There is this idea that animals don’t experience pain or unhappiness the way humans do. Well, evolution made us feel those things because they maximize our reproductive fitness. And guess what? Animals face the same evolutionary pressures.

They have similar nervous systems. They respond to injury and deprivation in the same ways. What makes you think their suffering is less real than yours?

Play Time

Analysis of MMORPG play as economic activity

Play Time is an economic analysis of play in massively-multiplayer online roleplaying games (MMORPG) that I wrote back in 2004. It began as an undergraduate ‘honors thesis’, but — like most of my projects — it grew to a monstrous size and carried me away with it.

Contents

Play Time was originally written as one long and rather heterogeneous paper, but I have since revised and reorganized; it now comprises a general introduction and three separate monographs. It should be accessible to anyone who has taken a few undergraduate economics courses: