Funny how reluctant Meep's population is to any sort of change.
Anyways, I think this is a good idea. It would add a level of professionalism that I believe newcomers would enjoy. Also, I believe that it would serve as a necessary counter to towns in that new players and old alike would be able to start something that they can relate to, and tangibly interact with, without the 150,000 meebles for a town.
The idea would also create another level of community, much like in the real world. In our everyday lives we have 4 distinct types of interactions: family / home, community, work / school , and friends. And whilst family life is hard to replicate on a Minecraft server, the other 3 are completely reasonable, however 'work life' seems to be missing. Adding this would add another vital interaction into our Meep 'culture', which may prove to bolster player retention.
Other than the very important community aspect this idea brings to the table, I believe that this idea would help people diversify themselves from the standard resource-gathering/mall building mindset (this, of course, being very important in terms of economic development) , as it would create competition as more people have access to knowledge of said companies. With that said, implementation would require that said knowledge is readily available. This is how I believe said knowledge could be accessed.
/c [ Company Name ]
*These lines pull up in standard yellow server text*
[ Company Name ]
1-2 line 'about' blurb for the company.
[ Owner Name ]
[ Employee(s)]
Whether or not they're hiring (perhaps link to a forum page if so)
Bank Balance
(time frame) Expenses (i.e: how much they cumulatively dish out to employees and how often)
Stock Name (read below)
These would each be changed with individual /c commands
Furthermore in terms of economics, I believe that this idea would greatly help people create the 'player-made stock market' that has been attempted many times to no avail. This is simply because of the professional nature of such a change and the ease of access to information regarding the companies people want to invest in.
Finally, I believe that this idea would be good if coupled with these points: 1) perhaps an owner would be able to make it so employees are only payed after 'x' amount of time played, with a minimum of 15 mins (I believe that this could greatly affect player retention) ;
2) $25,000 start-up fee instead of the author's 15k ; 3) either a daily tax on companies and/or an income tax not representing more than 5% (I personally don't agree with this but I figure I should compromise with you inflation-fearing peoples) ; 4) perhaps a new land usage within towns dedicated for companies ( this may even create a more realistic plot retail market, as companies would prefer their HQ's to be near the spawn of important towns ).
Sure, we could work on mini-games, and I don't want to undercut the importance of that, however something new and interesting like this idea is something I believe we should be reaching for most to bring a fresh and exciting new face to Meepcraft! Thanks for reading if you made it this far.
