The particular part of Shannon Applecline’s “Social Gaming Interactions, Part Two: Competition” which pertains most to the material in this class is what she describes as “the most exciting competition,” the economic competition involving auctions. Especially of interest is the variations on common auction types
which these games display, and how auctions traditionally held in reality are represented in digital form. Take the Dutch auction for example. This is easily digitally modeled in Merchants of Amsterdam with a clock which counts back and reduces the price simultaneously. First-degree price discrimination is displayed in Queen’s Necklace, which has a turn-based Dutch auction where players buy a small quantity of some item when they can afford it, and in the next round, prices drop and the game continues.
Interesting variations of auctions are sometimes done at the expense of the bidder. The reason for this is to curb devaluation of currency, which is quite rampant in online games. Fist of The Dragonstones uses a sealed-bid auction where all bids are spent and only the winner gets the item. New England displays a typical English auction with a twist, players only bid in certain rounds and have to pay in order to bid in earlier bidding rounds. Another solution to the devaluation of currency is displayed in Res Publica, where a seller offers an item, and bidders offer other items in trade or a bidder requests an item and sellers offer items. As a creative medium, games should continue to offer new and interesting variations of commonly used auction techniques.
[…] Original post by t3khn3 and software by Elliott […]
[…] Online & Board Games Have Interesting Variations of Traditional Auction Types The particular part of Shannon Applecline s Social Gaming Interactions, Part Two: Competition which pertains most to the material in this class is what she describes as the most exciting competition, the economic competition involving auctions. Especially of interest is the variations on common auction types which these games display, and how auctions traditionally held in reality are represented in digital form. Take the Dutch auction for example. This is easily digitally modeled in Merchants of Amsterdam with a clock which counts back and reduces the price simultaneously. First-degree price discrimination is displayed in Queen s Necklace, which has a turn-based Dutch auction where players buy a small quantity of some item when they can afford it, and in the next round, prices drop and the game continues. Interesting variations of auctions are sometimes done at the expense of the bidder. The reason for this is to curb devaluation of currency, which is quite rampant in online games. Fist of The Dragonstones uses a sealed-bid auction where all bids are spent and only the winner gets the item. New England displays a typical English auction with a twist, players only bid in certain rounds and have to pay in order to bid in earlier bidding rounds. Another solution to the devaluation of currency is displayed in Res Publica, where a seller offers an item, and bidders offer other items in trade or a bidder requests an item and sellers offer items. As a creative medium, games should continue to offer new and interesting variations of commonly used auction techniques. […]
Hi,
Shannon is a guy, by the way.
Yehuda
[…] In a recent post tekhn3 mentioned an interesting auction type that we have not discussed in class. It seems to be a form of an all-pay auction. In an all-pay auction every bidder pays their bid, but only the highest bidder wins the good being sold. Lobbying can be viewed as an all-pay auction as every lobbyist pays, but only one is successful. You might think that since very bidder pays, the seller would generate more revenue with this form of auction than with a second price auction. But optimal bids are very different here than in a second price auction. In particular, bidding your true value is obviously not an optimal strategy in this auction. The Revenue Equivalence Theorem shows that expected seller revenue is the same for an all-pay auction as for a second price auction (or a first price auction). A good reference for this is the on-line book by Paul Klemperer. […]