Dead Frontier

[LiberTodd]

Dead Frontier (www.s1deadfrontier.net) is a lovely little browser-based flash MMORPG set in a zombie-infested world. It boasts 20 playable classes, a huge city to explore, and tons of weapons and items.

The real interesting point of this game, however, is it's purely capitalistic and player-run economy.

See, in a lot of other MMORPG's you can go to an NPC (computer controlled) "shop" and buy/sell things you find for a set rate of in-game money. The computer's shop obviously has infinite money and access to supplies.

In Dead Frontier, however, every single item that exists in the game was brought into the market in some way by a real, live person. Players can venture into the infected city, avoid the zombies, and search buildings, vehicles, and corpses for usable materials. They then return to the outpost and sell the items to real people. Players can determine how much they want to sell anything for, one can sell a box of ammo for $1 or $1000 if they wish. Smart players can make a killing looking for good deals on valuable items, buying them, then re-selling for higher.

Interestingly enough, corporations and elaborate businesses have started to form. For instance, a group can have a few strong, fast characters to search the city for materials. Raw foods are cheaply sold to the player who chose the "Chef" class, who cook the food and re-sell it. If any of the characters in the group get injured but find medical supplies, they can pay the "Doctor" player to administer the item. And, of course, the "Engineer" character repairs armor and such. With these players working together to maximize each other's strengths and cheaply and effectively meet each other's needs they can all make a hell of a profit, which allows them to buy better guns from other players and make more successful runs into the city. Some groups which grow large enough will even hire web artists (with real money or in-game money) to create sites, banners, and logos for their group to maximize sales and increase their presence in the market. Some of these groups have amassed enough in-game wealth to sell it for real money.

So check it out, if you want to kill some spare time, haha. It's interesting to see that, given the opportunity to use their minds and ability to their full potential, players have turned the post-apocalyptic game world into a thriving economy that grows larger every day. And I like how the game reinforces to people that the ideal way for men to deal with one another is as traders, as it is the only way to bring about mutual benefits and the freedom to prosper. We need more games like this, where the market is player-controlled, instead of games where goods are produced from thin air and sold for the same price everywhere you go.

Edited December 11, 2008 by LiberTodd

[Sarrisan]

I remember playing this back in it's infancy, when it first launched. It wasn't too interesting then, but most of the features (And the economy) weren't really working yet. It was still fun though. I'll have to check it out again, thanks for the heads up.