Game Economics, Player Interdependence, & the Oxytocin Opportunity - Ramin Shokrizade | grokludo 27

Over 20 years ago, CCP Games released EVE Online, a massively multiplayer space game, promising huge fleet battles, and an open, player-controlled economy. But within months, that economy was headed for disaster.

This week's guest is Ramin Shokrizade, who later wrote on GameDeveloper – back when it was still Gamasutra – about recommending some economic interventions that would save EVE Online.

His story was later picked up by evangelists for Georgist economic theory – the writings of Henry George, who mainly talked about land tax – and held up as a proof that Georgist theory is correct.

I've watched this nugget of history grow into a piece of internet lore in certain communities. Rationalists, Georgists, and those at the intersection of game design and economics, building a narrative of the game economist who independently arrived at the perfect Georgist solution in a massive virtual world. And what's more, it worked!

One thing was missing from all this: Ramin's take on it.

We'll get that take today, and talk about the open economies games used to have, before they were dominated by big players like Goldman Sachs, and later the game publishers themselves.

Ramin has also written about the benefits of oxytocin, and the dangers of excessive dopamine targeting. We dive into why he believes the attention economy arms race will end poorly for any business model depending wholly on dopamine. The way out? Target oxytocin instead.

It's possible this need for oxytocin contributes to the recent rise in "cozy" games, but there are plenty of potential contributors. With so much evil stuff happening in real life, the desire to fill one's media with people being kind to each other is understandable.

There's also been some especially interesting research on dopamine and oxytocin in recent years, and oxytocin targeting is probably a topic we'll return to.

For now, I hope you enjoy, and have a great week!