I'm doing a rewrite of Arena (which is a gladiator combat game) and it
will probably have a "closed economy". That is, the game won't inject
any money into the game on a regular basis. The exception is new
characters, who will start off with some pot of money (say $500). To
make money, you have to get it off of other characters. (In Arena,
this basically means you need to win fights.)
However, there are some cases where money flows out of the game. For
example, you can go into a shop and buy armor or weapons. The
question is, what is the best way to inject this money back into the
economy?
One answer is to pay a "reverse tax" to all the players occasionally.
The program would keep track of all the money flowing out of the
economy and once in a while would divy that money up and pay it out to
the existing characters. This has the advantage of being (1) easy and
(2) in some sense equitable.
Another possibility is to use this money to provide cash prizes at the
various arenas. Under this scheme, the winners in the arenas would
benefit from this money flowing back into the economy, and the losers
would not.
Any thoughts on what the best way to do this is?
-- Scott T.