A talk I gave on May 13, 2009. Talks about why virtual economies are different from real economies, and then talks a little about how to deal with virtual economies.
Twofish products are shown in some screenshots, but it's not a Twofish-centric talk.
Digital Cash and Monetary Freedom - Libertarian Alliance (Economic Notes 63)Jon Matonis
Much has been published recently about the awesome promises of electronic commerce and trade on the Internet if only a reliable, secure mechanism for value exchange could be developed. This paper describes the differences between mere encrypted credit card schemes
and true digital cash, which presents a revolutionary opportunity to transform payments. The nine key elements
of an electronic, digital cash are outlined and a tenth element is proposed which would embody digital cash with a non- political unit of value.
This document describes an international payment service called Joys that allows users to make payments for goods and services using cryptocurrencies and national currencies. Joys aims to create a new worldwide payment infrastructure that integrates blockchain projects and cryptocurrencies into the traditional economy. It discusses Joys' solutions, operations, partnerships, and financial projections to transform digital money into real goods and services purchases globally.
This document discusses strategies for managing virtual economies within online games and applications. It covers topics such as controlling the circulation and scarcity of virtual currencies and items, testing prices and content, collecting user metrics, and using demographic data to improve monetization. The author advocates giving developers absolute control over their virtual economies in order to precisely test strategies, introduce scarcity, and maximize revenue through user transactions and purchases.
My talk at Login 2010. The topic was "in game monetization" and the level was "introductory." So I focused on basic principles that allow people to frame their thoughts.
Taking Virtual Economies to the Next LevelWilliam Grosso
The document discusses principles for running a successful virtual economy in online games. It covers metrics and measurements, focusing on process metrics over averages. It also covers merchandising strategies like using multiple currencies, rewarding good player behavior, recommending items, training players to make purchases, controlling inventory, customizing storefronts for different player types, localizing currencies, and using discounts to promote spending. The overall message is that virtual economies require an empirical, iterative approach to optimization rather than one-time decisions.
Scientific Revenue's own Ted Verani conducts a masterclass in annuity design. If you're thinking about adding annuities to your game., you need to see this presentation.
A talk from PocketGamer Connects in early 2016. High level trend analysis (do's and don'ts) of IAP-based monetization. If you're figuring out how IAP fits into an overall monetization strategy, this is the deck for you.
Digital Cash and Monetary Freedom - Libertarian Alliance (Economic Notes 63)Jon Matonis
Much has been published recently about the awesome promises of electronic commerce and trade on the Internet if only a reliable, secure mechanism for value exchange could be developed. This paper describes the differences between mere encrypted credit card schemes
and true digital cash, which presents a revolutionary opportunity to transform payments. The nine key elements
of an electronic, digital cash are outlined and a tenth element is proposed which would embody digital cash with a non- political unit of value.
This document describes an international payment service called Joys that allows users to make payments for goods and services using cryptocurrencies and national currencies. Joys aims to create a new worldwide payment infrastructure that integrates blockchain projects and cryptocurrencies into the traditional economy. It discusses Joys' solutions, operations, partnerships, and financial projections to transform digital money into real goods and services purchases globally.
This document discusses strategies for managing virtual economies within online games and applications. It covers topics such as controlling the circulation and scarcity of virtual currencies and items, testing prices and content, collecting user metrics, and using demographic data to improve monetization. The author advocates giving developers absolute control over their virtual economies in order to precisely test strategies, introduce scarcity, and maximize revenue through user transactions and purchases.
My talk at Login 2010. The topic was "in game monetization" and the level was "introductory." So I focused on basic principles that allow people to frame their thoughts.
Taking Virtual Economies to the Next LevelWilliam Grosso
The document discusses principles for running a successful virtual economy in online games. It covers metrics and measurements, focusing on process metrics over averages. It also covers merchandising strategies like using multiple currencies, rewarding good player behavior, recommending items, training players to make purchases, controlling inventory, customizing storefronts for different player types, localizing currencies, and using discounts to promote spending. The overall message is that virtual economies require an empirical, iterative approach to optimization rather than one-time decisions.
Scientific Revenue's own Ted Verani conducts a masterclass in annuity design. If you're thinking about adding annuities to your game., you need to see this presentation.
A talk from PocketGamer Connects in early 2016. High level trend analysis (do's and don'ts) of IAP-based monetization. If you're figuring out how IAP fits into an overall monetization strategy, this is the deck for you.
LEOcoin is a new cryptocurrency that aims to be anonymous, secure, and user-friendly. It has several key advantages over other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, including true anonymity through advanced encryption, resistance to ASIC mining monopolization, and a hybrid proof-of-work and proof-of-stake system to reduce risks of attacks. LEOcoin transactions are very low cost, can be done globally very quickly, and require no specialized knowledge to use. The founders believe LEOcoin has the potential to become a leading global digital currency for entrepreneurs and individuals.
Designing Virtual Currency by Breaking (Almost) Every Rule in the Economics T...Vili Lehdonvirta
Presentation given at Game Developers Conference 2012 on 7 March. See the notes tab below for partial transcript. Abstract:
Many games today feature virtual money of some sort, whether a "hard currency" sold for real money or a "soft currency" earned through play. The question that this lecture answers is, how do you design money? Not how do players obtain money, nor how do they spend it - but how do you design the money itself. Economists have identified around a dozen attributes of a good money - the kind of money that makes an economy efficient. These attributes make a great guideline for designing serious digital currencies. But in game design, we don't always want things to be efficient - we might want them to be challenging and fun instead. In this lecture, we therefore turn the economists' advice on its head and come up with a guideline for designing "bad money"! Both historical and virtual examples are included.
http://virtualeconomists.com
Draft slide deck for my presentation in San Jose (conference organized by the Bitcoin Foundation): "Why you should invest in Bitcoin". Here's the eventual presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7LQu-eIOO0
Blockchain is a public, synchronized global ledger of all transactions where records are verified and permanently displayed. Copies exist on millions of computers worldwide. Bitcoin is a digital currency and payment network defined by a protocol, software, and community. It allows sending money over the internet almost free of charge. The identity of Bitcoin's creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, remains unknown. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies could disrupt the current financial system by reducing costs and opening global markets through decentralized verification of transactions without trusted intermediaries.
This document provides an overview of cryptocurrency and how it works. It explains that cryptocurrency is a digital currency secured by cryptography, produced by solving complex algorithms. It is not backed by any government or bank. The document outlines how cryptocurrency can be "mined" through solving algorithms to earn coins as a reward. It also discusses how Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency and how there are now many alternative coins. In under 3 sentences, the document introduces cryptocurrency as a digital currency secured by cryptography and produced through solving algorithms, explains that individuals can mine coins by using their computers and resources to solve algorithms, and states that Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency but there are now many alternative coins.
What Is Cryptocurrency? This is what You Should KnowLeandro Martins
Digital forms of money let you purchase labor and products, or exchange them for benefit. Here's additional with regards to what digital currency is, the way to get it and how to ensure yourself.
Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ether rely on mining as a reward mechanism to incentivize miners to verify transactions. Miners compete to solve complex cryptographic puzzles, with the winner receiving new cryptocurrency as a reward. This mining process underpins the decentralized verification and trust in blockchain networks. While initially used only for financial transactions, ethereum's programmable blockchain enables additional uses like smart contracts and initial coin offerings that have led to growth in cryptocurrencies beyond just bitcoin.
Casual Connect Keynote - Creating a Bull Market: How to Manage a Successful V...Social Gold
Keynote presentation "Creating a Bull Market:
How to Manage a Successful Virtual Economy" given by Vikas Gupta, Social Gold CEO, at Casual Connect 2010 in Seattle.
Presentation for Government Blockchain Association l San Juan, Puerto Rico l Piloto 151, 7'June 2018
(c) Vladislav Solodkiy, A.ID
www.followthemoney.id
The future of cryptocurrency—some challenges
As we gaze into our crypto ball, let’s see what the future of cryptocurrency has in store for traders. With many experts estimating that the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic has hastened the decline of cash by almost five years, few are asking whether digital currencies will actually succeed (they have already). Instead, it’s a matter of when they’ll go mainstream. Nevertheless, there are some challenges ahead.
Perceptions
A significant generational divide exists when it comes to adoption rates of cryptocurrencies. Older generations are typically more sceptical of crypto’s long-term viability, expressing fears about volatile financial bubbles as well as uncertainty over how cryptocurrencies actually work.
Virtual worlds are 3D online environments where users interact through avatars. Second Life is an open cultural virtual world launched in 2003 that allows users to create digital content. While some saw potential for virtual worlds and brands saw them as emerging markets in the 2000s, challenges remained in understanding user demographics and whether virtual experiences could translate to real world purchasing. The technology was still maturing and hype outpaced real returns, but proponents argued virtual worlds may find educational and other uses as the technology continues to evolve.
Blockchain & Cryptocurrency - Part I (Jose Paul Martin)Jose Paul Martin
Blockchain and cryptocurrencies have the potential to disrupt the global financial system by allowing fast, cheap, and transparent transactions without intermediaries like banks. Blockchain acts as a distributed public ledger that records all transactions in a way that cannot be altered. The first major cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, works on the blockchain protocol to enable fast digital payments anywhere in the world. However, cryptocurrencies have not yet gone mainstream due to technical restrictions and the large number of competing currencies, though banks are beginning to take an interest in blockchain technology.
Saske is a decentralised blockchain social connectivity platform designed to bring together the world at large on the most preeminent social communications networks while simultaneously tearing down the monolithic barriers still standing between the everyday person and the unprecedented benefits of cryptocurrencies.
“As a layperson -let us understand- cryptocurrency and how it works.pdfRAVI TIKU
All of us listen so much about the cryptocurrency and its usage being done for the various transactions, but we still don’t know the basics of this currency and how it is transacted, and under which regulatory board or exchange their indices are maintained. I thought let us discuss the simple basics of the same and try to understand what exactly it is and how it affects the transactional market internationally.
Cryptocurrencies - Part I | Introduction of Money & Virtual MoneySyed Hassan Talal
1st Article of the series published in State Bank of Pakistan Newsletter - March 2015. This article discusses the basic concepts of Money, currency, digital currency, virtual currency and Cryptocurrency.
Download the full report now: http://bit.ly/1QD3aDm
Imagine a future where you don’t have to think about money. Got it? Well you’re probably thinking about it the wrong way. Because today, right now, money isn’t real.
That bill you can hold in your hand is simply a representation of a transaction about to take place, completely dependent upon our belief that it has a value. We believe wholeheartedly that a piece of paper can be exchanged for a cup of coffee or a microwave oven. But, when we strip away our dependence on this concept of “money”, and the physicality of its exchange, what remains in the pure transaction. A transaction of value.
This report unpacks how our very concept of money is evolving, and describes how the system designed to manage its movement is ripe for disruption. This shift will create immediate opportunities for brands to connect with consumers as not only participants, but partners in modern culture.
Our report examines:
• The concept of value beyond traditional financial notions
• How value hinges upon trust, and the way trust is driving disruption
• Tech startups and small group communities working together to challenge the way we’re paying for our lives
• Peer to peer exchanges, dying middlemen and algorithmic security
• New asset classes and a working vision of the Internet of Things
49 pp., 23 illustrations
Our report points to the near future, where every person, place, and thing has a measurable value that can be exchanged intangibly, rapidly, securely, and most importantly, directly. It’s a system where abstract notions like social currency have a value that can be transacted in the same way that we now buy a cup of coffee. It’s a system that can empower a planet where every single device, every head of lettuce, every drop of fuel, every road and cable that make up our infrastructure have a value not only in and of itself, but also in the context of its use.
Meet your new value system, or the future of money. UnMoney.
Methodology
For this report, sparks & honey conducted research and interviewed experts at DevCon1 in London (2015) and the Scaling Bitcoin Workshop in Hong Kong (2015). Using new social listening tools, we gauged public sentiment around the disruption of established currencies and financial systems. And tapping into our global scout network and proprietary cultural intelligence system, we combed through thousands of signals to build a vision of the future of value in an unmonied world.
DogeClub is an international cryptocurrency platform founded in 2016 in London. It has global branches in major cities around the world and offers cryptocurrency products and financial services. DogeClub aims to make cryptocurrency investing accessible to small investors and provide stable returns.
The document discusses fiat currency, stablecoins, and cryptocurrency. It defines fiat currency as government-issued currency that is not backed by a physical commodity and derives its value from supply and demand. Stablecoins are described as cryptocurrencies with stable value that is collateralized by underlying assets like USD to reduce volatility. Cryptocurrency 2.0 refers to stablecoins capturing desired characteristics of existing payment systems and cryptocurrencies by being regulated, stable stores of value with lower transaction costs and times.
For four years in the late 1990's and early 2000's I worked at Stanford University’s Section on Medical Informatics doing research in Artificial Intelligence. I was one of the primary architects on the Protege project (an open-sourced knowledge representation system) and spent quite a bit of time thinking about how to represent knowledge, the logical structure of knowledge, how to define constraints on information, and how to classify algorithms (a.k.a. “problem-solving methods”).
This talk, from 2001, describes the "slot widget" architecture that enabled other knowledge representation labs around the world to extend Protege.
For four years in the late 1990's and early 2000's I worked at Stanford University’s Section on Medical Informatics doing research in Artificial Intelligence. I was one of the primary architects on the Protege project (an open-sourced knowledge representation system) and spent quite a bit of time thinking about how to represent knowledge, the logical structure of knowledge, how to define constraints on information, and how to classify algorithms (a.k.a. “problem-solving methods”).
This talk, from 2001, describes the underlying architecture formal knowledge model used in Protege, how "slot widgets" play in the system, and goes on to describe PAL: the Protege Axiom Language. It's long, and really only for knowledge representation afficionados, but it's pretty complete.
LEOcoin is a new cryptocurrency that aims to be anonymous, secure, and user-friendly. It has several key advantages over other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, including true anonymity through advanced encryption, resistance to ASIC mining monopolization, and a hybrid proof-of-work and proof-of-stake system to reduce risks of attacks. LEOcoin transactions are very low cost, can be done globally very quickly, and require no specialized knowledge to use. The founders believe LEOcoin has the potential to become a leading global digital currency for entrepreneurs and individuals.
Designing Virtual Currency by Breaking (Almost) Every Rule in the Economics T...Vili Lehdonvirta
Presentation given at Game Developers Conference 2012 on 7 March. See the notes tab below for partial transcript. Abstract:
Many games today feature virtual money of some sort, whether a "hard currency" sold for real money or a "soft currency" earned through play. The question that this lecture answers is, how do you design money? Not how do players obtain money, nor how do they spend it - but how do you design the money itself. Economists have identified around a dozen attributes of a good money - the kind of money that makes an economy efficient. These attributes make a great guideline for designing serious digital currencies. But in game design, we don't always want things to be efficient - we might want them to be challenging and fun instead. In this lecture, we therefore turn the economists' advice on its head and come up with a guideline for designing "bad money"! Both historical and virtual examples are included.
http://virtualeconomists.com
Draft slide deck for my presentation in San Jose (conference organized by the Bitcoin Foundation): "Why you should invest in Bitcoin". Here's the eventual presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7LQu-eIOO0
Blockchain is a public, synchronized global ledger of all transactions where records are verified and permanently displayed. Copies exist on millions of computers worldwide. Bitcoin is a digital currency and payment network defined by a protocol, software, and community. It allows sending money over the internet almost free of charge. The identity of Bitcoin's creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, remains unknown. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies could disrupt the current financial system by reducing costs and opening global markets through decentralized verification of transactions without trusted intermediaries.
This document provides an overview of cryptocurrency and how it works. It explains that cryptocurrency is a digital currency secured by cryptography, produced by solving complex algorithms. It is not backed by any government or bank. The document outlines how cryptocurrency can be "mined" through solving algorithms to earn coins as a reward. It also discusses how Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency and how there are now many alternative coins. In under 3 sentences, the document introduces cryptocurrency as a digital currency secured by cryptography and produced through solving algorithms, explains that individuals can mine coins by using their computers and resources to solve algorithms, and states that Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency but there are now many alternative coins.
What Is Cryptocurrency? This is what You Should KnowLeandro Martins
Digital forms of money let you purchase labor and products, or exchange them for benefit. Here's additional with regards to what digital currency is, the way to get it and how to ensure yourself.
Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ether rely on mining as a reward mechanism to incentivize miners to verify transactions. Miners compete to solve complex cryptographic puzzles, with the winner receiving new cryptocurrency as a reward. This mining process underpins the decentralized verification and trust in blockchain networks. While initially used only for financial transactions, ethereum's programmable blockchain enables additional uses like smart contracts and initial coin offerings that have led to growth in cryptocurrencies beyond just bitcoin.
Casual Connect Keynote - Creating a Bull Market: How to Manage a Successful V...Social Gold
Keynote presentation "Creating a Bull Market:
How to Manage a Successful Virtual Economy" given by Vikas Gupta, Social Gold CEO, at Casual Connect 2010 in Seattle.
Presentation for Government Blockchain Association l San Juan, Puerto Rico l Piloto 151, 7'June 2018
(c) Vladislav Solodkiy, A.ID
www.followthemoney.id
The future of cryptocurrency—some challenges
As we gaze into our crypto ball, let’s see what the future of cryptocurrency has in store for traders. With many experts estimating that the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic has hastened the decline of cash by almost five years, few are asking whether digital currencies will actually succeed (they have already). Instead, it’s a matter of when they’ll go mainstream. Nevertheless, there are some challenges ahead.
Perceptions
A significant generational divide exists when it comes to adoption rates of cryptocurrencies. Older generations are typically more sceptical of crypto’s long-term viability, expressing fears about volatile financial bubbles as well as uncertainty over how cryptocurrencies actually work.
Virtual worlds are 3D online environments where users interact through avatars. Second Life is an open cultural virtual world launched in 2003 that allows users to create digital content. While some saw potential for virtual worlds and brands saw them as emerging markets in the 2000s, challenges remained in understanding user demographics and whether virtual experiences could translate to real world purchasing. The technology was still maturing and hype outpaced real returns, but proponents argued virtual worlds may find educational and other uses as the technology continues to evolve.
Blockchain & Cryptocurrency - Part I (Jose Paul Martin)Jose Paul Martin
Blockchain and cryptocurrencies have the potential to disrupt the global financial system by allowing fast, cheap, and transparent transactions without intermediaries like banks. Blockchain acts as a distributed public ledger that records all transactions in a way that cannot be altered. The first major cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, works on the blockchain protocol to enable fast digital payments anywhere in the world. However, cryptocurrencies have not yet gone mainstream due to technical restrictions and the large number of competing currencies, though banks are beginning to take an interest in blockchain technology.
Saske is a decentralised blockchain social connectivity platform designed to bring together the world at large on the most preeminent social communications networks while simultaneously tearing down the monolithic barriers still standing between the everyday person and the unprecedented benefits of cryptocurrencies.
“As a layperson -let us understand- cryptocurrency and how it works.pdfRAVI TIKU
All of us listen so much about the cryptocurrency and its usage being done for the various transactions, but we still don’t know the basics of this currency and how it is transacted, and under which regulatory board or exchange their indices are maintained. I thought let us discuss the simple basics of the same and try to understand what exactly it is and how it affects the transactional market internationally.
Cryptocurrencies - Part I | Introduction of Money & Virtual MoneySyed Hassan Talal
1st Article of the series published in State Bank of Pakistan Newsletter - March 2015. This article discusses the basic concepts of Money, currency, digital currency, virtual currency and Cryptocurrency.
Download the full report now: http://bit.ly/1QD3aDm
Imagine a future where you don’t have to think about money. Got it? Well you’re probably thinking about it the wrong way. Because today, right now, money isn’t real.
That bill you can hold in your hand is simply a representation of a transaction about to take place, completely dependent upon our belief that it has a value. We believe wholeheartedly that a piece of paper can be exchanged for a cup of coffee or a microwave oven. But, when we strip away our dependence on this concept of “money”, and the physicality of its exchange, what remains in the pure transaction. A transaction of value.
This report unpacks how our very concept of money is evolving, and describes how the system designed to manage its movement is ripe for disruption. This shift will create immediate opportunities for brands to connect with consumers as not only participants, but partners in modern culture.
Our report examines:
• The concept of value beyond traditional financial notions
• How value hinges upon trust, and the way trust is driving disruption
• Tech startups and small group communities working together to challenge the way we’re paying for our lives
• Peer to peer exchanges, dying middlemen and algorithmic security
• New asset classes and a working vision of the Internet of Things
49 pp., 23 illustrations
Our report points to the near future, where every person, place, and thing has a measurable value that can be exchanged intangibly, rapidly, securely, and most importantly, directly. It’s a system where abstract notions like social currency have a value that can be transacted in the same way that we now buy a cup of coffee. It’s a system that can empower a planet where every single device, every head of lettuce, every drop of fuel, every road and cable that make up our infrastructure have a value not only in and of itself, but also in the context of its use.
Meet your new value system, or the future of money. UnMoney.
Methodology
For this report, sparks & honey conducted research and interviewed experts at DevCon1 in London (2015) and the Scaling Bitcoin Workshop in Hong Kong (2015). Using new social listening tools, we gauged public sentiment around the disruption of established currencies and financial systems. And tapping into our global scout network and proprietary cultural intelligence system, we combed through thousands of signals to build a vision of the future of value in an unmonied world.
DogeClub is an international cryptocurrency platform founded in 2016 in London. It has global branches in major cities around the world and offers cryptocurrency products and financial services. DogeClub aims to make cryptocurrency investing accessible to small investors and provide stable returns.
The document discusses fiat currency, stablecoins, and cryptocurrency. It defines fiat currency as government-issued currency that is not backed by a physical commodity and derives its value from supply and demand. Stablecoins are described as cryptocurrencies with stable value that is collateralized by underlying assets like USD to reduce volatility. Cryptocurrency 2.0 refers to stablecoins capturing desired characteristics of existing payment systems and cryptocurrencies by being regulated, stable stores of value with lower transaction costs and times.
For four years in the late 1990's and early 2000's I worked at Stanford University’s Section on Medical Informatics doing research in Artificial Intelligence. I was one of the primary architects on the Protege project (an open-sourced knowledge representation system) and spent quite a bit of time thinking about how to represent knowledge, the logical structure of knowledge, how to define constraints on information, and how to classify algorithms (a.k.a. “problem-solving methods”).
This talk, from 2001, describes the "slot widget" architecture that enabled other knowledge representation labs around the world to extend Protege.
For four years in the late 1990's and early 2000's I worked at Stanford University’s Section on Medical Informatics doing research in Artificial Intelligence. I was one of the primary architects on the Protege project (an open-sourced knowledge representation system) and spent quite a bit of time thinking about how to represent knowledge, the logical structure of knowledge, how to define constraints on information, and how to classify algorithms (a.k.a. “problem-solving methods”).
This talk, from 2001, describes the underlying architecture formal knowledge model used in Protege, how "slot widgets" play in the system, and goes on to describe PAL: the Protege Axiom Language. It's long, and really only for knowledge representation afficionados, but it's pretty complete.
Knowing How People Are Playing Your Game Gives You the Winning HandWilliam Grosso
The document discusses using predictive analytics and machine learning to improve gaming analytics. It outlines six potential use cases: 1) predicting new player churn, 2) predicting veteran player churn, 3) survival analysis of player populations, 4) gameplay analysis to identify issues, 5) fraud detection, and 6) identifying high-spending "whale" players early. The presentation emphasizes the importance of collecting extensive player data, using techniques like supervised and unsupervised learning to build predictive models, and taking action based on predictions to improve the player experience and business metrics.
Yetizen (https://www.linkedin.com/company/yetizen/about/) was a gaming incubator that existed in San Francisco, roughly between 2011 and 2015. I thought it was an interesting experiment, and was happy to give a series of talks there, and advise the portfolio companies.
This talk, from 2013, is about what's involved in being a platform vendor-- a third party whose service is relied up by applications. From the fact that your customers (application companies) don't really trust you to the fact that they make unreasonable demands to the fact that platforms and services are architected differently from applications; it's all in here.
Yetizen (https://www.linkedin.com/company/yetizen/about/) was a gaming incubator that existed in San Francisco, roughly between 2011 and 2015. I thought it was an interesting experiment, and was happy to give a series of talks there, and advise the portfolio companies.
This talk, from 2012, is an intro to "How to think about Vendor Management" -- most gaming startups rely on dozens of vendors, but don't really know what's involved. At the end of the day, if your game relies on a third-party service, it's important to ask the right questions, and it's very important to have a contract in place that has specific representations and specific liabilities in the case of breach.
Yetizen (https://www.linkedin.com/company/yetizen/about/) was a gaming incubator that existed in San Francisco, roughly between 2011 and 2015. I thought it was an interesting experiment, and was happy to give a series of talks there, and advise the portfolio companies.
This talk, from 2012, is an intro to "How to think about Analytics" -- many entrepreneurs know they need data, and they need analytics, but that they had best be able to claim that their startup is "data driven"
But what, from an engineering perspective, does that really mean?
The University of Santa Cruz has a sequence in entrepreneurship (https://startups.ucsc.edu/). I gave this talk on the basics of forming a company, to help the students understand that startups take time, and nothing happens overnight.
This document provides advice on building and managing a startup team. It discusses that startups solve new problems by applying new technologies in a fast-changing environment. The right metaphor is being a kayak on the ocean rather than "going heads down." The ecosystem includes many people who don't care if you succeed. The author recommends finding exemplar companies in analogous situations to determine optimal team size and structure. When hiring, prioritize culture fit, intelligence, and a track record of success over specific skills. Constantly communicate goals and hold people accountable for milestones. Turnover is normal, as retaining over 85% of a startup team year-over-year is unheard of.
Scientific revenue unreasonable effectiveness of dataWilliam Grosso
Presentation from Pocket Gamer Connects, London, 2018.
The key point is very simple: invest in high-quality and highly granular data collection. If you do so, there are a lot of ways to use the data to optimize your game. Starting with pricing, but moving on to user acquisition and ad inventory management, and moving on from there.
Examples are given from Scientific Revenue's experiences running pricing in games and doing user acquisition.
Applying Retail Strategies to Item MerchandisingWilliam Grosso
My talk from this years GDC (the VCON event). Focusing on ways to improve item sales within mmos and games without necesssarily changing game play.
There's a lot we can learn from traditional retailers!
The document discusses next-generation programming languages that run on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), focusing on Groovy and the Grails web application framework. It provides an overview of Groovy's features like closures and first-class containers. It also demonstrates building a sample web application in Groovy/Grails and discusses how Groovy integrates seamlessly with Java.
The document discusses the evolving architecture of web applications over the past two decades. It describes how in the early years, websites were mostly inward-facing with innovation focused on front-end standards. However, in recent years web applications have become more complex as they are deeply interlinked at the service level, relying on specialized third-party services. The talk will provide an overview of this emerging architecture and how it is changing what application providers can offer.
Sudheer Mechineni, Head of Application Frameworks, Standard Chartered Bank
Discover how Standard Chartered Bank harnessed the power of Neo4j to transform complex data access challenges into a dynamic, scalable graph database solution. This keynote will cover their journey from initial adoption to deploying a fully automated, enterprise-grade causal cluster, highlighting key strategies for modelling organisational changes and ensuring robust disaster recovery. Learn how these innovations have not only enhanced Standard Chartered Bank’s data infrastructure but also positioned them as pioneers in the banking sector’s adoption of graph technology.
GraphSummit Singapore | The Art of the Possible with Graph - Q2 2024Neo4j
Neha Bajwa, Vice President of Product Marketing, Neo4j
Join us as we explore breakthrough innovations enabled by interconnected data and AI. Discover firsthand how organizations use relationships in data to uncover contextual insights and solve our most pressing challenges – from optimizing supply chains, detecting fraud, and improving customer experiences to accelerating drug discoveries.
Removing Uninteresting Bytes in Software FuzzingAftab Hussain
Imagine a world where software fuzzing, the process of mutating bytes in test seeds to uncover hidden and erroneous program behaviors, becomes faster and more effective. A lot depends on the initial seeds, which can significantly dictate the trajectory of a fuzzing campaign, particularly in terms of how long it takes to uncover interesting behaviour in your code. We introduce DIAR, a technique designed to speedup fuzzing campaigns by pinpointing and eliminating those uninteresting bytes in the seeds. Picture this: instead of wasting valuable resources on meaningless mutations in large, bloated seeds, DIAR removes the unnecessary bytes, streamlining the entire process.
In this work, we equipped AFL, a popular fuzzer, with DIAR and examined two critical Linux libraries -- Libxml's xmllint, a tool for parsing xml documents, and Binutil's readelf, an essential debugging and security analysis command-line tool used to display detailed information about ELF (Executable and Linkable Format). Our preliminary results show that AFL+DIAR does not only discover new paths more quickly but also achieves higher coverage overall. This work thus showcases how starting with lean and optimized seeds can lead to faster, more comprehensive fuzzing campaigns -- and DIAR helps you find such seeds.
- These are slides of the talk given at IEEE International Conference on Software Testing Verification and Validation Workshop, ICSTW 2022.
Climate Impact of Software Testing at Nordic Testing DaysKari Kakkonen
My slides at Nordic Testing Days 6.6.2024
Climate impact / sustainability of software testing discussed on the talk. ICT and testing must carry their part of global responsibility to help with the climat warming. We can minimize the carbon footprint but we can also have a carbon handprint, a positive impact on the climate. Quality characteristics can be added with sustainability, and then measured continuously. Test environments can be used less, and in smaller scale and on demand. Test techniques can be used in optimizing or minimizing number of tests. Test automation can be used to speed up testing.
Building Production Ready Search Pipelines with Spark and MilvusZilliz
Spark is the widely used ETL tool for processing, indexing and ingesting data to serving stack for search. Milvus is the production-ready open-source vector database. In this talk we will show how to use Spark to process unstructured data to extract vector representations, and push the vectors to Milvus vector database for search serving.
UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series, part 6DianaGray10
Welcome to UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series part 6. In this session, we will cover Test Automation with generative AI and Open AI.
UiPath Test Automation with generative AI and Open AI webinar offers an in-depth exploration of leveraging cutting-edge technologies for test automation within the UiPath platform. Attendees will delve into the integration of generative AI, a test automation solution, with Open AI advanced natural language processing capabilities.
Throughout the session, participants will discover how this synergy empowers testers to automate repetitive tasks, enhance testing accuracy, and expedite the software testing life cycle. Topics covered include the seamless integration process, practical use cases, and the benefits of harnessing AI-driven automation for UiPath testing initiatives. By attending this webinar, testers, and automation professionals can gain valuable insights into harnessing the power of AI to optimize their test automation workflows within the UiPath ecosystem, ultimately driving efficiency and quality in software development processes.
What will you get from this session?
1. Insights into integrating generative AI.
2. Understanding how this integration enhances test automation within the UiPath platform
3. Practical demonstrations
4. Exploration of real-world use cases illustrating the benefits of AI-driven test automation for UiPath
Topics covered:
What is generative AI
Test Automation with generative AI and Open AI.
UiPath integration with generative AI
Speaker:
Deepak Rai, Automation Practice Lead, Boundaryless Group and UiPath MVP
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Virtual Worlds and Real Metrics:
1.
2. Virtual Worlds and Real Metrics:
Tangible Statistics about Imaginary
Goods
3. In recent years, virtual currencies, virtual economies, and
virtual goods have become a common part of the internet
landscape. However, while there is now widespread consensus
that virtual economies are an increasingly valid and fruitful
monetization strategy for internet applications, there are very
few management tools for virtual economies, and, aside from
a few obvious bromides (quot;Avoid hyperinflation!quot;), no agreed-
upon consensus as to the key metrics to use in doing so.
This talk will begin with some history (covering some early
ideas in measuring virtual economies) and then explore some
of the metrics that make sense for a virtual economy. We will
cover both how to increase profit in a virtual world and how to
detect interesting user behaviors and profiles through
economic measures. Throughout the talk, screenshots of
Twofish's analytics platform will be used to illustrate key
points.
4.
5. Outline
• Who Am I
• Virtual Worlds: A Primer
• Virtual Economies and Real Economies
• Making it Concrete: The Velocity of Money
• Moore’s Law Kicks Ass
6. Outline
• Who Am I
• Virtual Worlds: A Primer
• Virtual Economies and Real Economies
• Making it Concrete: The Velocity of Money
• Moore’s Law Kicks Ass
8. Bill leads the Twofish Elements product roadmap, platform development and
engineering organizations. Bill's love of economics started as an undergrad, where he
taught econometrics and was the recipient of a URECA grant in economic modeling
and continued throughout his grad school career in mathematics.
An active and vocal participant in the software development community, Bill has
published 2 books and more than 20 journal articles, and is a long-time board member
of SDForum. Bill has held various chief architect and executive engineering roles at
companies including Engage (acquired by Spark Networks), Echopass, and Hipbone
(acquired by Kana).
9.
10. This is not a Twofish Product Talk
• More about illustrating the problems than
talking about the (Twofish) solution
• Goal is to take a step back and talk bigger
picture / deeper than is usually the case
• Goal is also to be somewhat provocative
– “I would rather be vaguely correct than precisely
wrong” – John Maynard Keynes
11. My Employer is Not To Blame
• Twofish is a great company
– We make software to support virtual economies
(SaaS backend play)
– I’m the CTO
• You ain’t the customer, I ain’t here to sell you
nothing, and this is mostly my opinion
– “And besides, the wench is dead.” – Christopher
Marlowe.
12. Ask Questions
• This is going to be an idiosyncratic slice of
– The last 30 years in gaming
– Economic theory
– Software design
– Other stuff
• “The footnotes are not entirely without merit”
– G. Santayana
13. Outline
• Who Am I
• Virtual Worlds: A Primer
• Virtual Economies and Real Economies
• Making it Concrete: The Velocity of Money
• Moore’s Law Kicks Ass
16. Habitat Really Did Pioneer Things
• Primitive Graphics
• But an economy
– You could buy items
• And people were people
– Communication between people mattered
– Communities formed
– Ethical debates over killing other people
– Accumulating items for status
– ….
17. … Avatars are hatched with 2000 Tokens in their bank account, and each day that they
login the receive another 100T. Avatars may acquire additional funds by engaging in
business, winning contests, finding buried treasure, and so on. They can spend their
Tokens on, among other things, various items that are for sale in vending machines
called Vendroids.
There are also Pawn Machines, which will buy objects back (at a discount, of course).
In order to make this automated economy a little more interesting, each Vendroid had
its own prices for the items in it. This was so that we could have local price variation
(i.e., a widget would cost a little less if you bought it at Jack's Place instead of The
Emporium). It turned out that in two Vendroids across town from each other were two
items for sale whose prices we had inadvertently set lower than what a Pawn Machine
would buy them back for: Dolls (for sale at 75T, hock for 100T) and Crystal Balls (for
sale at 18,000T, hock at 30,000T!). Naturally, a couple of people discovered this. One
night they took all their money, walked to the Doll Vendroid, bought as many Dolls as
they could, then took them across town and pawned them. By shuttling back and forth
between the Doll Vendroid and the Pawn Shop for hours, they amassed sufficient
funds to buy a Crystal Ball , whereupon they continued the process with Crystal Balls
and a couple orders of magnitude higher cash flow. The final result was at least three
Avatars with hundreds of thousands of Tokens each. We only discovered this the next
morning when our daily database status report said that the money supply had
quintupled overnight.
18. In the years since then …
• Vast expansion in graphical capability
• Vast reduction in barriers to building
• Major success stories:
– World of Warcraft
– Linden Labs
– Habbo Hotel
• Better gameplay, more sophisticated digital asset
systems, the emergence of gold farming, the
emergence of secondary market systems (player to
player commerce)
• But not a lot of change in the fundamentals of things
19. Key Terms
• Virtual Currency
• Digital Good
• Item
• Primary Market
• Secondary Market
20. Outline
• Who Am I
• Virtual Worlds: A Primer
• Virtual Economies and Real Economies
• Making it Concrete: The Velocity of Money
• Moore’s Law Kicks Ass
21. Very Seductive Analogy
• At the “artifact level”, Virtual Economies and
“Real Economies” share some common
elements
– Currency – medium of exchange, unit of
account, store of value
• Real and virtual currencies are all of these
– Items and instances that get bought and sold
• Whether the asset is purely digital or purely
physical, there are still things being bought and sold.
• At a deeper level, the analogy is misleading
22. Difference: Circulation
• Real world: Money
doesn’t escape; it
circulates
• Virtual world: “Cash
in”, “cash out”, and the
idea of “sources” and
“sinks”
23. Virtual World Economic Circulation
Cash Cash
In Out
Vectors Transactions Vectors
(some player to player, mostly
player to world)
Other
Sinks
(simple case)
24. Virtual World Economic Circulation
Cash Cash
In Out
Vectors Transactions Vectors
(some player to player, mostly
player to world)
Other
Sinks
Gray Secondary Currency
Market Exchanges Exchanges
25.
26.
27. Difference: Types of Currencies
• Real world: currencies mostly
interchangeable, via foreign exchange
• Virtual world: “loyalty currencies”, “earned
currencies”, “reward currencies” and “paid
currencies”
• Foreign Exchange behaves very very
differently
28.
29. Difference: Control of Purchase Points
and Distribution
• Hard for people to trade virtual currencies and
items outside of virtual world
– “Gray markets” do exist, but lots of friction
• Means that you can actually have different
foreign exchange rates
– Based on bulk volumes
– Based on user demographics
30. Difference: Tangibility
• In real economies, most goods are subject to
laws of physics
– They’re in a place, cannot be transported easily.
• Up until very recently, most money was
subject to the laws of physics
• In virtual economies ….
31. Difference: Pricing Discrimination
• Real world:
– Location-based differentiation, coupon-based
differentiation, …
– But the cost of money is pretty similar (except rich
people can borrow at better rates)
• Virtual world:
– Arbitary criteria on all pricing
32. Difference: Scarcity
Scarcity (also called paucity) is the problem of
infinite human needs and wants, in a world of
finite resources. Society has insufficient
productive resources to fulfill those wants and
needs. Alternatively, scarcity implies that not
all of society's goals can be pursued at the
same time; trade-offs are made of one good
against others. In an influential 1932
essay, Lionel Robbins defined economics as
quot;the science which studies human behaviour
as a relationship between ends and scarce
means which have alternative uses.quot;
33. Difference: Opportunity Cost
Opportunity cost or economic opportunity
loss is the value of the next best alternative
foregone as the result of making a decision.[1]
Opportunity cost analysis is an important part
of a company's decision-making processes but
is not treated as an actual cost in any financial
statement.[2] The next best thing that a person
can engage in is referred to as the opportunity
cost of doing the best thing and ignoring the
next best thing to be done.
34. Difference: Comparative Advantage
In economics, comparative advantage refers to
the ability of a person or a country to produce
a particular good at a lower marginal cost and
opportunity cost than another person or
country. It is the ability to produce a product
most efficiently given all the other products
that could be produced.[1][2] It can be
contrasted with absolute advantage which
refers to the ability of a person or a country to
produce a particular good at a lower absolute
cost than another.
35. Famous Economists of the 1800’s
• Adam Smith: invisible hand, analogy of the pin
factory
• David Ricardo: comparative advantage, the
evolution of trading patterns and the
international economic order
• Karl Marx: the workers control the means of
production!
36. Big Important Question
• Virtual and Real Economies have the same
artifacts
– Means that the measurements you can make for
real economies can be made for virtual economies
– And the people are the same
• But Virtual and Real Economies have very
different fundamental underlying structures
• So what are the right metrics for Virtual
Economies?
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42. Outline
• Who Am I
• Virtual Worlds: A Primer
• Virtual Economies and Real Economies
• Making it Concrete: The Velocity of Money
• Moore’s Law Kicks Ass
43. The Fundamental Question
• How do I measure the health of an economy?
• One answer is “an economy is healthy if people
are buying stuff”
• If the world is closed and all money is recycled,
then you can talk about “how many times a dollar
is used in one year (on average)”
– Note this assumes transactions are mostly
commensurable and involve physical money
• How do you calculate that?
44.
45. I have never met with any attempt to
determine in any country the average rapidity
of circulation, nor have I been able to think of
any means whatever of approaching the
investigation of the question, except in the
inverse way. If we knew the amount of
exchanges effected and the quantity of
currency used, we might get by division the
average numbers of times the currency is
turned over; but the data, as already
stated, are quite wanting.
Jevons, 1875
46.
47. Measuring Velocity of Money
• Tons of effort expended on this
• And lots and lots of recent newspaper articles
– The velocity of money slowed late last year
– The “multiplier” effect is a related statistic.
• Take GDP
• Divide by Money Supply
48.
49. Key Point
• This is one of the most analyzed macro-
economic statistics out there
• The original idea: try to figure out if people
are buying stuff, was good
• The execution was definitely colored by the
environment:
– How do you do that in 1875?
– Even now, how do you do that?
50. Outline
• Who Am I
• Virtual Worlds: A Primer
• Virtual Economies and Real Economies
• Making it Concrete: The Velocity of Money
• Moore’s Law Kicks Ass
51. Reminder: I’m not Unbiased
• I work for a company that does this for a living
55. Twofish Architecture
R900 Twofish Elements
OLTP
ETL defined
using Kettle
R900 Mondrian Highly Customized
OLAP (open source OLAP) Version of OpenI
56. The Point
• Perfect Data
– Twofish Elements is, essentially, a highly scalable accounting
system that tracks millions of accounts simultaneously
– We also store user demographic information and have a virtual
title system (“items”)
• WOW Hardware
– 128G of Ram with 4 cores is now around $10K
• The BI Revolution
– Pentaho is a couple million lines of code we didn’t have to write
• (and, of course, some clever people writing some very
clever code)
57. Velocity of Money Revisited
• “Single Account Coin Velocity”
– If I model a user’s account as a FIFO queue, how long
does it take before they start to spend money they
deposit today?
• I can compute this for each and every user in my
world
– For each and every currency they have
• And then I can aggregate by demographics (or
across the world)?
– What’s the velocity of money for women, aged 30 to
39, in California?
58. Sam Walton’s Dream
• Item Sales, broken down by
– User demographic
– Time
– Type of Item
– …..
59. Ben Bernanke’s Dream
• Accurate macroeconomic
statistics
(and then we can drill down by type of sink/source etcetera)
60.
61.
62.
63. Dave McClure’s Dream
• Automatically run tests;
adjust prices and exchange
rates to maximize revenue
????
(not available in this quarter)