My two-stepping in Second Life dance halls led me to wonder the role of behavior and intelligence in virtual worlds. I suspect that the Turing Test ideal is likely the wrong "evaluation function" for considering useful intelligence in entertainment worlds. In fact, perhaps the role of the AI is to amplify the forces of the world, as well as to guide the player experience.

So now your hipper economist prefers to reckon GDP values by indexing the local prices of a fixed basket of goods, thus measuring what’s known as purchasing power parity (or PPP) (do I hear “bingo”?), and this gives strikingly different results from the exchange-rate method.

The underlying problem: There is a social contract in gaming just as there is in sports. This is not a PC reaction to "the way things are supposed to be" so much as it is a warning to short-sighted capitalists that some of their value stems from this contract. Messing with it hurts the product. In sports and games, teams and individuals contest on a level playing field. It is meritocratic, not capitalist, nepotistic, classist or elitist, and it is a central underlying reason for the appeal of sports--Joe six pack and Joe CEO can watch and play as equals. When this ideal is violated, there is a violation of that contract--that meta-game. When the ideal is protected, the product is better and more people partake of it.

You've staked out opposite sides of the argument, but I find myself disagreeing with both of you. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you both seem to believe in the possibility -- and the desirability -- of drawing clear ethical and aesthetic lines around MMOs. And generally speaking, I don't. It also raises some interesting non-design problems. It looks to me as if it would discourage RMT, for example, because investments won't necessarily be seen as sufficiently long-term. The truth is World of Warcraft Gold doesn’t HAVE to take a long time to get, especially in the higher levels. Buy WOW Gold here, and then enjoy your excited WoW life!

The typical gamer response is for players to team up outside the arena and form "hard-core" "squads" or clans or groups who tightly regulate membership: to build cohesion and weed out those of different ilk and interests. However it seems hard to scale a game that assumes this model to commercially viable numbers. It also raises some interesting non-design problems. It looks to me as if it would discourage RMT, for example, because investments won't necessarily be seen as sufficiently long-term. The truth is World of Warcraft Gold doesn’t HAVE to take a long time to get, especially in the higher levels. Buy WOW Gold here, and then enjoy your excited WoW life! Warhammer Online Gold will keep your high power. On the other hand, if RMTers persuade the courts that people own what their characters own, the whole concept of a purge might be threatened.

Thus, should game worlds as organizing experiences, be more dictated? Should players be more enlightened? Or is somewhere between, bliss? It also raises some interesting non-design problems. It looks to me as if it would discourage RMT, for example, because investments won't necessarily be seen as sufficiently long-term. The truth is World of Warcraft Gold doesn’t HAVE to take a long time to get, especially in the higher levels. Buy WOW Gold here, and then enjoy your excited WoW life! Warhammer Online Gold will keep your high power. On the other hand, if RMTers persuade the courts that people own what their characters own, the whole concept of a purge might be threatened.

There are several factors here that need to be teased out. Seeing an orc with a white kitten running around behind them does not tell you why they purchased that kitten. Are they deriving pleasure from watching the incongruity of the burly orc and the frolicking kitty? It also raises some interesting non-design problems. It looks to me as if it would discourage RMT, for example, because investments won't necessarily be seen as sufficiently long-term. The truth is World of Warcraft Gold doesn’t HAVE to take a long time to get, especially in the higher levels. Buy WOW Gold here, and then enjoy your excited WoW life! Warhammer Online Gold will keep your high power. On the other hand, if RMTers persuade the courts that people own what their characters own, the whole concept of a purge might be threatened.

Mark, you suggested that there is a substantial degree of invidious comparison that’s driving the price up. On the other hand, you could explain it by simple scarcity—if the Alliance has pets A, B, C and Horde has D, E, F—then, if ABCDEF are similar but not perfect substitutes, you’d fully expect the price for the rare thing to be higher because it is more scarce to that group. It also raises some interesting non-design problems. It looks to me as if it would discourage RMT, for example, because investments won't necessarily be seen as sufficiently long-term. The truth is World of Warcraft Gold doesn’t HAVE to take a long time to get, especially in the higher levels. Buy WOW Gold here, and then enjoy your excited WoW life! Warhammer Online Gold will keep your high power. On the other hand, if RMTers persuade the courts that people own what their characters own, the whole concept of a purge might be threatened.

On my current Horde server, my character has a prairie chicken as if to say to the cognoscenti, “I know how—and have bothered—to accomplish something that is non-trivial.” It also raises some interesting non-design problems. It looks to me as if it would discourage RMT, for example, because investments won't necessarily be seen as sufficiently long-term. The truth is World of Warcraft Gold doesn’t HAVE to take a long time to get, especially in the higher levels. Buy WOW Gold here, and then enjoy your excited WoW life! Warhammer Online Gold will keep your high power. On the other hand, if RMTers persuade the courts that people own what their characters own, the whole concept of a purge might be threatened.

It’s not all about conspicuous consumption, of course. But as to the pets: That’s because they’re not all that rare. In the context of, say, World of Warcraft, there are certain pets that are more easily available to one faction than to the other, and these bring a great deal of money on the auctionhouse. It also raises some interesting non-design problems. It looks to me as if it would discourage RMT, for example, because investments won't necessarily be seen as sufficiently long-term. The truth is World of Warcraft Gold doesn’t HAVE to take a long time to get, especially in the higher levels. Buy WOW Gold here, and then enjoy your excited WoW life! Warhammer Online Gold will keep your high power. On the other hand, if RMTers persuade the courts that people own what their characters own, the whole concept of a purge might be threatened.