Interesting, 2 minute read in Wired about game designers intentionally creating scarcity:
“…But in a game world, there’s no inherent reason for scarcity. Game designers have given us plenty of utopias where we can have all the mithril we want, to buy whatever we want whenever we want it. Problem is, those worlds turn out to be dull. For example, the developers of Active Worlds made everything in the game free. Players built enormous houses – in which there was nothing to do. The game never quite caught on. That’s why today’s newer massive synthetic worlds make life hard. It’s why we have to scheme, fight, and occasionally beg for food, shelter, transportation, and great big flaming swords. Games show us that scarcity can be fun…”
Well, apart from the obvious things in the real world like food, shelter, warmth, clean water, cheap (medicinal) drugs that would benefit from _ubiquity_ , it’s an interesting concept.
Think about information among groups – would artificial scarcity improve things, would it make people more _interested_ and _motivated_ to get that information? I spend my life trying to create information abundance…and stopping people unintentionally (or worse, intentionally) creating information scarcity.
But that’s because I’m trying to _remove obstacles_ aka ‘challenges’ in people’s lives, not increase them.
But it’s an interesting element in gaming…and fashion – and both these areas consume people’s interest and economic focus…maybe creating the illusion of exclusivity (reveal information as ‘prizes’) is an appropriate technique to pique people’s interests?