modeling. Can one picture the human desert that had to be created to make existence on the social media seem desirable? Just as the traveler had to be replaced by the tourist for it to be imagined that the latter might pay to go all over the world via hologram while remaining in their living room. But the slightest real experience will shatter the wretchedness of this kind of illusionism. The poverty of cybernetics is what will bring it down in the end. […] “The end of the Self will be the genesis of presence,” envisioned Giorgio Cesarano in his Survival Manual.
From "Fuck off, Google" in To Our Friends, by The Invisible Committee (original text in French).

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Re: Gaming/virtual economies (EVE online)

Post by jacob »

@OutOfTheBlue - But would [this impoverished human experience] be a felt loss if one has never known the alternative? In particular can the virtual world add value insofar it's not but a reduced version of the real world? For example, I generally have far more interesting conversations online than I do IRL since it's simply not practical to bring enough geographically dispersed "interesting people" together in the same place on a regular basis. A forum like this, which allows asynchronous conversation, which tends to be more deliberate, would be impossible to replicate in the real world. If anything, I think the problem is the trend to replicate the real world online e.g. with human avatars walking and talking on virtual real estate rather than expanding the possibilities.

prudentelo
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Re: Gaming/virtual economies (EVE online)

Post by prudentelo »

@jacob

"I think the problem is the trend to replicate the real world online e.g. with human avatars walking and talking on virtual real estate rather than expanding the possibilities."

agree. and not just in this extreme

Internet has got a lot less abstract over 20 years, and also less interesting

How many forums like this still exist? Used to be the main type of discussion online. If ERE were made today, would it have a forum? Would anyone even notice it ?

OutOfTheBlue
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Re: Gaming/virtual economies (EVE online)

Post by OutOfTheBlue »

jacob wrote:
Mon Aug 08, 2022 7:29 am
@OutOfTheBlue
My answer would be yes and no.

It is hard to imagine a time where humans would be so oblivious of their physical presence and disconnect with nature and the world (although the dystopian science fiction short story "The Machine Stops" by E. M. Forster provides a compelling picture - and description of its downfall).

Even if you've never known the alternative, at some point, there is discontent, existential dread, even, creeping in. I am convinced virtual reality cannot provide all the necessary nutrients to a good life. One then might just awaken to the reality of this impoverished human experience, even if they have never known better:
Jacob, from the ERE book wrote: I was beginning to feel that something was wrong. "Why is the emperor not wearing any clothes?" I started getting an uneasy feeling that something about the world was not quite right.
I think the felt loss is real.

Many reports in the ERE forums and journals seem to point to a better balance found in vastly reduced and intentional use of screens, virtualities and "content consumption", mirroring the ERE proposed shift from a consumer to a more producer/creator mindset. But also with immersion in nature and enjoyment of moments shared with others in the same place.

However…
Jacob wrote:Can the virtual world add value insofar it's not but a reduced version of the real world?
I do think so.

Eloquently, the text following the above quoted text from "Fuck off, Google" ) reads (my bolds):
The virtue of the hackers has been to base themselves on the materiality of the supposedly virtual world. In the words of a member of Telecomix, a group of hackers famous for helping the Syrians get around the state control of Internet communications, if the hacker is ahead of his time it’s because he “didn’t think of this tool [the Internet] as a separate virtual world but as an extension of physical reality.” This is all the more obvious now that the hacker movement is extending itself outside the screens…
Now:
Jacob wrote:For example, I generally have far more interesting conversations online than I do IRL since it's simply not practical to bring enough geographically dispersed "interesting people" together in the same place on a regular basis. A forum like this, which allows asynchronous conversation, which tends to be more deliberate, would be impossible to replicate in the real world
I quite agree with this, and my experience partly mirrors this. Especially the ability to connect across the world.

When I first discovered Internet chat/discussions, I was awestruck by how much can go through text communication (but also, by how much is being left out).

There might not be a better place than the Internet for one to can fulfill their desire to "be understood" (as you've said in another thread) and communicate, at least on an a strictly intellectual level.

Treating the online world as an extension of the real world is IMO the way to go.

Trying to replace it with a virtual world, or to most fully live in it in an escapist fashion, instead of assuming our human physical existence and taking root in the magic and terror of reality… is a dead end.

So…
I think the problem is the trend to replicate the real world online e.g. with human avatars walking and talking on virtual real estate rather than expanding the possibilities.
Yes, indeed!

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Re: Gaming/virtual economies (EVE online)

Post by sky »

Eve looks like it has everything I try to avoid in the real world.

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Re: Gaming/virtual economies (EVE online)

Post by jacob »

prudentelo wrote:
Mon Aug 08, 2022 8:59 am
Internet has got a lot less abstract over 20 years, and also less interesting
In other words, it has become more like the real world with normal average people now that everyone is online.
prudentelo wrote:
Mon Aug 08, 2022 8:59 am
How many forums like this still exist? Used to be the main type of discussion online. If ERE were made today, would it have a forum? Would anyone even notice it ?
I don't think anyone would notice it but someone would notice it. Figure the "cool kids" are hiding in a space somewhere away from their parents. Analogously the iconoclasts are underground in a cool place where iconoclasts meet. That used to be certain neighborhoods in certain cities. Then it was online. Now it's...? Once the parents and the marketeers and the public show up the original nerds fade away from the scene. The cool places these days seem to be in the "dark forest" of the internet, that is, places that don't leave a record on the lit net.

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