Understanding economies with video games?

Reuters has an article about a research study being conducted to study virtual economies in video games. Now these games are not your Pac-man's or even the newer Halo varieties. These games are massively mutli-player worlds that connect thousands of game players from all over the world in a virtual universe. A lot of these massive online games, also know as MMORPGs (massive multi-player online role-playing games) have an intricate trading economy included as part of the game itself. One researcher, Edward Castronova, is studying the economies of these games and how it compares to real world economies.

These massive online games can be a seen as a model of real world implementation. One thing Operations Research analysts need is data and these types of online games could provide a lot of information. Perhaps an augmented reality could be modeled in these games to provide experimentation and research into areas of Operations Research. One example is in the case of sampling plans. Often times inspecting and sampling requires destruction of the item to be inspected. Sampling plans can reduce that destruction requirement but what if no destruction is needed at all. Perhaps a simulated world could "produce" the said item and data could be taken from this simulated production process.

On a different note the gaming business (which is a multi-billion dollar market) could learn some from Operations Research work. The mathematics involved in developing these massive games is getting more and more complicated. The games are more and more relying on physics, statistics, predictive analysis, and optimized outcomes.

I've talked about having fun in Operations Research before yet this could be on a much bigger scale and could be research focused. I'm not the first one to think of Operations Research and virtual gaming. Paul Jensen, of Jensen's Operations Research Models and Methods website fame, has a Second Life implementation of his popular instructional website.

Free software and Open Source tools for Operations Research

Operations Research is growing in many areas in our industrial society. Organizations are seeking experts in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering in a significant rate. These organizations are understanding the enormous potential that these analysts can contribute. The primary tools of the Operations Research specialist use to be proprietary or require a large software development team. Now these tools are entering the public domain known as free software or open source software.

Free software , or Open Source, is a software development movement started mostly in academia and is slowly moving toward industry. The idea is that computer software should be freely available to decipher, reuse, modify, and improve. Since the code that the software is built on is free than it is available for anyone to download and use to their advantage. This can have a huge advantage in terms of licensing and software costs. Also implementation can be rapid. Since free software is public domain than there is also a community available to support the software. A lot of times this community can be very large.

Examples of Operations Research tools in the public domain include:

GLPK, or Gnu Linear Programming Kit. Developed by the GNU project. From the website "...intended for solving large-scale linear programming (LP), mixed integer programming (MIP), and other related problems. It is a set of routines written in ANSI C and organized in the form of a callable library." IBM Developerworks devoted a tutorial on the GLPK.

Paul Jensen's Operations Research Models and Methods is a collection of Excel Add-Ins for various Operations Research and statistical analysis. The website includes great documentation and is a great resource for learning about Operations Research tools.

SimPy, a discrete event simulation language developed in the Python programming language. Excellent tool to perform simulation analysis. The website also includes tutorials and documentation.

These are just some to name a few. Brady Hunsaker has a great website with a collection of valuable open source tools of free and open source software for Industrial Engineers and Operations Research.