Comments on: Looking Forward.

By: fffff

fffff — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 23:44:31 +0000

Bitcoin is stable enough as a unique collection of bits. It’s *capable* of being all the things money is supposed to be: a unit of account, a store of value, a medium of exchange.

The economics question that arises is such: Money is money because people believe it is money. Why does anyone believe Bitcoin is money? (and how long will they continue to believe it?)

By: fffff

fffff — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 23:41:46 +0000

WHAT? They actually filmed it???!? Will miracles never cease? Next thing you’ll tell me is that they’re actually going to finish the Second Avenue Subway!

By: fffff

fffff — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 23:38:03 +0000

Hopefully EA learned from Cities XL’s online debacle, at least enough to avoid the obvious mistakes.

By: Josh

Josh — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 15:31:48 +0000

As far as I can make out, inflation in bitcoins it controlled by the fact that it is iteratively harder to make bitcoins the more bitcoins get made – and this ramp up in difficulty is designed to be resistant to Moore’s Law. There’s a programmed hard cap on the number of bitcoins that can be minted, too, so when it reaches a certain cap the mines will just find themselves spinning their wheels.

This gives it the opposite problem – that the system is vulnerable to hoarders, that it will end up being an essentially static system unless it gets much greater access to purchase markets, and that its futures market will end up being a big ponzi scheme. A lot of that can be mitigated with monetary policy – i.e. increasing the cap. A lot depends on how much the bitcoin ends up actually being worth, I suppose – the more it gets hoarded, the lower its value will be, and then the more it will be spent and converted into traditional assets. That would in turn increase the bitcoin’s value. So it could all end up working, or it could not, but it’s an interesting experiment either way.

By: Gap Gen

Gap Gen — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 11:19:17 +0000

I have never fully understood how the bitcoin valuation remains stable. Seems like it’s ripe for hyperinflation, but my knowledge of economics is pretty limited.

By: Gap Gen

Gap Gen — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 11:13:16 +0000

I know at least some of the RPS people are playing AJE – Monty is in a PBEM game with a few other RPS people, I gather.

By: pertusaria

pertusaria — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:28:46 +0000

I love The Flare Path, and yes, when I went and checked he’d covered AJE and I remembered reading the article. I’d have expected it to be talked of on the RPS forums or something, though.

By: Josh

Josh — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 09:25:00 +0000

I don’t think I actually have a problem with this, given that it’s kind of an extension of the Freemium model. The user doesn’t have to pay anything but gets a good that they would otherwise have had to pay for for free, and the dev gets their payment. The main problems for me would be twofold: 1, these guys seem to be fairly open about what they’re doing, but not every dev would be; and 2, it would seem that widespread use of this technique would devalue the bitcoin to the point where the process becomes worthless. Otherwise it seems like a neat solution to the monetisation problem.

By: Hentzau

Hentzau — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 22:50:09 +0000

Tim Stone’s Friday column on RPS being the only mainstream coverage of wargames is probably why you haven’t heard more about it. That being said I should probably make more of an effort to take a look at games that slip through the cracks like that.

By: pertusaria

pertusaria — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 20:33:56 +0000

Yes, it does seem to be out – apologies. Surprised I haven’t heard more about it.