Been thinking about game theory stuff (and I have a book, but busily reading PKD and Expressive Processing. But on the drive in to work today (yeah, working post-tday, commute == awesome) got to musing. What if we applied game theory techniques to health care and insurance payment? I’m sure there is already some of that going on with their complex models, but I have to wonder if they could come up with some sort of auction model or whatnot to pay for treatments based on the expected outcomes of those treatments. For example, say a person gets a diagnostic test (like, perhaps, a mam…oh I don’t want to get into that argument!) and that test resulted in identifying disease early and allowing for a successful treatment. The payment for the next patient wishing to get that test should be reimbursed more. If the test, on the other hand, resulted in a false positive or caused ill effects (infection, induced cancer, etc) the reimbursement rate should be lowered for the next patient. If the framework was clear and open, folks would realize that it’s not that the insurance company is trying to screw them out of a test or treatment, it’s just that they are going to be expected to pay out of pocket for a test based on how likely the test will result in positive outcomes.
Or reverse, everyone pays for everything (or a high percentage) out of pocket, and is reimbursed based on their individual outcome. Think your test is worth taking? Pony up the $ and let’s see.
Market forces for game balance – Many folks complain that power X is overpowered or power Y is underpowered. Balance of powers has got to be the most difficult aspect of designing any game, whether it be a card, board, or computer game where multiple players compete. One easy solution to this is to provide a marketplace model to powers. MMO’s have auction houses for equipment, why not allow everyone to start with a blank slate and every power is obtained through an item that can be traded/sold away? Players level by getting a lower-quality item and trading up, say by auctioning off multiple lower-value items for one higher-value item. Give everyone a tiny amount of $ per hour played; newbie players can use it to buy the lowest-rung goodies.
Limited level range for quests – I played Runes of Magic (finally stopped when they wanted to do 3 patches in a row…Um, nah!) and the lower-level quests are supposed to be solved by teams…But higher-level players would come by and offer help (for free, or for pay) and make the quests uninteresting and extremely short. Warhammer Online got this right, to some extent, by having tiers and higher-tier players can’t fight lower-tier players, but they can help with lower-tier quests.
Or have quest difficulty be a function of who’s playing the quest – D&D Online does this, sorta…Running solo? The quest is scaled down. Want to play harder, scaled up. But you select how hard you’d like to play and the rewards are scaled as well. Not too bad…
Streaming clients – Warhammer Online just started this…So now you only need download 1GB. 1GB? Sheesh. Should be able to get that down to 100MB, if you ask me.