The homicidal resource curse in EVE Online

Details

Supervisors

Delvenne, Jean-Charles

Faculty

Ecole polytechnique de Louvain

Degree label

Master [120] : ingénieur civil en mathématiques appliquées

Abstract

In this thesis, we use data from the game EVE Online to find evidence of the homicidal resource curse even in a game environment. We identify which variables we must look at, and how to normalize them. We then prove that some resource are more important than others, but that no resource tend to have a negative impact on violence, and only cheap and simple resources tend to have almost no impact on violence. The results show that violence can be seen as a convex function of the amount of resource, and that the presence of security had a major impact on the expression of the resource curse.