The MMO Economist: AI Empowers Robust, Healthy, and Sustainable P2W MMO Economies

This repo is the official implementation of The MMO Economist [paper]. The MMO Economist is an economic simulation environment that facilitates the correspondence between real-world economic systems and their virtual counterparts for authentic and realistic assessments of MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online Game) economic evolution.

Requirements

The code has been tested running under Python 3.8.16, with the following packages installed (along with their dependencies):

• gym==0.21
• tensorflow==1.14
• ray[rllib]==0.8.4
• importlib-metadata==4.13.0

Running

GYM-style environment for using in practice:

import foundation

env_config = {}
env = foundation.make_env_instance(**env_config)

obs = env.reset()
for t in range(env.episode_length):
  # random actions
  actions = env.sample_random_actions(obs)
  # perform actions and get feedbacks
  obs, rew, done, info = env.step(actions)
  # do other things

tutorial:

• demo.ipynb: This demo shows how environmen works in economic simulations.
• demo_rllib_yaml.ipynb: This demo shows how AI works in economic design.

Components

• Economic Resource
  • EXP: Non-negotiable incorporeal game assets, acquired directly from the game and used solely by the player oneself, without trading possibilities.
  • MAT: Negotiable corporeal game assets, directly obtained from the game and tradable with others.
  • TOK: Any item that can function as a general equivalent to all goods and services in games, obtained directly from the game or through external recharges.
  • CCY: Legal tender of a specific country used externally to the game, utilized for recharges to exchange for tokens.
  • CAP: Specific (virtual) abilities or scores that players enhance by participating in various game activities.
  • LAB: Labor generated by players engaging in game activities during the game.
• Economic Activity
  • Task: Any production behavior in which players directly obtain resources through their labor in the game.
  • Upgrade: Any consuming behavior of players to improve their capabilities by consuming corresponding economic resources in the game.
  • Auction: Any trade behavior involving free trade between players in the game. All tradable economic resources can be traded structured as a continuous double auction.
  • Shop: Any trade behavior where players directly purchase commodities from game malls or non-player characters (NPCs) in the game.
  • Recharge: Any forex behavior where players make payments in the game, such as IAP.
• Economic Entity: Agent players with different personalities.
• Economic Structure
  • Market Economy: Free economy without any economic regulation and control.
  • Planned Economy: Economy with economic regulation and control by human or AI.

Acknowledgements

We thank the great work the ai economist for providing assistance for our research.