Wealth in Massive Games (gedankenexperiment)

There has been a storm of concerned armchair economics gurus that has come out of the woodwork over the past few months. I've become steadily more angry at seeing people trot out tired old theories that show a deep misunderstanding of even the most basic facts about money and wealth.

You can learn more about economics by playing Alpha Centauri than by reading Marx.

But almost all games suffer from an oversimplified economic rule set. This is to avoid getting in the way of whatever the "real" gameplay is. I would like to turn that on its head and theorize a game about economics.

Here are the restrictions:

1) The theoretical game must be massively multiplayer (or massively singleplayer, a'la Spore).

2) It must contain interesting non-economic gameplay (typically, various kinds of killing).

3) The economic rules must emerge from simple fundamentals rather than by complex fiat (IE, no arbitrary money sinks, no specific "B happens if you raise taxes").

4) The game must contain zones, modes, or other variations that change the fundamental rules somewhat to highlight the different economic results that occur when rules change.

5) It must highlight the difference between MONEY and WEALTH.

All the examples I can think of are constructive, rather than the "static state" worlds of WoW or WoW, WoW, or maybe WoW. For example, my first instinct is a space empire game like Masters of Orion, but with far less focus on war and far more focus on the amount of time it takes to travel through space. By having specific resources obtained only from specific star systems, you would be able to stress the costs of shipping this product (or derivatives) all around the empire.

The game would require somewhat arbitrary use of fundamental materials to build products. For example, building an acropolis might require explicitly listed goods in addition to research, time, and labor. These are somewhat arbitrary sinks, but at least they make sense.

The game would also highlight the difference between a new economy and a mature economy as you expand and build up your planets. You could also have "low-traction" zones where travel happens faster, or low-fuel zones where you're forced to stick to light speed in order to make it economically viable...

You have any ideas?

Crossing the Geographical Wires

_{Here's a thought experiment. I'm not suggesting we do this, but it's an interesting thought experiment.}

Imagine that voting for president works the same way it does right now, with one tiiiiiny little difference: any citizen can cast their vote in any one state (or county, or however you divide it).

So I could cast my vote for MA, where I live, or I could cast my vote in, say, Texas.

Put aside the idea of ideal behavior: people aren't ideal. Instead, think about how many people of what types you think would take advantage of this "switched voting", and what you think the effects might be as years pass and people get used to the idea. What sort of new groups do you think voters would create to try to leverage their votes?

I'll get things started: I think that most groups of independents (such as libertarians) would get together and agree to win a specific (low-population) state. "Green party wins Alaska!" would be hilarious...

Reviewer Unleashed!

Okay, I got a copy of the Force Unleashed, and I'm gonna whine about it.

Short review: Oh, look, another game where lightsabers don't cut shit and you suck! But with added quicktime events, because we don't want you to have any fun!

Long review: Wait, I played this game already. On this console, even. Except it was called Conan.

Except in Conan, your mana didn't refill as fast. This was okay, because fighting was fun. Conan was, of course, absolutely ruined by the idiotic quicktime events that happen at every point. Quel coincidence!

So, I haven't played the Force Unleashed for too terribly long just yet. I stopped when I got shot to death by a race that's not supposed to have fucking ranged weapons. So far, it's not very good. Their much-vaunted physics/animation system is... um... pointless? Not terribly interesting? The ability to throw shit at other shit doesn't really support very much gameplay. It's kind of fun for a bit, but it gets pretty repetitive.

The rest of the game is cookie-cutter action game. Your character might as well be Kratos, except that your melee combat is really dull and there are no really awesome boss battles. Just really boring ones.

Now that I've ranted, let's see what the average score is from the rest of the world... Reviewers seem to rate it as a high six or low seven, players seem to rate it as a high eight. I can only assume this is because reviewers are smarter than fanboys.

A lot of people talk about how pretty it is, which is true to a point. Boy, I sure would have liked them to think about using lights other than "ambient standard". I also liked how their cutscenes tend to use in-game animations, meaning walking so wooden and lock-step it's painful. The story might be good, but there's a whole lot of quicktime events between here and there, so it's going to be irritating.

Whine whine bitch moan. When did the rebels get shocksticks that can block lightsabers? Why does my lightsaber do a fraction of someone's HP in damage instead of, say, cutting them in half? For that matter, why can't I cut anyone in half? It's a big part of my Sithy ideal. Force grip, check. Cut people in half, not check. You see, that'd be straying from the cookie-cutter action-game mold, and they'd actually have to start thinking about balance and fun, instead of stamp-stamp-stamping down levels.

I'm always depressed by the new Star Wars games because Force Powers are depicted as, basically, D&D magic spells. Unleashed's push-physics is a step in the right direction, but let me explain to you what's missing from all of these titles:

The Force.

Whoa-ho, you know, it flows through all things, you can sense it, feel the Force, be one with the Force, trust the Force...

The Force can be more than just magic spells. In fact, in all the various Star Wars stuff (canon and otherwise) we see people on both sides doing a lot more with the Force than we do in these games. Stuff that seems insignificant until you think about just how cool it would be in a game.

For example, it's common for Force users to jump off something high and land on a moving vehicle. It's common for Force users to sense other Force users. And, hey, saber combat isn't about stringing together combos, it's about using the Force to guide your blade. Let's not mention the whole redemption/falling stuff, which is always simplified to a painfully childish level.

Here's a thought experiment: this is a Star Wars game very similar to the Force Unleashed. Except we'll start as completely untrained, and it's in black and white.

As we train up, colors are added. But they aren't the "true colors": they're representations of various ways of seeing the Force. So, when we learn to see the Force in all living things, we see all living things limned in, say, green. The further away they are, the more stuff in the way, the foggier and fuzzier the lining is. The halo sparks and fizzes based on the personality of the life form: a Sith would have delightfully sparky halo, while a Jedi might have one that is a gentle rivery-type effect.

When we learn to see opportunities - to "trust in the force" - we see a fog that flows towards important things, and bunches and swells with timing opportunities. So if we're standing in a corridor on a space base, we see a slight fog being sucked down the garbage shaft, or chugging in clumps towards the edge, where platforms are moving by beneath.

There could be a system for sensing raw Force, for sensing connections in the Force, for sensing danger, for sensing the future...

The idea being that, by the end of the game, you are experiencing a radically different environment than a non-Jedi. You can tell that people are going to shoot at you when you turn the corner, because you can see the red streaks that represent danger. You can tell when to jump off the cliff, because you can sense when the ship's going to drop by. You can track down another Jedi, because you can see his distinctive glow even from space.

I understand this kind of thing is difficult (especially to not make it overwhelming), but it is really any more difficult than the advanced physics and AI Unleashed uses?

To be honest, I'll gladly stick with shit-tastic Light Side powers if I can have the Force overlays.

What do you think? Have any of you played it?

Edit: Having played more of this game, I can safely say that I wouldn't have even given it a 6.

Games of Evolution, Thought Experiment

Okay, in my unhappiness with some aspects of Spore, I've started to think about some possible ways to create a game featuring the same basic progression of scales, but with a more evolvy feel rather than focusing on the arbitrary aesthetics.

One of the issues with this kind of game is that each scale has such distinct machinery. A space ship isn't terribly similar to an amoeba, especially not aesthetically. But - but! It's possible to represent them using the same underlying algorithms.

Lets say you start off as a simple cell, just chugging through freefloating molecules. In the course of evolving, you don't simply evolve flagella or cilia (or spines and eyeballs): you also evolve internal "organelles". See Wikipedia.

All those internal structures aren't just for kicks. They radically enhance the capabilities of the cell in ways that aren't about moving or eating things. But, if anything, they're more important.

Thing is, trying to build a system that can evolve those organisms in an "organic" way, step by step... that's pretty difficult, and it wouldn't be much fun to play.

However, if you look at the organelles, you see something interesting: most of them are equivalent to organs (hence their names) in term of overall functionality. And most devices' internal components ALSO serve the same basic functionality.

If we give up on trying for realism, we can throw out the idea that we need to simulate these with any kind of care, and instead we can simply express them by fiat. "Oh, the endoplasmic reticulum is basically the circulatory system of the cell," we can handwave, "and a nation has roads, and a starship has plumbing/ductwork."

It's not accurate, but it's serviceable.

Then we can offer up a specific set of evolutionary options to the player - a kind of mutation system that is weighted by gameplay - and let him choose. He doesn't have to try to foster some kind of subcellular machinery: we can handwave a very primitive "circulatory system" into existence, and he can choose it - and continue to improve it by choosing in favor of mutations with better circulatory systems in further generations.

This same handwaving can be applied to the internal evolution of just about everything, if we don't mind a certain loss of realism. We can even talk about subsequent generations of cars: cars don't reproduce, but the same basic laws govern their evolution in a society. So we could allow the player to selectively "breed" cars for preferred options. We could even apply this to nations, cities, perhaps even ecosystems...

More external modifications, such as growing eyes or wheels, are a bit more dependent on scope and type of interaction. A cell won't grow wheels, and a car won't grow flagella - but they do serve the same basic purpose. In different mediums, different specific implementations are prevalent.

For example, there are little boats that do use flagella. We call them oars, though. Some even use a single oar out the back. You can easily argue that this is the same basic idea: different scale, same basic medium. More advanced boats evolve sails (flicking fins) or turbines (jellyfish and octopus use a roughly analogous method). We can talk about airside boat evolution and waterside boat evolution: maybe oars are flicking fins and sails are more like a primitive bird wing. Any way you run it, the basic ideas are the same: in any given medium, the same external evolutions will happen.

There are a lot of issues to consider. Transitions are important: when does a cell turn into a multicellular organism? We have rules on how multicellular organisms can develop organs (made of cells), and how cellular organisms can develop organs (made of molecules), but between the two is a bit iffy.

Similarly, not all evolution uses the same components. A tribe might become radically more advanced if it makes a tribal "organ" by domesticating animals. Those animals are not tribe members any more than the structures of the cell are DNA. But there has to be some kind of reason or source to the development: we can't just say "oh, look, something so arbitrarily handwavy that it's incomprehensible!"

(Plus, we want to support "zooming in", if you want to see how a tribesman lives.)

Anyway, the advantage to this kind of abstraction is computation. If we develop organelles as algorithmic components rather than some kind of complex chemical stew, we can abstract the operation of the whole cell to a very simple algorithm. Then, if we're treating organs in a multicellular organism as algorithmic components rather than huge assemblies of cells, we can simulate the whole organism as a simple algorithm...

Downside being, of course, that it's more or less impossible to actually make.