Emergent stuff in MMOs
Dec. 15th, 2006 05:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sobriqueWell, I'm sure it'll come as a surprise to none that I play an MMO called EVE
One of the things I'm involved in, is the ISS. The Interstellar Starbase Syndicate. Now I'll not bore you with the ingame details (if you play EVE, then you probably can already find 'em, or just comment and I'll fill in more).
But I just thought I'd share an interesting emergent concept with you all. You see, ISS has issued an IPO. Initial public offering, trading shares in the alliance.
Details of it are in the rather snazzy presentation: http://www.eve-iss.com/ISSO/
And there's a stockmarket that's evolved to take account of this (and several others - you'll see several 'ISS' tickers there):
http://eve.hubau.be/index.php?page=corp&act=info&ticker=ISSO
The 'value' of the offering is 500bn ISK. Which is an absolutely meaningless sum for most. Especially as you can't (legally) trade in game for RL money. However, to use a reference, $19.95 game time cards sell for about ??? Isks. Which means, should we be so inclined, this many isks could be seen as an equivalence of yyy cash.
The sources of revenue are loans, capital investments (building in game infrastructure) and commodities - buying good in volume at supply, and distributing them in the outer regions for a margin has always been profitable, but capital intensive.
Now, I'm not trying to pimp my game (but if you want to give it a try, give me a shout, I have trial codes) but ... well I just thought it was fascinating that you can have this kind of emergent behaviour in a game. That ... well the stockmarket model has been implemented almost from first principles -
ISS lead the field on the 'first' EVE IPO too, in selling shares in the original outpost project Marginis, which you can see the stock history on the EGSE site too. (t's fairly static, but the project has been 'live' for over a year now, so a measure of stability on stock trading has been reached. In many ways the ISS projects represent the 'Blue Chip' investments of the EVE universe.
One of the things I'm involved in, is the ISS. The Interstellar Starbase Syndicate. Now I'll not bore you with the ingame details (if you play EVE, then you probably can already find 'em, or just comment and I'll fill in more).
But I just thought I'd share an interesting emergent concept with you all. You see, ISS has issued an IPO. Initial public offering, trading shares in the alliance.
Details of it are in the rather snazzy presentation: http://www.eve-iss.com/ISSO/
And there's a stockmarket that's evolved to take account of this (and several others - you'll see several 'ISS' tickers there):
http://eve.hubau.be/index.php?page=corp&act=info&ticker=ISSO
The 'value' of the offering is 500bn ISK. Which is an absolutely meaningless sum for most. Especially as you can't (legally) trade in game for RL money. However, to use a reference, $19.95 game time cards sell for about ??? Isks. Which means, should we be so inclined, this many isks could be seen as an equivalence of yyy cash.
The sources of revenue are loans, capital investments (building in game infrastructure) and commodities - buying good in volume at supply, and distributing them in the outer regions for a margin has always been profitable, but capital intensive.
Now, I'm not trying to pimp my game (but if you want to give it a try, give me a shout, I have trial codes) but ... well I just thought it was fascinating that you can have this kind of emergent behaviour in a game. That ... well the stockmarket model has been implemented almost from first principles -
ISS lead the field on the 'first' EVE IPO too, in selling shares in the original outpost project Marginis, which you can see the stock history on the EGSE site too. (t's fairly static, but the project has been 'live' for over a year now, so a measure of stability on stock trading has been reached. In many ways the ISS projects represent the 'Blue Chip' investments of the EVE universe.
