I second many of the comments about the difficulties in coding a reasonably plausible game or MUD for exploring list ideas. Just about four years ago exactly, at the first meeting of what was to become the Cypherpunks group, we "played" the "Crypto Anarchy Game." Based solely on paper tokens, like Monopoly, the idea was to introduce people to concepts like digital money, anonymous remailers, information markets, and so on. Sealed envelopes represented remailed messages, with "mixing" done by hand. Lots of imperfections, lots of stalls and dead ends, lots of confusion. Protocols were imperfectly enforced, messages got lost (literally "dropped on the floor"), and the game eventually ended in laughter, confusion, and silliness. But it was deemed useful by most present, as it made more real the abstractions talked about in the morning session. Coding nearly any of the core cryptographic concepts for use in an online game, even without a real crypto core (e.g., using other trust mechanisms) is likely to be almost as big a job as actually coding the concepts for real-world use. Could be very educational, and a useful dry run for later real-world reification of concepts, but by no means easy. I'm not trying to discourage anyone. Go for it! But it's a _big_ project. And as Jim Bell noted, there are all sorts of costs which are not properly accounted for. I would not, for example, expect anything interesting to emerge out of the simulation of "assassination politics" in such a game, as the costs, dangers, moral issues, and whatnot are not properly accounted-for in such a MUD-type simulation. (No more so than in a fantasy role-playing game, where characters die routinely...) And as a last note, we had a couple of "hits" bought anonymously back then, during the game, in '92. (Hint: One doesn't need a Bell-style infrastructure for bidding on the death of politicians to raise the money for a hit....many interested parties would surely pay the $5000 (or less, say some) to buy a hit if the risks were lowered. And to paraphrase Bell, "I know a way to lower the risks.") --Tim May We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."