[MUD-Dev] Re: Character maintinence - expenditure of resources

["Koster, Raph" <rkoster#origin,ea.com>]

On Thursday, May 07, 1998 5:35 PM J C Lawrence 
[SMTP:claw#under,engr.sgi.com] said:

> On Mon, 4 May 1998 14:41:39 -0700 (PDT)
> Adam Wiggins<adam#angel,com> wrote:
>
>>  On Mon, 4 May 1998, Koster, Raph wrote:

Whatever I might have said isn't in this post. :) Stray attribution 
here...

>The classic case is the faucet->drain model where various points in
                                                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>the game introduce resources, various other consume them, and 
players
>can do arbitrage in the middle.

You stole my term. See if I ever have a phone conversation with you 
again! :)

Seriously, though, I have no idea if the term exists outside of my use 
of it... I came up with it because it seemed a good analogy for inflow 
and outflow in a virtual context, since there really isn't any exact 
analogue to the mysterious "creation from nothing" and "vanished to 
nothing" system in the real world. I really meant literally, the 
faucet is *creation* of resources from thin air, and the drain is the 
utter deletion of said resources, with no cost and no remnants. The 
real world is of course messier than that...

> Raph:  I'd be extremely interested in any of your wife's takes on 
this
> area given her background.

No need to ask me--she's on the list herself. :) I'll point out this 
post to her and see if she'll reply.

-Raph


-- 
MUD-Dev: Advancing an unrealised future.