Terra Nova

Valve Economist on EconTalk

Economist Russ Roberts runs EconTalk, a rather cool series of podcasts on edgy topics in economics. These are the guys who brought you the Keynesian-Monetarist rap debate. What's not to love? Well, they've got a great interview with Valve's economist Yanis Varoufakis.

It's important for non-specialists to be aware that Econ is having problems right now. Different people point to different issues, and they point in different ways forward. From my brief interactions with Dr. Varoufakis, I'm convinced that he's pointing in a good direction and is very much worth listening to. Perhaps the most exciting thing about him is his career choice. At Valve, he can do economic science however he wishes. I can almost guarantee that good stuff will result.

Now, how to get Valve to tell the rest of us about it....?

Fun with mapping

Holy smokes, but someone did a real Mapping test using SimCity and his hometown's traffic. It's not exactly rigid science, but this is the sort of application I've been hoping to see since writing this thing.

Virtual sports offer better betting

As you may know, football (soccer, not handegg) is broken. The game as designed is strategically light (not enough scoring, too much luck - from a Euro game? How odd) and it has fallen victim to two unrelated forms of corruption, the unelected-international-body corruption that plagues the Olympics and the UN, and the big-money corruption that plagues US college sport and politics. Football would have doping scandals too, but FIFA is only just now getting around to it.

Who in their right mind would wager money on professional football? It's like betting on the outcome of a novel. 

No matter. If real sports are broken, virtual sports can be pure. Head on over to Ladbroke's to bet on Virtual World Cup 2010. It runs anew every 20 minutes. Don't wait years, only to experience such execrable moments as this and this. You can encounter the beautiful game right now, in a way that somewhat lives up to its name - if only in virtual form.

Question: Why is 3rd Party RMT Evil?

Tom Mason blogs at the Nosy Gamer and is intrigued by CCP's ongoing efforts to combat botting and 3rd party RMT. It does seem strange, given CCP's libertarian philosophy, they they would actively resist trade in these limited cases.

Years ago I wrote a model that treated botting and farming as a pollution effect. Using hypothetical numbers, I showed that these things can be very costly to ordinary gamers; their fun is degraded. Tom asked me to reconsider and possibly update the analysis. His questions and my responses are below the fold. 

Amazon launches virtual currency

Larry Dignan at ZDnet reports on Amazon's new money. The company sells everything, but the Amazon Coin will initially be used only for apps in the company's Kindle Fire platform. Still, if they build the currency, they can use it for anything else that they do. That means, the only reason you cannot use the Amazon Coin to buy this Batman Apron, this pumice stone, or this wood chipper is because Amazon has decided against it. For now.