Ancient Egypt, Economics, and Evil Pharaohs
Krish Raghav -
Wednesday, November 19, 2008 9:58 AM
I'll admit it - I'm pretty much addicted.
In my defense, how can you not be - when there's this treasure trove of information to obsessively compulse over:
That may not really encourage too many people, so here's another one, one that gives you a better idea of what I'm talking about.
Nile Online is an Ancient-Egypt themed browser based MMO City Building game (Though I hear there's a movement on to properly classify these titles as PBBGs - chalk it up for YAA (Yet Another Acronym)!) from Tilted Mill, some of whose leading members constituted the erstwhile Impressions Games - which made Caesar III, Pharaoh and Zeus: Master of Olympus, three games lovingly pirated in the thousands the country over.
It's an entire MMO experience in your own browser - right from patiently building your empire, and having to deal with pesky, sometimes evil, competing pharaohs. You can play it for a few minutes a day, or pore over it at lenght - and it can reside in a single tab or browser window all day. I'd recommend just going over and playing it - its easy to pick up, and there's a lot of help in the forums at hand. I dont want to spoil too much of the experience, so I'm going to ramble a bit about what's really interesting about this.
The brilliance of Nile is in how carefully the game is balanced. The sheer level of...the only word that comes to mind is 'craftsmanship', in tweaking the various goods and raw materials you trade/fleece/monopolize in is point-perfect. No player is at an absolute disadvantage - and players need to co-operate and trade with others in order to progress. That, in turn, makes the social aspect very very interesting - most players stick to character, starting their messages (called Scrolls, in game) thus:
O Most Noble Pharaoh, The People of Djedu acknowledge the challenges....you get the idea. Also, the relentless obsessing over trade and markets is pretty much going to make you feel like a real businessman - and there's a lot of unconscious, tangential teaching and learning of complex economic concepts (you'll encounter trade negotiations, undercutting prices, inflation, deflation among others) going on as you go about playing - something, I think, games excel at.
Also, if ancient egypt isn't your cup of Nile water - try Travian, which has an Asterix-esque Romans vs. Gauls setting, or Ikariam - which has a...err.competitive, non-caribbean island sort of setting
Look me up if you're joining - I'm Pharaoh Sottaithep (don't ask) - and I offer Leather and Sandals for trade.
May fortune favour you.