About MMO-ECON
MMO-ECON is the geek study of economics, statistics, and rationality found in massive multiplayer online (MMO) games. In so doing, MMO-ECON hopes to address some of the traditional questions asked by economists on macro and microeconomics, consumer rationality, and decision making.
MMOs create persistent realities in which gamers operate following economic rules and incentives similar to those we find in real life (IRL). Unlike real life, however, every aspect of the virtual world is controlled by a game designer or designers, and therefore can be changed at will. This combination of real players with real motives operating in a virtual and malleable world offers a remarkably useful petri dish to test some of the traditional questions that economists ask.
The possibility of using virtual worlds as an economic petri dish, of course, assumes a basic level of congruence between online and offline rationality. This question will be foundational to MMO-ECON. But, given even a marginal level of similarity (and I suspect it is more than marginal), we can move on to broader questions and topics.
MMO-ECON will present two tracts. These blog entries presented here will report the day to day issues of testing economic theories within MMOs. Whenever something interesting is found, they will be added to the static articles section.
To summarize, MMO-ECON will focus on:
- Economics of MMOs
- Rationality and decision making of gamers
- Statistics and econometrics within MMOs
- Data collection and analysis
- Deeper questions of “value” within games, and what it is that motivates people to behave in certain ways within games
Being the first post, this will be somewhat of a living document as I change it to reflect the current purpose of MMO-ECON. Please feel free to add your comments and thoughts as I work to define this site.
