Some thoughts about "Human Action Online" (but mostly about me and my dilemma).

Reply

AJ replied on Thu, Nov 5 2009 3:08 AM

rated by 0 users

kiba:

http://libregamewiki.org - The world's only encyclopedia on free(as in freedom) gaming.

Whoah, so they do exist. I don't know much about WoW, but what's stopping private in-game entrepreneurs from offering services to other players, such as private security, etc.? If they just made the game more hardcore, there might be a need for such services. And if they added a function for signing contracts with other players and for designating private property (land), such a structure may emerge. Later they could even make contract enforcement and dispute resolution non-automatic, so that there would be incentive for player entrepreneurs to set up private courts. They would need some kind of brand recognition system at first as well.

In general, games like WoW try to eliminate scarcity in terms of mundane things like law, by making it automatic in the game engine. But since there are millions of users, they have a unique opportunity to re-introduce scarcity by removing such automatic server-side management and thereby leaving it up to the players to create systems for handling such things. The economy side of things is already well done in some games, where there are emergent monies and inflation is well-modeled, for instance. But for government and law systems, there doesn't seem to be such a level of sophistication.