In our virtual world, we have a super soft currency called cookies. It is intentionally designed to break one of the rules of what money is and how money works.
The main design choice is that cookies are rather hard to keep hold of - they are very easy to steal. Not only that but the more you have, the more likely they are to go missing. This is the opposite of how “real” money works; more money means more protection for your money. This is a slippery slope. Slippery slope design is bad for systems, mkay.
Rob from the rich, not from the poor.
There is also a (server side) limit to how many cookies you can spend in a day. People need about 24k worth to level up every 24 hours. If you have more than that, there are of course other money sinks but since cookies are so easy to come by, you will almost always end up with more than you need.
On top of this, it is even easier to lose them whilst you are not logged on than if you are online. This simple design leads to a interesting emergent behaviour.
Rather than hoarding cookies, people try and give them away when they have more than they need since anyone you help is more likely to help you in the future. Besides, if you don’t spend them, you will probably lose them; by attempting to hold on to them yourself, the cookies get stolen by someone who *won’t* feel indebted to you in any way.
Some people even work as “banks”, taking any spare cookies people have and holding on to them. “If you need cookies, just come back to me. I’m bound to have some since everyone gives me their spare cookies.” This is, of course, work that gains you some social standing.
We also work on a slight rationing system, what is available to buy is more important than having the money to buy it. It is about turning up at the right place at the right time to make a purchase rather than just building up enough cash. You do, however, still need the cash and since it is also easy to lose, you may have to find someone who is currently rich and ask for help.
One of the major benefits of this system is - we do not have to be careful about giving cookies out. Since we run flash games locally, it is very easy for them to be hacked; this does not bother the economy in any way. We limit the amount each game can pay out per day by ip and we limit the amount each account can “spend” per day. This is a very hard server side limit. Becoming a cookie billionaire over night by exploiting a glitch actually does not do you much good. Unlike other systems, transfers are not an issue. Our money moves around, a lot. The rationing system limits your spend and the ease of stealing means you probably will not be able to hold on to it for long. Basically, we have a currency that redistributes itself.
Cookies are a super soft and totally impermanent currency.
For many, this is a bit of a culture shock. It can, in some ways, be considerd an act of guerilla ontology; questioning your belief in what money is and how it works rather than reinforcing it.
Which is exactly as designed…
