Diablo III and its surprising link to Venezuela
Thomas Hibbert
Video games.We all love them. From terrible mobile games to the top-notch
Zelda series, and finally to adult games which have more to do with economics
than they do with the devil. Actually, we should probably look into that.
Diablo III is the third installment in the popular Diablo series. It is a 17+ game
[obviously I don’t play this myself, what with me only being 13] where you
roleplay in an online world, earn gold and defeat monsters in a hellish
landscape, while sporadically coming into contact with demons and even the
devil himself. But what could be scarier than the devil? I’ll tell you what:
economics and finance, and not even the worst demon could fix this mess.
Instead, you would have to bring in the help of - shudder - an economist to sort
out this crazy fiasco.
Inflation is a rise in prices, as things become
more expensive, and you can buy less over
time. Hyperinflation is the same; but instead,
the value plummets, and people stop
counting money. Instead, they start weighing
it. Money in the game works like this. There
are sinks, and there are faucets. The faucets
are what generates gold, such as doing
quests, defeating monsters, and selling to
NPCs. Sinks remove currency from the game,
in the form of reaping weapons and buying
new ones from NPCs, such as the blacksmith,
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