An Xbox Live-like Service For Open/Indie Gaming?

Byrne Reese writes "Amidst all the crazy ideas in online video entertainment in the past year, there is a small company called Arena Unlimited that is taking an interesting approach to gaming economies. As near as I can tell, they're trying to open up a multitude of online gameplay services (e.g., opponent matching, free market item trading) to the masses (i.e., open source and independent PC game developers). (I shudder to think what would happen if one could actually introduce a legitimate and real free market economy into The Sims.) It's no Xbox Live, and their list of supported games is pretty small, but if they can do all that they say they may one day support, then sign me up."

Comments

Re:Hey...

[seringen]

I really like your enthusiasm, but as you probably already know, philosophy never goes "straight ... to reality"

Just as there was never a real implementation of Communism, there is no real "free market capitalism."

There are, on a simple level, two reasons for this. One, no one can really agree what "free market capitalism" or "communism" is. The second one is that there's no way in hell politicians would ever inact something that makes sense without perverting it with "political realities."

Being an economist is definitely a dismal science ;-)

Oh yes there is...

[marcus]

...true capitalistic free market anyway.

It's called the "Black Martket".

Drugs, cigarettes, prostitution, software, satellite cards, anything that is regulated and/or taxed to opression or overpriced or has unserved demand due to a monopoly has a black market and as such also has a true free market.

All that participate, do so by choice. They take the risks for the rewards. They pay the costs for the product. All suppliers compete in a totally unregulated fashion and all buyers are free to choose based on price and product.