The Pirate's Dilemma: notes

[singer]

(I'm not understanding the difference between being your own distributor as opposed to distributing your stuff to as many distributors as possible?  Is it just that as your own distributor you would be both wholesale and retail but wholesale only if you simply sold to other distributors?)

There's no difference, you're right. Every customer is a potential distributor in this model. The marketting is a bit different though

When you have the time I would appreciate it if you would explain the marketing differences to me a little  ... I'm really very interested.

When I explained the gist of this conversation to someone else this morning, he said... "So what happens when the SL model meets real life?  What if, right now, some tv producer is grabbing his song (distributed in SL) for the title theme of his new blockbuster prime time show... making a couple million of real life dollars off it... and providing the artist with....Zip.... in return?"

Does the SL model take into account derivitave profit?

[Xooxe]

Its strage, but I keep saying games like Second Life and WoW would be brilliant places to try out new economic models.  Some games have actually quite advanced economies, and it has the benefit of not destroying peoples lives by experimenting with the system.

Obviously no replication can be perfect, but with micro-economic models and trends, it could be very, very useful.  Real people generally act more like real people than computer projections done by economists, so I think there is merit to the idea.

I have no desire to play any massively-multiplayer games, but I find this kind of thing fascinating.

As far as economics goes, you should take a look at EVE - http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=19844

Also, I saw this in the BBC some time back - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6951918.stm

I don't know where to find a link, but quite a while back I remember the American military trying to get hold of data from Counter Strike games or something.

[Cain]

Its strage, but I keep saying games like Second Life and WoW would be brilliant places to try out new economic models.  Some games have actually quite advanced economies, and it has the benefit of not destroying peoples lives by experimenting with the system.

Obviously no replication can be perfect, but with micro-economic models and trends, it could be very, very useful.  Real people generally act more like real people than computer projections done by economists, so I think there is merit to the idea.

I have no desire to play any massively-multiplayer games, but I find this kind of thing fascinating.

As far as economics goes, you should take a look at EVE - http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=19844

Also, I saw this in the BBC some time back - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6951918.stm

I don't know where to find a link, but quite a while back I remember the American military trying to get hold of data from Counter Strike games or something.

Yeah, they're not my sort of thing either, really, but I do find their potential for mapping and modelling such things fascinating.  Thanks for the links, I'm just looking at the BBC one right now.