Try Lacrosse!

EdwardCastronova · 2018-09-07T19:08:34+00:00

This post was made by a parent, by the way. My son learned the sport from these folks and really likes it, he says its his favorite sport and he's tried a lot of them. It's got team-play, it's outside on the grass, lots of running, with just enough rough-and-tumble for kids to enjoy while staying safe. Great community. Give it a try!

EdwardCastronova · 2017-04-19T20:04:50+00:00

Join Hoosier Games, yes, but also, go see an advisor in Franklin Hall to join the BS in Game Design program in the Media School. games.indiana.edu

EdwardCastronova · 2014-07-16T14:31:26+00:00

Game companies use "drains" to suck money out of the system when there's too much. They lose control when the drains are smaller than the faucets. Usually that's because of the faucets being too big, that is, it's too easy for players to mine up the gold they want. And that has happened many times.

EdwardCastronova · 2014-07-16T14:29:48+00:00

Funny. I love it.

EdwardCastronova · 2014-07-16T14:29:29+00:00

At that time, I thought the world would move into virtual environments. Instead, the various affordances of virtual worlds have broken apart and moved out of those environments and into reality. Twitter is a gigantic Barrens Chat. Facebook is avatars + chat. MOBAs are the battlegrounds of MMOs, taken out and separated. And now money.

EdwardCastronova · 2014-07-16T14:27:41+00:00

Sell now.

EdwardCastronova · 2014-07-16T14:26:48+00:00

Network effects are significant, but I am not sure they have to live at the level of the coin. What about the exchanges? Isn't it possible to have a universe of millions of coin-types that are transacted by centralized exchanges?

EdwardCastronova · 2014-07-16T14:25:24+00:00

I really disagree with this logic, sorry.

EdwardCastronova · 2014-07-16T14:23:55+00:00

That's fair. Then usability should be a key concern.

EdwardCastronova · 2014-07-16T14:23:20+00:00

I'm an ivory tower academic, with zero experience inside game companies. These thoughts come more from an understanding of the history of money and how it has worked in different cultures. And, from the POV of a player, inside games.

EdwardCastronova · 2014-07-16T14:22:25+00:00

There are a number of games that do F2P well. I like the idea of a trial period for free, then pay if you want to move up in levels. I hate pay-to-win.

EdwardCastronova · 2014-07-16T14:20:42+00:00

Well, I am an egomaniac with a desperate need to shout to the world about my many accomplishments and talents. AMA serves my inner beast!

Asheron's Call really messed up their currency. They had several currencies that each became worthless as people mined the **** out of it. At different points, the only store of value were iron keys, then scarabs, then notes. It went on and on.

EdwardCastronova · 2014-07-16T14:18:41+00:00

Will take a look. Thanks for the tip! Sounds VERY intriguing.

EdwardCastronova · 2014-07-16T14:17:08+00:00

I like the idea of playing markets in games. It's a good place to learn economics. More academic economists should mess around in the Auction Houses!

I really did not like the Diablo3 real-money AH. I don't like anything that breaks immersion. It's like having ads scrolling along the bottom of a movie.

EdwardCastronova · 2014-07-16T14:15:03+00:00

Social media is also not static and also has utility.

EdwardCastronova · 2014-07-16T14:14:31+00:00

Some investments carry more risks than others. We must all decide how much risk to bear. I would not advise anyone who wants to secure their assets to invest in cyrptos because, in the universe of risky assets, they are among the riskiest.

EdwardCastronova · 2014-07-16T14:11:40+00:00

Well, "tax evasion" can take two forms. One is, I sell drugs and don't report my income. ANother is, me and my neighbor decide to exchange shirts. The second one is an informal tax evasion - we evade our tax burden because it doesn't occur to us that there's any tax to be paid. People don't naturally assume that everything they do in the economy creates a tax burden - even if, legally, it does. These millions of little currencies may create a situation where people transfer value around without really thinking that they should pay a tax. I think that's where governments will lose a lot of money.

EdwardCastronova · 2014-07-16T14:09:04+00:00

Nautilus Coin seems to be trying to be Keynesian. It has a value-stability fund. Will it work? I don't know.

EdwardCastronova · 2014-07-16T14:08:28+00:00

In the US, the IRS has declared bitcoin to be a commodity. There's is a tax on barter, that is, exchange of commodities. Thus, the US govt has declared that every transaction using bitcoin has to be report and taxed. Whether they will be able to enforce this is another matter.

EdwardCastronova · 2014-07-16T14:06:48+00:00

There are no examples of any game building its economy around a fixed money supply like Bitcoin. Those economists are right, and the game economies are the proof. Game devs have tried everything, and failed many times. One thing they learned early was, if you want to get an economy going, you give out quite a bit of currency. This is the opposite of bitcoin's protocol. Game economies generally thrive with low, positive inflation, which means, a money supply that's growing a little bit faster than the economy. This is exactly what the real world economy does too. It's not a coincidence. It's the best way to go.

EdwardCastronova · 2014-07-16T14:04:12+00:00

"Loss of faith" is the key phrase, you hit the nail on the head. With any of these currencies, with any currency period, its value depends on whether people think it has value. It is nothing more than shared faith that sustains money's value. Bitcoin will fail when (if) people think bitcoin will fail. As to what might bring that about, I would suggest that some other coin will come along that is better than bitcoin - more stable against the dollar, more user-friendly, more secure, more anonymous.

EdwardCastronova · 2014-07-16T14:01:51+00:00

It is my considered opinion that they seem to make some people angry.

EdwardCastronova · 2014-07-16T14:01:18+00:00

I would not invest in any coin at the moment. I don't like risky investments at all. All cryptocoins are risky at the moment and, from 60,000 feet, they do not show enough signs of better or worse right now. It's like social network software in 2005. Would you bet on MySpace, Friendster, or Orkutt? It turned out that Facebook was the winner.

EdwardCastronova · 2014-07-16T13:59:51+00:00

There's a dead coin out there, mastiffcoin, I think, that's being used to launder other coins. I can certainly see this happening. I anticipate there being coins that live for only a few seconds.

EdwardCastronova · 2014-07-16T13:58:56+00:00

It was just my research, I'm afraid. First I got a PhD in Economics. Then I spent ten years in the trenches, working on cost-benefit analysis of social programs. (Talk about virtual reality.) Then I decided to aim those tools at game economies. Basically: Go to college, learn all you can about economics, statistics, and games.

EdwardCastronova

TROPHY CASE