Breakfast Links: EVE Economy, Private Moon Landing & Japanese Food
EVE Online’s one of those MMOG’s that’s pretty popular, not World of Warcraft popular, but then no one else is either. As far as I know, they are the first online game to hire a Chief Economist! It’s pretty cool, you can read the interview with this him, Dr. Eyjólfur “Eyjo” Guðmundsson where he talks about things. He talks about how EVE went to a conference on experimental economics to look for him, that’s badass. Apparently there’s all sorts of reasons why the in game market in EVE is interesting and well worth studying. I completely dig that stuff.
But if that’s too fiction for you maybe you want to try your hand at getting some of the $30 million Google’s offering for landing some craft on the surface of the moon! How hardcore is that? They’re doing it through the X-Prize foundation and it runs through 2012. Sir Richard Branson, are you listening? We need to get this into Virgin Galactic ASAP. I want to land on the moon, dammit. (BTW, see how hip that virgingalactic site is? They put underscores in front of their titles on that site! They know the kidz like dem underscores!)
And when you’re on the moon? What will you eat? Perhaps you will have a craving for japanese food? Check out this device that lets kids (or you) make soba noodles! That’s cool. Mmm… fresh delightful soba. And even fancier, I know you’ve had sushi making parties after you got those bamboo rollers, but don’t try and represent that you made good sushi, I know what they looked like all lumpy and misshapen - it’s because you didn’t have this sushi-rolling machine! Dig it. Ok, you probably won’t be eating those on the moon. Sorry.
September 14th, 2007 at 11:46 am
I have been playing Eve-Online for 2 years now and their Market system is fantastic. I make most of my money (isk in game) buying and selling weapons. It’s immersing when you finish battle and dock at a space station and then get to bring up your whole financial portfolio. Here is screen shot of a product detail with buyers and sellers:
http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/f/fc/Eve_Market.png
-poyla
September 14th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
I was thinking of you when I posted that! I didn’t realize that that was such an integral component of the game - that is, second life gets all the press for their “economy” because of the real world exchange rate, but this one sounds interesting because it’s an integral part of the game. You do better and worse depending on how well you play it the market… that’s cool.
September 14th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
Oh yeah, course you don’t have to “play” the market at all, but everyone has to eventually turn to it for something they will need as a consumer, if nothing else. This makes it vulnerable to the same power hungry crap people try and pull in real markets. Check out this article, with links in it, about a 700 Billion isk scam someone pulled off. I don’t know how I avoided that one, but I did.
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/23/1918246
September 14th, 2007 at 6:32 pm
And Eve is a very under rated game. Even with all the press it has got, it’s still way under rated. I think most of the players enjoy that because they make enough to expand the game, yet the average age of Eve players is older than all the other MMORPGs. Thus less smack talk and BS.