Gaming/virtual economies (EVE online)

[jacob]

There are a lot of very good game now. I have several games with playtime in the 4 digits.
They don't help the world, but they keep me in a learning state that would otherwise require to be very invested in a career to be attained.
Most job don't realy help the world either, at most, they fix issues caused by other jobs.

Some evidence that gaming improves neuroplasticity: https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... game-play/
Not all games produce the same kind and the same game might not even produce the same results if people play different styles, e.g. someone taking reaction-shots vs someone circling around. Some games produce little effect (Sims?). Some produce a negative effect in being easy dopamine dispensers with little thought required.

In terms of sheer intensity, I haven't done anything similarly since solving quantum mechanics problems in undergrad. It's also interesting how my two main games use different parts of the brain to the point where I can feel the difference depending on what I focused on that day. Warships uses the temporal lobes which are associated with working memory. Likely because one has to remember where the other ships are [going] when they fall outside detection range while constantly working out relatively simple firing solutions. E.g. rotating turrets enough will take 8 seconds but the enemy#1 will get behind an island in 12 seconds and requires an 5 second lead, so it wont work, while enemy#2 ... [For the real world dorks, I suppose this would be similar to quickly deciding which base to cover first in baseball?) Whereas DCS (a combat flightsim) is all parietal lobe zonking. That part of the brain has to do with spatial orientation which makes sense: You're in a plane trying to orient yourself towards the ground as well as the anti aircraft below you and the SAMs coming after you. I no longer consciously think about the actual controls (stick, rudder, pedals). When I was in the learning phase, the brain usage was temporal lobe too which surprised me at the time.

Interestingly enough the same research reveals that traditional "brain games" are actually not that effective in terms of neuroplastic improvement. They probably lack the intensity. Or perhaps they're just not that interesting. Some research also suggest that in order for the brain to change, the brain also has to be engaged. This might be were many jobs fail---especially when they've become routine.

The only effect I have detected that translates is that my eye-to-hand coordination has gotten rather much better compared to before.

[AxelHeyst]

This discussion is making me think of the work I did/am currently doing. I'm modeling mechanical systems for buildings in a 3d environment where the objects aren't just dimensional but also informational - a duct knows how much air is going through it and what the velocity and friction drop are, etc. I can and do drop into flow doing this kind of work for 4-12 hrs a day (long days require long breaks). With this particular kind of work I think there's a narrow sweet spot of cognitive predilection, as evidenced by how few people in the industry are actually good and fast at this kind of work, despite this software existing for over 20 years. For most people it's a slog, other people dream in it.

I've tried several times to get back into gaming, but I always lose interest within 2-12hrs of gameplay. Come to think of it, it's since I started doing this work that games mysteriously lost their appeal to me...

[Jean]

I think all game can have negative effect when you stop being challenged but still keep playing. It then becomes a very cheap and useless way of suceeding at something.
I also note that some games have problem complex enough, so that trying to solve the same problem 1 year later is still challenging, because important part of the solution have been forgoten. (like doing a landing mission on Eve in Kerbal space programm that can bring back the kerbonaut)

@AxelHeyst you mean you get paid to play factorio? what is your streaming account?

[daylen]

I see great potential in normalizing games as an exploration of what could be, grounded in what is. Citizens existing along a spectrum of [actualizers to virtualizers] for all necessary activities to sustain civilization. Citizens that converge onto an activity flow that the economy + social policy rewards get the lion's share of the wealth generation. Riskier flows perhaps attracting more attention to be extended into the virtual where citizens that would diverge from the activity flow can prove a superior path to earn some portion of the wealth (as decided by some group in a centralized organization or a decentralized blockchain). Artificial agents could automate some portion of the path for less risky activities. Virtualizers check the work of actualizers and actualizers check the work of automations. This could involve varying degrees of anonymity between layers.

[PhoneticNachos]

As a former pro gamer who has played tournaments of all sorts for a multitude of games. They are a great entertainment value per dollar spent over time.

I have been a part of several guilds, alliances and gaming groups over the years, net positive gain over time, considering time/investment over hours played.

The biggest reward being from Warhammer Online Age of Reckoning, that was how I got a huge group of people to invest into crypto and we all got a lot of money.

[jacob]

As a former pro gamer who has played tournaments of all sorts for a multitude of games.

Were the games all within the same category, e.g. FPS, or did you play different categories too, e.g. FPS and RTS?

Did you find that the skills/talents transferred between games such as game equivalent of IQ for academic studies or athleticism for sports?

[zbigi]

There's a good amount of ex-Starcraft pros who became poker pros.

[PhoneticNachos]

Were the games all within the same category, e.g. FPS, or did you play different categories too, e.g. FPS and RTS?

Did you find that the skills/talents transferred between games such as game equivalent of IQ for academic studies or athleticism for sports?

Starcraft, various shooting games, a few MMOs, really all sorts, sports we would play games and drive to regional tournaments, or do MLG online ones

Lots of transferable skills with gaming and investing, why I got into forex trading and stock investing, because of reading the charts seems to scratch the same mental itch that a lot of video games stimulate, and I agree with @zbigi that a lot of good gamers make excellent poker players.

I work at Fidelity Investments now, and am working towards being a CFP financial advisor eventually.

[grundomatic]

Can also confirm that I'm more into these types of games than the 4x games which theoretically ought to be the best fit for me. I suspect this is along the lines of what @7wb5 suggested. If you already have a real world alternative, then simulating on the computer is an inferior experience IOW, trading real stocks is more engaging than trading paper stocks, growing a real garden is more motivating than a garden sim, having real sex is more enjoyable than porn, and so on. Likewise, ERE is a more interesting 4x game than managing a virtual imperial economy. As such, my conclusion so far is that games can fill an otherwise unfillable IRL void, but they are very likely inferior substitutes to the real thing.

Sometimes the simulated alternative comes without the drawbacks of the real thing. I'm playing Sim Companies, which to almost anyone else probably seems like the most boring thing one could possibly do. It, however, let's me run a company and do things I enjoy--connect with others, wheel and deal, and apply my business education/experience, but without the drawbacks of attending pointless meetings, dealing with employees not showing up, and knowing I'm producing or selling more stuff the world really doesn't need. You get to captain a warship without, you know, dying. Your point still stands, though. While fun, it's not nearly as engaging as my real world work experiences were, at least in the beginning.

There are ALWAYS players on the servers, even at 6am on a Monday morning.

They are always available, cheap, fun, no hangover.
Once you know that, you are doomed.

The value of this can't be understated for me. Once I started this game interacting with people in a mostly cooperative way, I've had no interest in going back to the solo games (at least for now). My preference is 80/20 socializer/killer, similar to real life. What's different is a 50/50 Achiever/Explorer break. I'm really not much of an achiever in life, but put numbers to it in a game and things change. I'm tempted to dethrone the AI Ottomans, just because they are ahead of me on a point board. I start tracking the company value of that sassy know-it-all I just had an interaction with, just to verify that my business practices are more successful than theirs.

When I told my friends what I've been up to, one responded "My uncle has a job in finance open at Raytheon. I'll send you the link." He never did, because he later admitted knowing that the real job is much crappier than my game.

I am thinking about writing an ERE related article for the game newspaper, something like "Is your life as vertically integrated as your Simco company?". Other articles I've considered are "Are you as careful about your IRL transport costs?", "Do you keep your IRL assets running 24/7 like your game buildings?", and "Stocking up to guard against price increases".

[jacob]

@grundomatic -

Check out https://prosperousuniverse.com/ (spreadsheets in space, freemium model)

One thing---perhaps the main thing?---that has changed gaming between now and 20 years ago is that it used to be that one go conquer the final level and finish a game, say, 50 hours or so. Whereas today, especially with multiplayer, games are so big/deep that 50 hours is barely enough to get started on all the game mechanics.

I'm now 400 hours into World of Warships. About a hundred hours ago, I learned of https://na.wows-numbers.com/ranking/?or ... tles__desc which keeps detailed stats on all the players. Turns about that I'm still a small and barely average potato, back on page 700ish, near the bottom. Those who have played the most have put in over 10,000 hours, perhaps close to 20,000 hours. (Each game lasts up to 20 minutes.) That's some 5-10 full time YEARS!

For Wows' kind of PvP, with its 10+1 different tiers, it bears resemblance to children's sports with its ~10 different age groups. One practically has to commit to a specific game to have any hope of getting good at it. There's simply not enough time within an ordinary human lifespan to get good at several different games when competing against people who basically treat playing that particular game as their second (or first?) job. In some sense, choosing a game is almost like choosing a career.

I think one downside of getting habituated to a "sanitized version of the world" is to forget or come to expect that the real world is similarly free of consequences. I have noticed that there's a certain kind of gamer-mentality where the expectation is that they can just hit the reset button/create a new account and start over if they do something stupid. I remember one game back in the 1980s where you had to keep some character alive ... and if they died, the game would actually delete the character from the disk/tape. The loss was terminal. That idea never caught on. Gaming might be raising a generation on the wrong meta-lessons.

[ducknald_don]

I think a bigger problem is after investing so much of your life into one game how are you going to feel if the developer turns it off for some reason.

[jacob]

I think a bigger problem is after investing so much of your life into one game how are you going to feel if the developer turns it off for some reason.

Yeah, there is a certain single-point failure risk. However, is this really that different from getting fired from a regular job? What usually happens is that the player base migrate over to a similar game in the same genre. If none exist, the game might be kept alive by a group of dedicated volunteers. I played the original Falcon1.0 back in the mid 80s. That game still exists as FalconBMS, basically developed and maintained by volunteers, now forty years later.

Add: I think it compares to training for a belt in martial arts and then having to move and not being able to find a dojo where the skills transfer. This is basically what happened to my pursuit of Japanese swordsmanship after moving to Chicago. Were the three years I spent practicing wasted? In terms of belt-progress, yes. In terms skills learned like moving the body in precise ways, no.

[thef0x]

If you're strapped for "sitting there" time but have the ability to check in 1-2x a day, the game "Utopia" is super fun, imo. Also a spreadsheet warrior game and technically the longest lasting MMO on the internet! You rule a province inside of a kingdom and coordinate online with others in your KD to take on enemy kingdoms in battle. Pick a race and personality to play based on the role you want to have in your kingdom.

Get your calculators out, kiddos!

I played it when I was 11, 26 years ago, and picked it up again during a recent "Age" (a 'season' of play with specific rules / changes for that season) -- it still holds up! https://utopia-game.com/

[grundomatic]

I managed to grow up understanding the real world has consequences, and haven't really seen the behavior your talking about. I mean, I see bad social behavior in gamers all the time, but just figured that a common characteristic of the type of people that like to game, not a result of playing the games.

I stuck to classic type games for a long time precisely because getting crushed by full-timers was not fun, and as I noted, I don't have a lot of "killer" in me. I remember struggling to find the right difficulty for Elder Scrolls Oblivion--like there was nothing in-between "walk through" and "using all my resources on the first random animal or bandit I run across". I suppose I could have tried to "get gud", but I'm something of a dilletante. I suppose back then I also had outlets for achievement IRL--career advancement, etc.

Prosperous universe looks like a very good recommendation, thank you!

[jacob]

I am thinking about writing an ERE related article for the game newspaper, something like "Is your life as vertically integrated as your Simco company?". Other articles I've considered are "Are you as careful about your IRL transport costs?", "Do you keep your IRL assets running 24/7 like your game buildings?", and "Stocking up to guard against price increases".

I've put in some 6-7 hours on Prosperous Universe. It sounds very similar to Sim Companies except in space. PU is basically about 1) managing the logistics of the production side of the economy turning raw materials into more and more refined products while building and maintaining the industry to do this by flying space ships over to the various commodity exchanges and 2) buying/selling those items in the financial commodity markets/local markets/direct to other players, etc. complete with exchange rates and currencies for the different planetary systems (analogous to countries on IRL planet Earth). Contracts are established and people are then responsible for delivery.

There's no "killing" in the game. I suspect the worst one can do to someone/something is "breach of contract". I'm not sure how that plays out.

The game is extremely slow-burn just like real life. For example, I run a small fuel company on a planet in the Benten system. It takes me roughly 20 hours (of wall clock time) to make a run to the nearest commodity exchange, that is, if I send a ship now (Saturday morning), I'll have to wait until tomorrow (Sunday) before it arrives. I actually screwed up the timing so my refinery is currently idling and waiting for supplies from a ship coming back from the exchange in about an hour from now---and of course I'm still paying salaries (in the form of water, food, and clothing).

This very quickly turns into min-max decisions about whether it's best to buy resources or process them yourself (if you can). There are at least a couple of hundred different ticker symbols. (I'm dealing in about 10 of them.)

The CE itself has the same features as an IRL CE complete with orderbook and limit orders. You could technically rent a warehouse (I have) and just sit and speculate in price movements. It's also possible to run for governor, establish a corporation, or run a chamber of commerce, but that's still beyond me.

As for the size of it, I see about ~400 players online at all times. I don't know how many are active and how many just have the game running on their browser (or phone). It gives you push notifications if something happened, like a ship arrived, a limit order got filled, or a production lot was finished.

The crazy thing is that I find myself checking PU much more than my real life investments. I suppose the fun is in building something from scratch as opposed to just maintaining an ERE-WL8 system that's just on autopilot. However, for those players who have not translated their lessons into IRL, I'd suggest they're wasting their time---it's not very meaningful to become "wealthy" in a game if one is not already "wealthy" IRL. I wonder---but I highly suspect---that the typical player is so compartmentalized that they don't transfer the skills/interest over(*).

(*) Although one thread in the global chat caught my eye as people started talking about if anyone was an economist in real life. No personal finance discussions detected so far though.

[grundomatic]

The games sound very similar. Sim Companies hovers around 28,000 players, and is all about production and retail. Products of varying complexity are produced, in multiple steps and often by multiple players, and eventually sold back to the pretend people that work in the buildings. There is a single exchange where almost all of the 141 items are traded--the exception being aerospace end products, which I'm guessing is to force more interactions with other players and the game. There is a dedicated chat just for those products. Transport is done instantaneously, but does use resources.

I think most players run a 24 hour production cycle, but I've managed to pick items that don't neatly do that. So I'll be on and find myself messing around waiting for the next building to end in 20-40mins. When not on vacation I did start to use these windows to complete chores. I've also over-extended myself at times and had to produce in smaller runs so I could sell the product in order to run the next small cycle.

The fun, for me, is absolutely in the building something from scratch. In opening new restaurants, we talked about a "two kinds of people" divide--builders and maintainers. I fall pretty hard on the builder side, and I find I'm pretty much that way in most aspects of my life. I'm tempted to dip my toe into Prosperous Universe because, well, building is fun and I don't want to restart simco.

The irony of optimizing my pretend company while the rest of my life still has many improvements to be made is not lost on me. If I'm honest, deliberately wasting my time on games is probably backlash against having to watch my (and other's) time so tightly when I was mass producing first-graders, and before that, hamburgers. IOW, the articles are probably for myself while hopefully helping some other gamer make the connection, and definately not sage wisdom from someone with a fine-tuned lifestyle system.

[jacob]

The irony of optimizing my pretend company while the rest of my life still has many improvements to be made is not lost on me. If I'm honest, deliberately wasting my time on games is probably backlash against having to watch my (and other's) time so tightly when I was mass producing first-graders, and before that, hamburgers. IOW, the articles are probably for myself while hopefully helping some other gamer make the connection, and definately not sage wisdom from someone with a fine-tuned lifestyle system.

I'm actually curious whether it works the other way around. IOW, does a solid understanding of ERE, in particular the polymathic approach with its understanding of learning curves, etc. carry over to learning something like gaming. So far, I would say yes. I can recognize the learning curve and approach it a bit more strategically instead of just playing for fun. It's the standard meta-lesson as all learning experiences tend to be the same. To realize this, one needs to experience the learning curve more than once which is rather unusual in this hyperspecialized world of ours where most humans stop learning much of anything more after their mid 20s.

PS: Here are some notes I took for PU. Making those is actually more fun than the game itself---it's all about figuring out the economy and that's mostly a mental game. I've yet to transition into spreadsheets, but it's getting pretty close. I've already noticed some economic inefficiencies as revealed by "comparative advantage" concerns. For example, it is more profitable to produce and sell oxygen (O) to buy ammonia (AMM) from someone else, which is a feedstock for the fuel production at the refinery, than it is to produce the AMM directly. W/o knowing that comparative advantage was a thing I don't think I would have spotted it. I've also looked for arbitrage triangle trades at the various exchanges but I haven't found any. Both ideas are pretty simple but by no means "obvious".

Code: Select all

Vertical integration strategy: 
Self-sufficient in water and rations, not overalls

FRM Farmstead: 4BSE 4BBH 120MCG 50pioneers
FP Food processor: 3BSE 3BBH 3BDE 48MCG 40 pioneers
Total needed 7BSE 7BBH 3BDE 168MCG 90 pioneers
Inv 8BSE 101MCG

HB1 Pioneer habitation 4BBH 2BDE 2BSE 1BTA 40MCG
Total needed 9BSE 11BBH 5BDE 1BTA 208MCG
Cost: 9*1500+11*2200+5*2200+1*1300+208*30 ~ 56000 CIS

---

Specialization strategy: Import HE3, raise ref eff by 20%
Refinery 6BSE 6BBH 6BDE 100MCG (60 pioneers 20 settlers)
Cost: 6*1500+6*2300+6*2200+100*34=39400
Barracks 4BBH 4BDE 2LTA 2LSE 56MCG
Cost: 4*2300+4*2200+2*3150+2*8000+56*34=42204
Pioneer hab 4BBH 2BDE 2BSE 1BTA 40MCG 
Cost: 4*2300+2*2200+2*1500+1*1300+40*34=19260

---

Bonus strategy: 
Collector 16BSE 60MCG (almost have enough material)
Cost: 16*1500+60*34 = 26040CIS (50 pioneers) (26 days to pay for itself)
---

Daily consumption (200 pioneers): 8RAT 8DW 1 OVE
8*111+8*69+1*120 = 1560CIS/day (200 pioneers)
Luxury consumption (pioneers): 1COF 0.4PWO
1*731 + 0.4*298 = 850.2/day
Daily consumption (100 settlers) 0.5EXO 0.5PT 5DW 6RAT
0.5*265 +0.5*460 + 5*69 + 6*111=1374/day 
Luxury consumption (100 settlers) 1KOM 0.2REP 
1*799 + 0.2*663 = 932/day
---

Production lines

Refinery:
4H+2HE3 -> 100FF
4*90 + 2*270 + profit = 1420: profit 520 
Profit rate = 520/339mins = 92CIS/hr

3H+2GAL+1AMM -> 100SF
3*90 + (2*70) + (85) + profit = 1200: profit 930 or 705 value add
Profit rate = 930/339mins = 164CIS/hr or 125CIS/hr add

Collector
2AMM / 533 mins = 2*100/533*60 =  22CIS/hr (net 22*24-1560*50/200=138/day)
5O / 523 mins = 5*105/523*60 = 60CIS/hr (net 60*24-1560*50/200=1050/day)

Extractor
9GAL / 983 mins = 9*60/983*60 = 32CIS/hr (net 32*24-1560*60/200=300/day)

Rig
12H2O / 1436 mins = 12*31/1436*60 = 15CIS/hr (net 15*24-1560*30/200=126/day)

Add: Someone made a simulator for the simulator: https://prunplanner.org

[grundomatic]

I'm actually curious whether it works the other way around. IOW, does a solid understanding of ERE, in particular the polymathic approach with its understanding of learning curves, etc. carry over to learning something like gaming. So far, I would say yes. I can recognize the learning curve and approach it a bit more strategically instead of just playing for fun. It's the standard meta-lesson as all learning experiences tend to be the same. To realize this, one needs to experience the learning curve more than once which is rather unusual in this hyperspecialized world of ours where most humans stop learning much of anything more after their mid 20s.

Ok, when you put it that way, I think I am better at learning now than I was previously, at least based on results of video games. While I've always been a quick learner when it comes to games (and many other things), I think the difference now is being willing to push past early success (or failure), and grow beyond that.

As far as learning analogies go, EU4 was complex enough that I needed some scaffolding to be successful, and found the article linked earlier that suggested focusing on learning one element of the game at a time, even dedicating a playthrough to each one. Once I did that, it was easy to put together a strategy that incorporated all aspects of the game, and I was much more successful.

Doing this should not sound novel to anyone that has read Early Retirement Extreme, yet I needed someone to tell me to do it for EU4. Obviously still some compartmentalization going on, however I had at least learned the meta-lesson of "you can learn things on your own using the internet".

I don't know if there is much translation of learning going on with Sim Companies, as I am both educated and experienced in business. More like direct application. It has been fun to see all the business and economics things played out in a way that moves faster than the real world and is easier for me to see everything that is going on. Race to the bottom, VI vs specialization, supply chain ripples, market overreactions, your idiot competition ruining your ability to make good margins, just to name a few. Right now I'm "buying when there is blood in the streets", paying 50% of cost for assets others no longer want because of announced game changes.

The figuring it all out and planning is indeed the fun part. Otherwise it's just punching numbers into a web browser. I am now reaching a point where it seems like the learning curve flattens out. I feel like I've learned the essence of the game, and all it is going to take now is time in the game. Keep running things more efficiently than others, and watch my company value grow.

If it weren't for a few game friends I've made, I might just leave the game. As it is, I'm already starting to make decisions that sacrifice game optimization for reducing the time needed in-game. I thought about joining you over in Prosperous Universe, but then saw that the player to player actions all seem to require the paid subscription, so we wouldn't even be playing together if we wanted to play free.

Oh, there is a 3rd party website for Simco that's pretty essential, too: simcotools.app--calculates profit for all the different items, but can be dangerous now because the automatic price inputs aren't always correct, so now one has to at least verify prices of everything. It also has market history. A friend noted that it takes a special kind of player to like a game where the most important tools are outside the game itself.

[PhoneticNachos]

I used to be a top world ranked player in a few MMOs, we had a guild as part of our alliance in Warhammer online: age of reckoning that was a gold farm ran by a group of middle school/ high school kids, they got to run with us big boys in our raids, and they contributed to all the gold our groups needed to buy up all the best gear and run a few server economies, we also sold excess gold to a few online gold selling websites, they paid for our guild leaders college education, since he took the risk of actually running the whole operation and setting up the accounts.

[jacob]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... id=0#gid=0 <- When people take their economics games seriously. The ultimate in WL5. How many use differential calculus in real life?