The Evolution of Virtual Economy in Games

Mitch and Blake take on the complex topic of in-game economies. They discuss how the endemic problems of trust and arbitrage were present in the earliest in-game economies of the late 1980 and how they have persisted to the present web3 economies. They look at the concept of mudlfation, a unique economic problem of massively multiplayer online games, and the strategies for controlling it, as well as the idea of economic play. Mitch talks about how gold farming and real-money trading were early antecedents of play-to-earn, before taking a look at early web3 economies. They end the episode with a discussion of the speculator problem in web3 gaming, and Mitch explains the trust and gifting based economy of Jenova Chen's Sky.

The Story of Habitat

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Raph Koster on "fun" in virtual economies

Under a Killing Moon

"Mudflation"

'Flation (Koster)

Play Money (Dibbell 2007)

Castronova on Everquest GDP

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EVE Online (How Money Works)

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Sorare

Sky economy