The problem is that people enjoy starting from scratch and building up - how do you generate player interest in joining an endgame scenario?
Another problem is that, if you run a simulation from scratch and then at the end of the game the exponential growth makes the whole thing crash, people will complain that the game is not well tuned for playability. Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith
So as long as you're up-front about what you're doing, it seems to be possible to violate some of the usual genre conventions and still get something that works. I think the key here is to be very explicit that half the challenge of building an empire in this game is to make sure that there's something left to rule when you're done building your mega-corporation and grinding all the others into dust.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
Let's all be libertarians! Fine.
Now watch as the world drives off a cliff.
Keep a historical record of previous incarnations. It would be educational - and also interesting in that most sims to date seem to be a-historical, which makes them culturally atypical.
My idea isn't to model specific examples or to create another Second Life - there are plenty of faux economies out there already.
It's more about creating another media channel which gets a practical progressive message to a potentially receptive audience, bypassing the trad media in the same way that blogs do.
The modelling algorithms are relevant, but less influential than intent.
