Mitch and Blake take on the complex topic of in-game economies. They discuss how the endemic problems of trust and arbitrage were present in the earliest in-game economies of the late 1980 and how they have persisted to the present web3 economies. They look at the concept of mudlfation, a unique economic problem of massively multiplayer online games, and the strategies for controlling it, as well as the idea of economic play. Mitch talks about how gold farming and real-money trading were early antecedents of play-to-earn, before taking a look at early web3 economies. They end the episode with a discussion of the speculator problem in web3 gaming, and Mitch explains the trust and gifting based economy of Jenova Chen's Sky.

The Story of Habitat

Axie Infinity hack

Raph Koster on "fun" in virtual economies

Under a Killing Moon

"Mudflation"

'Flation (Koster)

Play Money (Dibbell 2007)

Castronova on Everquest GDP

CS:GO Skin Economy Explained

EVE Online (How Money Works)

Is Crypto VC Strategy Securities Fraud?

Sorare

Sky economy