Bay 12 Games Forum
Finally... => General Discussion => Topic started by: GreatWyrmGold on January 04, 2013, 09:08:04 pm
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This isn't about video games which exist in a world that works only on barter; those could presumably work like trade in DF's Fortress Mode would. This is about a hypothetical world in which people (for the sake of the argument, let's say humans, although it shouldn't matter) have ascended to roughly our level of technology without developing even the concept of currency.
How would their video games deal with it?
Many real-world games base a surprising amount of their gameplay on advancement by buying gear, or at least have their gameplay determined in part by buying such gear. Pretty much all RPGs and many other games include some kind of in-game currency to buy in-game benefits. How or would this be accomplished in a world where the idea of assigning a numerical value to an item as a price was foreign? Would they make a list of what items are worth each other, and what items are worth more than each other, or something to that effect? Would they have the equivalent of shopkeepers give certain items in exchange for specific other items or quests? Would they simply not have shops or an equivalent? Would something I haven't thought of happen?
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I don't think a society like that is possible.
But if you want to imagine a magical world where it did not happen, then apply logic to how video games would handle it:
Video games would invent currency. Since the lack of such a concept would leave such a large void, if the world was magically held back from creating it, then the world started working normally in video games, the concept would just appear in video games.
I think specially it could come about in two ways, actual points that can be spent, and are basically directly modern currency, or they could go the way of that Diablo 2 style game where there are currency items like town portal scrolls that have a specific constant value and take little to no space.
At any rate, the vacuum would collapse.
If the games themselves were also magically held back from that concept though, then they would likely not have shops or exchanges at all.
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Like Criptfeind said, currency is such a natural thing that I believe it would exist in any video game with an advanced trade system. Disallowing that really narrows things, but I'll try to speculate.
All in-game items could be put on a list. Steel armor would be above iron armor - it's more useful. A meal would be above a piece of bread. But would iron armor be above a meal? Would iron gauntlets be above iron boots, if neither is assigned a numerical value? If values are not assigned, then separate lists must be kept for things that have definite superiority in order. Such a system would require more - or different - player interaction. An individual in the game "knows" what they have, but not what the player wants/needs, as well as their own wants/needs. The most likely thing would be for the individual to define their needs and ask the player what they want in reward, unless a particular reward seems more fitting. This is basically questing as it is currently, but with an increased chance that the player already has the goal in their inventory.
To get armor, the player would have to complete "quests" from assorted individuals around town that have bits of the desired set, complete one big job or trade with someone who has a full set, or do a lot of work for the local smith while still managing to stay fed.
As for food, most people before currency worked all day for a full day of food. That's boring in an RPG. The player's best approach would be to trade loot from monster killing, raids, etc. Finding the right person to sell to would be a bit of a pain - jewelers didn't have much work in such a society, it just doesn't work. Some might only give you a couple of small meals for a gem, because they're short on food and don't have any use for it but further trade; nobles have more to offer, but do they really want to bother adding such a small thing to their collection? Lack of value presents a serious problem here. What's to differentiate that 4cm emerald from the golden spoon? The only solution I have to this is to undifferentiate loot, so to speak. Make all objects the same value and/or define it as units. Again, here value of loot isn't really based on value but the desire of in-game individuals and their current assets. Such a system would then be much more complicated to put in a game than currency-based systems, though entirely possible.
This was kind of rambly, but I think I got my points across. Basically, it's unlikely that this would be in place, but if so it would be a sloppy mess tracking the desires and stocks of every local.
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Game makers, especially as far as programming goes, often needs to assign numerical value to things that might not have a corresponding value in real life. Take HP for example, nowhere in medicine does such a thing come up, but it quickly became popular in video games because of the fact that pretty much everything has to be quantised.
As such, it isn't a great leap to assume that a similar system would be implemented in game. Even if the player never got to see the IP (Item points) of any one thing, they would still exist somewhere, most likely.
Otherwise, just play Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup or Spelunky or The Binding Of Issac and don't use any shops, should be exactly what you are thinking of. You can still get hold of most items without having to use a shop. Just use a different procurement system.
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Otherwise, just play Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup or Spelunky or The Binding Of Issac and don't use any shops, should be exactly what you are thinking of. You can still get hold of most items without having to use a shop. Just use a different procurement system.
I was thinking for more "realistic" games (as much as that term pertains here). Like Oblivion and other open-world RPGs. You could kill bandits and take their armor; but what are the bandits stealing? Would there be bandits to loot without currency? If someone has better gear than you, they're probably going to kill you. I don't think a more direct procurement method would work well for the player.
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urw?
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What I would find impressive is video games without written language.
Very early games were nothing but text, looking at you Infocom! I wonder how games would have gone if we only ever had verbal communication.
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it would be hard to develop the math required to make computers possible without written language. that said, depending on how you define computers, nature was able to create computers capable of playing games, and depending on how you define games, nature might also have designed games for those computers to play. eat and drink a minimum amount of certain items in a given time to keep playing, produce the maximum number of offspring during your play time for extra points.
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What I would find impressive is video games without written language.
Very early games were nothing but text, looking at you Infocom! I wonder how games would have gone if we only ever had verbal communication.
it would require a completely different standard of computing than we have now. EVERYTHING we do with computers involves, ultimately, the input of text, whether at the coding level or the input level.
A non-written computer would have to have some very interesting ways to do it differently.
anyway, without written language, how would we store up the knowledge of the technology required to make a computer?
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I think trade would simply be more pre-determined and written directly into the story. It would be "I'll give you this thing if you can get me that thing". If you don't have that thing, then you have to get it or deal with the person who has what you want in some other fashion. Trade doesn't necessarily have to involve merchant npcs or large selections of stuff.
Even if it's an open world type game without much pre-written, I can easily imagine the same thing. You determine what you need, encounter npc who has what you need, and npc tells you what they need in return. So you decide you want to upgrade from iron armor to steel armor. Let's say you meet an ex-soldier, a recent deserter who is laying low on his own in the wild for a while. He's starving and his armor isn't doing him much good. He needs food and/or survival gear. He'll give you his armor if you can get him X amount of food and some hunting gear. Instead of shopping being a very dry meta-interaction, it's now a minor story-driving element, especially if it's recognized that the value of an item is subjective to a character's circumstances rather than tied to a hidden meta-value rating.
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I don't think we'd have videogames.
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Like Criptfeind said, currency is such a natural thing.
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat
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it is. even in bartering systems, currencies occur naturally, people start to hoard small, valuable, non-perishable items that they don't necessary need, so that they can preserve\carry the value of items that cannot be preserved\carried. picture you and your tribe just killed a mammoth and have more meat than you can eat before it rots, you'll probably try and trade it with the first tribe that shows up even if they don't have anything that interests you, hoarding items of equivalent value for later trades. those items might be large and cumbersome when you're travelling from one place to another, so you might also trade them for a number of arrowheads or pretty stones or shells of equivalent value, or any number of small items that might interest anyone that you come across. there you go, you've invented currency... only it was there all along!
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it is. even in bartering systems, currencies occur naturally, people start to hoard small, valuable, non-perishable items that they don't necessary need, so that they can preserve\carry the value of items that cannot be preserved\carried. picture you and your tribe just killed a mammoth and have more meat than you can eat before it rots, you'll probably try and trade it with the first tribe that shows up even if they don't have anything that interests you, hoarding items of equivalent value for later trades. those items might be large and cumbersome when you're travelling from one place to another, so you might also trade them for a number of arrowheads or pretty stones or shells of equivalent value, or any number of small items that might interest anyone that you come across. there you go, you've invented currency... only it was there all along!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inca_Empire#Economy
Or it just got wiped out by Europeans.
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there's relatively little trading in a centrally planned economy, so there's neither widespread currency nor bartering. your link mentions axe-monies, so there was an established currency in the parts of the empire where it was justified
E:i'm also willing to bet that other commodity monies were also used in other parts of the empire, possibly informally, and we just failed to recognise them as such
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Children of the Nile is a video game which is set in a real-life environment, where barter is used. That is not an RPG, though.
Keeping a tab at the shops of various sellers is the first refinement of the barter system. In that system, each shop accepts any goods of worth that I happen to have. In return, I get whatever goods that shop keeps in stock. Then the shopkeeper has to figure out how to convert metal scraps into flour, for example. Possibly he can trade the dented armor to the blacksmith for knives. Lots of people would probably accept knives as trade goods.
The next step is paying for goods at the above shop with credit chits from the blacksmith, obtained by dropping off the metal bits at that place. Now we have currency, issued by every shop, or at least by major shops. Then it becomes currency issued by the local ruler, to consolidate the value of it and incidentally make taxes easier to assess and collect.
Now we have modern times, and our trade is carried out using a mix of issued currency, credit chits issued by banks (checking), and tabs kept also at banks, and sometimes at shops (credit cards). We've progressed almost back to before currency again by not needing to carry individual items to represent our buying power, but the concept of relative values is still there. It always was. One mammoth steak was always worth two frozen yucca roots, or whatever.
Which is to say that we always have some kind of numerical valuation in mind even if we don't specifically assign numbers to everything before we trade. The kid who trades his peanut butter sandwich for a pickle doesn't assign explicit numbers to the two items, he just knows that he wants that pickle more than he wants the sandwich. I think that would be a weird trade, but then I'm not that fond of pickles as compared to peanut butter. *laugh*
So, it should be possible to write an RPG with nothing but the purest barter visible to the player, even though the game must make numerical valuations in order to present the proper choices. Bandits would be stealing anything of value, not just gear. They would not attack people who are better armed than themselves, for the given reason that they would die, but they could prey on weaker victims. Knives, leather boots, personal jewelry, and anything else that could be bartered would be fair game for them. There would not be the concentrated value of leather pouches of coins, so probably cutpurses would not flourish, but a dead body can always be stripped of everything and provide some kind of loot.
Edit: I seem to recall that some communities in the United States have attempted to re-establish barter in an attempt to circumvent paying taxes of all types. I'm not sure where, but for some reason I think it was in New England. People were getting "paid" in barter points and trading those in to local shops, who in turn "paid" their bills back to the companies who had hired their customers as workers. I can't remember how well it worked, or if the goverment(s) figured out a way to tax them regardless, but I'm not betting against the government's persistance on that issue.
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there's relatively little trading in a centrally planned economy, so there's neither widespread currency nor bartering. your link mentions axe-monies, so there was an established currency in the parts of the empire where it was justified
They used the currency to trade with outsiders who would accept nothing but currency. Their society was entirely without money.
A video game in a currency free world would probably be more interesting than what we have now; you do something for me, I do something for you as opposed to you do something for me, acquire currency.
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I'm kinda impressed by myself. We've just broken into the second page and there's been discussion not only of the original topic, but of how "natural" it is to develop currency and computers without written language.
Anyways...I think that I really don't have much to add, except skepticism about if currency really is such a "logical" thing to develop. To address some concerns brought up early on:
I understand that a society with video games but no currency is improbable. The level of sophistication required for computing is much more difficult to reach without something that's a standard of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value, and that such a concept would be come upon much more easily than computers. I also understand that a society without currency would be harder-pressed to develop many people who had disposeable income (or even the concept of disposeable income) to spend on video games.
Ignore all that for a sec and enjoy an interesting thought experiment.
I'm kind of interested that some people think that the numbers required for video games would lead to the concept of money. I'm not sure if it's true, but it's a neat idea.
A lot of people seem to agree with the hypothesis that a sort of "tier system" of item value would be used (e.g, a flaming sword is worth less than a diamond chalice but more than a steel axe), or a more story-based idea of exchange would occur, if trade even existed in those games. Assuming the tier system for a moment, how would such a system allow one to purchase, say, multiple Light Healing Potions by giving the shopkeep a single diamond chalice?
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We've yet to get a game that handles even a currency-based economy well. I'd recommend Patrician for a decent currency-based trading sim, but honestly, how many other games have even tried a dynamic economy, beyond arbitrarily fixing the iron sword at 100g and the steel sword at 200g?
What's necesssary for a barter-based trading game is, unsurprisingly enough, what's also necessary for a currency-based trading game. Coins and bills were just barter by other means, as Askot describes, up until governments began making them irredeemable for gold. And that happened only a few decades ago.
You would have to know the rate at which something can be produced, and how much of it each game entity needs. That's actually pretty hard. Patrician does try to do it, though.
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I'm kind of interested that some people think that the numbers required for video games would lead to the concept of money. I'm not sure if it's true, but it's a neat idea.
Not that directly. The point is that assigning values to items is the easiest way to make a game's trade system. You wouldn't need to trade coins in this system, but you'd have to trade something like three knives and a leather boot, regardless of the other's desire for each, so it's not really different from currency. Currency is just a logical step.
Assuming the tier system for a moment, how would such a system allow one to purchase, say, multiple Light Healing Potions by giving the shopkeep a single diamond chalice?
It can't. The only way is the one I suggested, which is very messy, computationally intensive, and subjective. Some keepers on some days might give three potions for a chalice, some might give ten, some might only give one or refuse the trade altogether because they don't have use for a chalice and can thus get better items from someone else wanting to trade for the potions.
This is where assigning value is at least useful, if not necessary.
I'd recommend Patrician for a decent currency-based trading sim, how many other games have even tried a dynamic economy, beyond arbitrarily fixing the iron sword at 100g and the steel sword at 200g?
I think there's a mod for Oblivion that does something dynamic, but it's not very good/full/realistic.
Doesn't Mount and Blade have a dynamic economy?
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They used the currency to trade with outsiders who would accept nothing but currency. Their society was entirely without money.
yes, but i'd guess that that's because their society was almost without interpersonal trade. the bulk of the resources and status was centrally distributed and managed, and what evaded government control probably didn't require a a very complex trade system, but i'd still imagine some portable commodities would fill in the role of money whenever needed. money wasn't invented, it's a natural consequence of systematic trade. if you can expect to be able to trade items for others, you'll automatically hoard items that you don't immediately need for the purpose of trading them later
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They used the currency to trade with outsiders who would accept nothing but currency. Their society was entirely without money.
yes, but i'd guess that that's because their society was almost without interpersonal trade.
Yes because they didn't use money. Ta da!
Very much a human construct. Not natural.
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i don't disagree that trade is a human construct, i postulate that money is a natural consequence of trade. this is "barter world", not "centrally planned economy world", trade is implied to be a thing in this hypothetical universe.
also, before they were an empire with centrally planned economy... they weren't. so trade and commodity currencies might have been abolished or made obsolete some before, making the lack of trade the unnatural thing, not money.
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The thing is, people have been looking for a society for decades that has a real barter economy, and it just doesn't exist. If they trade, they generally have currency.
Note that the currency doesn't have to be physical; it's just a unit of account. The famed islanders of Yap, for example, use those giant stone rings; but they don't actually move them around. Rather, everyone knows everyone else, or just about, so it's not the stone that moves around but who owns the stone.
Or, take medieval Wales. Medieval Wales, like most medieval states, had almost no actual currency floating around. Still, there are medieval Welsh lawbooks detailing exact values for everything in a home, from pans to floorboards- not so that they could be bought with money, which almost nobody had, but rather so that you could get exact restitution for them if they were stolen or destroyed. Even in a world without physical currency, there will still be currency!
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i don't disagree that trade is a human construct, i postulate that money is a natural consequence of trade. this is "barter world", not "centrally planned economy world", trade is implied to be a thing in this hypothetical universe.
also, before they were an empire with centrally planned economy... they weren't. so trade and commodity currencies might have been abolished or made obsolete some before, making the lack of trade the unnatural thing, not money.
Or maybe currency didn't exist there in the first place?
The thing is, people have been looking for a society for decades that has a real barter economy, and it just doesn't exist. If they trade, they generally have currency.
Note that the currency doesn't have to be physical; it's just a unit of account. The famed islanders of Yap, for example, use those giant stone rings; but they don't actually move them around. Rather, everyone knows everyone else, or just about, so it's not the stone that moves around but who owns the stone.
Or, take medieval Wales. Medieval Wales, like most medieval states, had almost no actual currency floating around. Still, there are medieval Welsh lawbooks detailing exact values for everything in a home, from pans to floorboards- not so that they could be bought with money, which almost nobody had, but rather so that you could get exact restitution for them if they were stolen or destroyed. Even in a world without physical currency, there will still be currency!
Trade came before currency. Trade does not imply currency. If I give a friend a book or something in exchange for, um...something else, I don't need to be considering the monetary values of each. I just trade. You don't need currency for trade any more than you need language for a brain.
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The thing is, people have been looking for a society for decades that has a real barter economy, and it just doesn't exist. If they trade, they generally have currency.
Note that the currency doesn't have to be physical; it's just a unit of account. The famed islanders of Yap, for example, use those giant stone rings; but they don't actually move them around. Rather, everyone knows everyone else, or just about, so it's not the stone that moves around but who owns the stone.
Or, take medieval Wales. Medieval Wales, like most medieval states, had almost no actual currency floating around. Still, there are medieval Welsh lawbooks detailing exact values for everything in a home, from pans to floorboards- not so that they could be bought with money, which almost nobody had, but rather so that you could get exact restitution for them if they were stolen or destroyed. Even in a world without physical currency, there will still be currency!
i don't know about that, bartering definitely happens, even in modern western society. just today, my mom traded a bunch of power tools with a neighbour in exchange for a remodelling service on our kitchen
Trade came before currency.
yes. probably by a few hours, maybe by a couple generations. actually, i retract that. will post why after the inevitable ninjas
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yes. probably by a few hours, maybe by a couple generations.
Or 1100 years.
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yes. probably by a few hours, maybe by a couple generations. actually, i retract that. will post why after the inevitable ninjas
early hunter gatherer societies probably didn't engage in much trade, hunter gatherer clans seldom encountered each other, and probably wouldn't keep items for the explicit purpose of trade. once trade became a regular activity, and clans could expect to trade and started to plan it beforehand, commodity currency became a thing.
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yes. probably by a few hours, maybe by a couple generations. actually, i retract that. will post why after the inevitable ninjas
early hunter gatherer societies probably didn't engage in much trade, hunter gatherer clans seldom encountered each other, and probably wouldn't keep items for the explicit purpose of trade. once trade became a regular activity, and clans could expect to trade and started to plan it beforehand, commodity currency became a thing.
And even when farming was a thing, most subsistence farmers never used currency nor did they when they started farming more than what they needed - they payed in crop.
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crop was a formal currency in many early market societies
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crop was a currency in many early market societies
noun (plural currencies)
A system of money in general use in a particular country:
the dollar was a strong currency
Definition of money
noun
[mass noun]
A current medium of exchange in the form of coins and banknotes; coins and banknotes collectively:
I counted the money before putting it in my wallet
he borrowed money to modernize the shop
No, not really.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_money
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This isn't about video games which exist in a world that works only on barter; those could presumably work like trade in DF's Fortress Mode would. This is about a hypothetical world in which people (for the sake of the argument, let's say humans, although it shouldn't matter) have ascended to roughly our level of technology without developing even the concept of currency.
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that's the op. what about it?
i'm defending the notion that currency arises naturally in a trade system... maybe we've derailed this a bit
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Currency has three characteristics that it needs, to be a currency:
1--It must be a unit of account (e.g, a measure you use to compare prices)
2--It must be a store of value (e.g, a way to store money for a while)
3--It must be a standard of exchange (e.g, something anyone will accept)
That's a bit simplified, but you get the idea.
Crops can usually be given good units of account, but not always (not all apples are equal, for instance). They are (almost) never a good store of value. They are consistently a good standard of exchange, but only because people need to keep eating them, which violates the idea of a standard of exchange (e.g, Alice accepts Bob's $5 bill because Alice knows Charlie will accept it).
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So we have a few options, I think.
It could be a world with some form of easily harvested, highly concentrated energy in abundance that made for really easy technology advance without much specialization. Wouldn't need much sophistication to make modern things happen. Just brute force energy.
It could be a culture that has maintained from its beginnings a high degree of mutualism. People don't trade so much as give freely to anyone who needs something, with the expectation that they'll do the same in return later. Things aren't assigned value in the sense that they are now. If somebody needs something and you are able to share, you do.
It could be a people that never spread out after they came into being. A race who formed one tribe that never splintered and advanced together as one unit with a centrally planned economy, so that there was never trade. Could be some form of hive creature. Could be a very intelligent race that was created artificially and kept confined in a limited space, but otherwise left to do its own thing... like an entire species stuck in a sort of ant farm/Truman Show scenario.
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So we have a few options, I think.
It could be a world with some form of easily harvested, highly concentrated energy in abundance that made for really easy technology advance without much specialization. Wouldn't need much sophistication to make modern things happen. Just brute force energy.
It could be a culture that has maintained from its beginnings a high degree of mutualism. People don't trade so much as give freely to anyone who needs something, with the expectation that they'll do the same in return later. Things aren't assigned value in the sense that they are now. If somebody needs something and you are able to share, you do.
It could be a people that never spread out after they came into being. A race who formed one tribe that never splintered and advanced together as one unit with a centrally planned economy, so that there was never trade. Could be some form of hive creature. Could be a very intelligent race that was created artificially and kept confined in a limited space, but otherwise left to do its own thing... like an entire species stuck in a sort of ant farm/Truman Show scenario.
Why not all three, to improve the chances of it happening?
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Okay, now can we get back to the video games, or have we exhausted our ideas on that front?
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I'm trying to come up with plot settings that could be used in a video game that would meet the still-developing criteria :P My last post was developed under the assumption that advanced trade is necessary for a society with specialized roles and thus technology, and that currency is a natural feature of trade. And the OP dictates that the setting in this video game must not even have developed the concept of currency. So I've proposed three situations where that might be possible.
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Currency is so easy, even a monkey (http://www.zmescience.com/research/how-scientists-tught-monkeys-the-concept-of-money-not-long-after-the-first-prostitute-monkey-appeared/) can do it.
I think there's a mod for Oblivion that does something dynamic, but it's not very good/full/realistic.
Doesn't Mount and Blade have a dynamic economy?
I dove into the module script once to check out the M&B economy, and I recall it was just disappointing window dressing. Probably a little better than the Living Economy mod for Oblivion, but not too much.
Or maybe currency didn't exist there in the first place?
Let's keep in mind that the source for pre-Conquest Incan civilization is probably Juan de Betanzos (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_de_Betanzos). Nothing wrong with that, except he was a Spanish man who married the Incan princess Dona Angelina, who was 10 years old when the Empire fell. What you're getting is the tale of an Incan princess who knew the systems of the Incan empire as one of the elite, not a grubby commoner. If it seems to work like a flawlessly planned central economy without trade or barter, that's why. Princesses rarely need trade or barter.
i'm defending the notion that currency arises naturally in a trade system...
I, for one, am convinced.
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It could be a culture that has maintained from its beginnings a high degree of mutualism. People don't trade so much as give freely to anyone who needs something, with the expectation that they'll do the same in return later. Things aren't assigned value in the sense that they are now. If somebody needs something and you are able to share, you do.
Wow, this is a strange thing. Fun to imagine. Would a free-range adventurer be accepted in this society? Kind of a sinkhole for resources, considering they'll probably die and not give much back. I suppose once you give things to a community they might accept you. Potentially interesting system for a game.
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It could be a culture that has maintained from its beginnings a high degree of mutualism. People don't trade so much as give freely to anyone who needs something, with the expectation that they'll do the same in return later. Things aren't assigned value in the sense that they are now. If somebody needs something and you are able to share, you do.
Wow, this is a strange thing. Fun to imagine. Would a free-range adventurer be accepted in this society? Kind of a sinkhole for resources, considering they'll probably die and not give much back. I suppose once you give things to a community they might accept you. Potentially interesting system for a game.
I think he was talking about a culture that wouldn't get currency...but that could be a neat idea for a game...until the player abuses the people, of course...
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It could be a culture that has maintained from its beginnings a high degree of mutualism. People don't trade so much as give freely to anyone who needs something, with the expectation that they'll do the same in return later. Things aren't assigned value in the sense that they are now. If somebody needs something and you are able to share, you do.
Wow, this is a strange thing. Fun to imagine. Would a free-range adventurer be accepted in this society? Kind of a sinkhole for resources, considering they'll probably die and not give much back. I suppose once you give things to a community they might accept you. Potentially interesting system for a game.
I think he was talking about a culture that wouldn't get currency...but that could be a neat idea for a game...until the player abuses the people, of course...
The idea behind an adventurer in this society is they bring unique contributions. They're a gamble for the community, but one with potentially large payoffs. This type of community deals with greedy non-contributors by shunning. People who refuse to share get cut off from the sharing economy, and are essentially on their own until they come back with a different attitude.
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Currency is so easy, even a monkey (http://www.zmescience.com/research/how-scientists-tught-monkeys-the-concept-of-money-not-long-after-the-first-prostitute-monkey-appeared/) can do it.
Didn't yet have time to read the whole study, but that is some interesting stuff. I wonder how long it would take for us to teach monkeys concepts of work and wage? How fast we could teach them some system of law, where they punish criminals themselves? How long it would take them to adapt to human-like society, if we slowly introduced more and more complex concepts and ideas?
I'm waiting for our monkey overlords.
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I don't think currency can't NOT develop from barter. There's some games where the player base decided (without vote, just like that) for a common item/service that sorts of become the currency. But there's the influence of the real world currency.
Anyway, I think it would be interesting to consider video games in a world without even barter. Or even just how the society works.
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You kind of have to figure out how the society works in order to base a video game on it. That's why the discussion has gone this way.
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My suggestion would be to have a really fragmented power structure and a city-state kind of environment. Different cities would probably produce their own currencies, but ultimately these wouldn't carry much value outside of the city, and maybe not even much inside if the city's leaders aren't trusted. Under such conditions it might make sense for people to prefer accepting goods over currency in many cases, and to some degree the different kinds of currency could be part of the bartering system.
To avoid making it so there's effectively an "invisible currency" dictating all items values you'd probably want to make it so that goods are valued differently in different places, and make moving between these places an arduous and dangerous task (having such a dangerous world might explain why it's so hard for any one state to gain too much power) to help justify this. You could also have fluctuations and stuff based on in-world events.
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Well, some games have no kind of economy at all. I guess they could be universal. Of course, there is always values in our games, but that's because of our visual and binary systems.
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i'm defending the notion that currency arises naturally in a trade system... maybe we've derailed this a bit
Currency =/= Crop
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All I want to know is what the hell would Mario be picking up for extra lives in this case.
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All I want to know is what the hell would Mario be picking up for extra lives in this case.
Golden goats, obviously.
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Well jewellery is a really popular commodity currency, it's light, it's common, and you can wear it around to keep it safe/show off your wealth. So I suppose he could run around collect necklaces and such, though collecting rings might be a bit of an issue if you don't make him blue and really good at rolling around at high speeds.
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i'm defending the notion that currency arises naturally in a trade system... maybe we've derailed this a bit
Currency =/= Crop
i'm kinda tired of this discussion, i'm just going to list some crops from the top of my head that were used as standard currency
barley grains, rice grains, pepper grains, tea leaves, and coca leaves. i probably left out some. these were formal forms of currency that were used over wide areas for centuries. there were others that were used informally over smaller regions and for much shorter periods of time, but most anything could have been used as such
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i'm defending the notion that currency arises naturally in a trade system... maybe we've derailed this a bit
Currency =/= Crop
i'm kinda tired of this discussion, i'm just going to list some crops from the top of my head that were used as standard currency
barley grains, rice grains, pepper grains, tea leaves, and coca leaves. i probably left out some. these were formal forms of currency that were used over wide areas for centuries. there were others that were used informally over smaller regions and for much shorter periods of time, but most anything could have been used as such
*Used as commodities in trading, not currencies.
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i'm defending the notion that currency arises naturally in a trade system... maybe we've derailed this a bit
Currency =/= Crop
i'm kinda tired of this discussion, i'm just going to list some crops from the top of my head that were used as standard currency
barley grains, rice grains, pepper grains, tea leaves, and coca leaves. i probably left out some. these were formal forms of currency that were used over wide areas for centuries. there were others that were used informally over smaller regions and for much shorter periods of time, but most anything could have been used as such
*Used as commodities in trading, not currencies.
If they were used as intermediaries, then they were effectively currency.
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i'm defending the notion that currency arises naturally in a trade system... maybe we've derailed this a bit
Currency =/= Crop
i'm kinda tired of this discussion, i'm just going to list some crops from the top of my head that were used as standard currency
barley grains, rice grains, pepper grains, tea leaves, and coca leaves. i probably left out some. these were formal forms of currency that were used over wide areas for centuries. there were others that were used informally over smaller regions and for much shorter periods of time, but most anything could have been used as such
*Used as commodities in trading, not currencies.
no. used as standard currency.
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If they were used as intermediaries, then they were effectively currency.
Then as a purpose of discussion it becomes moot; if you define anything that is held to value and used in trading to define currency - despite most forms of currency being of no inherent value, then you're arguing for video games in a barter world without trade. Which isn't terribly imaginative.
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I've played quite a few video games without a true formal currency. Even without such a currency, the natural behaviors of human beings in a barter economy would lead to the creation of a de facto currency.
In a barter economy, you judge how much an item is worth by how much you want it, how much other people want it, and how easily you could find a buyer for it. Assuming there exists some universally demanded item that moves quickly, that would quickly assume the role of currency.
If you look at trading card games for the iOS such as Rage of Bahamut, trade value is measured in small discrete units like healing items that restore stamina or battle power. Even though the economy may contain such disparate items such as cards, items, and other resources, something in nearly universal demand like the aforementioned healing items naturally becomes a standard unit of value against which all goods can be compared.
A video game economy generally avoids a lot of problems that real world economies have that facilitate barter, like the difficulty of enforcing contracts, trade goods that expire, or difficulties in transport. I daresay these factors would lead to the development of an in-game monetary economy along the lines I described above.
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You kind of have to figure out how the society works in order to base a video game on it. That's why the discussion has gone this way.
True. And hey--if the thread promotes interesting discussion, it's done its job.
Well jewellery is a really popular commodity currency, it's light, it's common, and you can wear it around to keep it safe/show off your wealth. So I suppose he could run around collect necklaces and such, though collecting rings might be a bit of an issue if you don't make him blue and really good at rolling around at high speeds.
Jewelry isn't a commodity. Not every necklace is worth the same; not every pearl necklace is worth the same; etc. There are too many differences between examples of jewelry for that to work. It's a good store of value, and in certain circumstances a decent medium of exchange, but a worthless unit of account.
i'm defending the notion that currency arises naturally in a trade system... maybe we've derailed this a bit
Currency =/= Crop
i'm kinda tired of this discussion, i'm just going to list some crops from the top of my head that were used as standard currency
barley grains, rice grains, pepper grains, tea leaves, and coca leaves. i probably left out some. these were formal forms of currency that were used over wide areas for centuries. there were others that were used informally over smaller regions and for much shorter periods of time, but most anything could have been used as such
*Used as commodities in trading, not currencies.
no. used as standard currency.
I don't think it fits the accepted definition of currency, and crops certainly don't work very well. Terrible store of value, often a poor unit of account (although those you mentioned function better as it), and you need to eat it to survive.
I've played quite a few video games without a true formal currency. Even without such a currency, the natural behaviors of human beings in a barter economy would lead to the creation of a de facto currency.
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Two things. One, doesn't Rage of Bahamut have a "currency"? I uninstalled it a while ago, but I seem to recall something along those lines...
Two, this is about a world without currency, making video games.
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Due to limitations on its use, few people use the "rupees" (gold equivalent) in rage of bahamut as currency. It behaves more like monster experience than actual money.
I have described why natural human behaviors in a video game simulation might overcome the barriers that prevent a currency system from evolving in the real world otherwise.
That said, one of the problems with this discussion is a poor definition of how a sophisticated barter economy might exist for a long time without developing the characteristics of a money economy. In the real world, the more volume of trade in a barter economy, the more it will resemble a money economy as merchants develop new financial instruments or practices to facilitate trade. Even if the real world used a barter economy due to not possessing the ability to support a money economy, a video game with a large volume of trade would cause a currency system to naturally develop.
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Well jewellery is a really popular commodity currency, it's light, it's common, and you can wear it around to keep it safe/show off your wealth. So I suppose he could run around collect necklaces and such, though collecting rings might be a bit of an issue if you don't make him blue and really good at rolling around at high speeds.
Jewelry isn't a commodity. Not every necklace is worth the same; not every pearl necklace is worth the same; etc. There are too many differences between examples of jewelry for that to work. It's a good store of value, and in certain circumstances a decent medium of exchange, but a worthless unit of account.
Not commodity, just money then? Or trade medium?
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Well jewellery is a really popular commodity currency, it's light, it's common, and you can wear it around to keep it safe/show off your wealth. So I suppose he could run around collect necklaces and such, though collecting rings might be a bit of an issue if you don't make him blue and really good at rolling around at high speeds.
Jewelry isn't a commodity. Not every necklace is worth the same; not every pearl necklace is worth the same; etc. There are too many differences between examples of jewelry for that to work. It's a good store of value, and in certain circumstances a decent medium of exchange, but a worthless unit of account.
Not commodity, just money then? Or trade medium?
Money doesn't work if it's a craptastic unit of account. I can't say that my Masterwork Club is worth two necklaces, because some necklaces are worth more than others. However, I can say that my Handmade Robust Walking Stick is worth two dollars because every dollar is the same.
Jewelry and the like are okay trade items, but terrible currency.
[/spoiler]
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I think the argument that video games would create currency, because you have to assign a value to each item and eventually that value would be the currency, is backwards.
It actually points out a flaw in many "barter" based games: each item has a set price. You try to meet that price with other items that also have a set price, until you come as close as possible (if the game doesn't allow you to get more for your value), but in the end, in the game that fur cloak is worth 1.21 jigowatts.
I don't think that's how barter works (worked) in the real world. Who's to say that a cow is worth 2 sheep? Maybe the guy that raises cows will give you one cow in exchange of one sheep (he already has enough cows, but wants more sheeps), and someone will give you a sheep in exchange of your pencil (they really need another pencil more than they need an extra sheep).
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that is true, but even if you program an advanced ai specifically for barter trading, you'd have too quantify one or more values for the items. some items are more useful than others, and some require much more effort to produce\acquire. these values might be variable, the same item might be more useful for some people than others, and some people might have an easier time acquiring some items, and that's why a number of dollars, despite being a much better money than necklaces, still fail to accurately and absolutely translate into the value of another item, but for the purpose of a programmed trade system there would need to be a form of quantifying value even if that value fluctuated wildly. it would certainly establish the notion of unit of value if there wasn't one before, though it could also highlight the ineffectiveness of a standardized currency unit
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You're still assuming everything has a value that applies to everyone. I didn't say anything about fluctuating prices over time, but that value is entirely subjective. While a farmer will want one pencil and be willing to trade two cows for it, another may want 5 pencils for one cow.
If it was dollars, then in a barter economy, everything would be worth $1, and there would be a HUGE multiplier based on bartering skill (as much as 0.1x to 10x or whatever you want), current needs of the individual, etc. Raw "Bulk" items would probably need to be packed in certain amounts (so, i'm not going to trade you a single ear of corn, but maybe a sack, or bushel or whatever thing those things get packed into). Everything else (specially manufactured stuff) is fair game.
Again, if you were making the game you'd base the "AI" in some form of currency, but people who don't know about currency may have an entirely different heuristic in mind (pun? :P) when they program it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomad_(video_game)
In this game, everything is worth the same. One missile, one upgrade, one "unit" of goods. You meet an alien and always trade 1 for 1. They'll just say if they're interested or not.
Maybe too simplistic to be practical (only way to get new items is to somehow "produce" them from the wrecks of your dead enemies).
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You guys are operating under the assumption that trade must be procedurally generated. It gets really easy if the circumstantial needs of NPCs are pre-written. If a game is simply trying to tell a story, it's easy to write into that story exactly what X npc wants for Y item, as in the military deserter example I offered previously. This can even take place in an open world environment. That NPC could easily be someone you meet while wandering the landscape in a game like Skyrim, where most NPC interactions are pre-written, despite being a game that tries to feel very open-ended.
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I didn't say anything about procedurally generated. Of course I was including the possibility of having a set number of "merchants" wanting specific stuff and having a completely arbitrary "price" for them. Or basically everyone in a CRPG.
Anyway:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_War_2:_Edge_of_Chaos
There's another game where things don't have "prices". Don't know if the game internally manages a numeric value for things, but you don't sell or buy much as reply in a message board to some who wants "50 tons of textiles" and wants to pay "10 sidethruster missiles" for them.
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My suggestion would be to have a really fragmented power structure and a city-state kind of environment. Different cities would probably produce their own currencies, but ultimately these wouldn't carry much value outside of the city, and maybe not even much inside if the city's leaders aren't trusted. Under such conditions it might make sense for people to prefer accepting goods over currency in many cases, and to some degree the different kinds of currency could be part of the bartering system.
To avoid making it so there's effectively an "invisible currency" dictating all items values you'd probably want to make it so that goods are valued differently in different places, and make moving between these places an arduous and dangerous task (having such a dangerous world might explain why it's so hard for any one state to gain too much power) to help justify this. You could also have fluctuations and stuff based on in-world events.
Basically this...
Barter System, worth of items is based on how much the person you are trading it to wants it... and what they have to trade for it in return.
Actual merchant/trader would likely offer less then a direct client and the the direct client would probably expect to offer less to you then they would the merchant/trader.
Throw in a random variable, based on regional worth for all characters that trade for wants/needs/haves. Realistically, you'll end up saturating the market with fur/low grade armor if it is a Barter World Bethseda game. Also, I would wager that the 'economics/trading' grind would be replaced by something else in video games, making 'buying/selling' stuff not really important except for the occasional upgrades and 'extras'.
I guess more reliance on the Quest based model... do this or get that for me and I'll give you X.
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I don't think that's how barter works (worked) in the real world.
That sort of argument could be applied to all sorts of things such as Health Points, Stat Points, score in general, extra lives, and pretty much everything that a game quantifies that real life does not. Programming, by its very nature, tends to put numbers to things.
And it works. Just because something is realistic doesn't always make it fun. Would Super Mario be any fun if his jump height was realistic?
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I don't think that's how barter works (worked) in the real world.
That sort of argument could be applied to all sorts of things such as Health Points, Stat Points, score in general, extra lives, and pretty much everything that a game quantifies that real life does not. Programming, by its very nature, tends to put numbers to things.
And it works. Just because something is realistic doesn't always make it fun. Would Super Mario be any fun if his jump height was realistic?
Yes, but the argument is how "Real Life People" from an alternate world with no currency (who probably never invented the concept) would come up with a game.
Not how we, who have a currency, would come up with a game with Barter using numbers and an invisible currency.