{"id":3445,"date":"2017-12-30T08:36:54","date_gmt":"2017-12-30T14:36:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/handyvandal.com\/?p=3445"},"modified":"2017-12-30T08:37:15","modified_gmt":"2017-12-30T14:37:15","slug":"the-internal-economics-of-a-popular-minecraft-server","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/2017\/12\/the-internal-economics-of-a-popular-minecraft-server\/","title":{"rendered":"The internal economics of a popular Minecraft server"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AliceAlice Maz writes<\/a> about how she mastered the economics of Minecraft:<\/p>\n

I started on my server with only a rudimentary knowledge of the game itself and ipso facto zero understanding of its economy. Within six months or so, I had perhaps as detailed a mental model of it as one could get. I knew the price ranges of most of the items in the game and everything that all of them were used for. I knew how common they were on the market, who the major sellers were, what their supply chains looked like. I knew how fast they sold through, whether the price was stable or tacking a certain way, and I had tons of theories on ways to play all this to get what I needed and turn a profit while doing it, and nearly all of them were sound. Most of it I didn’t even think about. I didn’t need to contemplate why, for instance, lumber was both cheaper and more common than it should be, such that I could buy it all and hold, force the price up, corner the market, and keep it that way. I just kind of… knew, and did it. It’s a wonderful feeling, weaving a system into your mind so tight that it’s hard to find the stitches after awhile. Highly recommended.<\/p>\n

[minecraft<\/a>]\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Via Boing Boing<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Alice Maz was part of a small group of players who came to have near-total mastery over the internal economy of a popular Minecraft; Maz describes how her early fascination with the mechanics of complex multiplayer games carried over into an interest in economics and games, and that let her become a virtuoso player, and brilliant thinker, about games and economics.<\/p>\n

Maz’s long, fascinating essay about her business ventures in Minecraft are a potted lesson in economics, one that shows where financial engineering actually does something useful (providing liquidity, matching supply and demand) and the places where it becomes nothing more than a predatory drag on the “real economy” of people making amazing things in Minecraft.<\/p>\n

[The internal economics of a popular Minecraft server are an object lesson in everything great and terrible about markets<\/a>]\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alice Maz writes about how she mastered the economics of Minecraft: I started on my server with only a rudimentary knowledge of the game itself and ipso facto zero understanding of its economy. Within six months or so, I had perhaps as detailed a mental model of it as one could get. I knew the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,219,238],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-massive-multiplayer-online","category-minecraft","category-virtual-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3445"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3449,"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3445\/revisions\/3449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}