> That is not what mudflation is at all.
No, I think it is more that you are used to the more straight-jacketed post-EverQuest form of the term rather than the original circumstances that gave rise to the term in the first place. MUDs didn't have "expansion packs" or DLC. The original form of the term had more to do with infinitely printable currency ("grindable" drops from game spawned enemies) and its effects in trying to balance a larger economy. EverQuest did help to popularize the term in the way its expansions packs particularly badly handled that inflation, but those expansion pack balancing woes were never the cause of that inflation, only a symptom. The cause was (and has always been) "grinding" and "grinding mindset".
> Maybe try telling them that they should look into the economy of Animal Crossing
That is exactly what I'm trying to do. We have some good science from videogames but not enough of it. Dismissing videogame economies as "toy universes" that don't matter doesn't help science. Animal Crossing has inadvertently demonstrated some of the symptoms of that economic question. Imagine if a game was designed to intentionally simulate that as a lab experiment.
I don't think we're going to agree on that, but I think on the spectrum of "macroeconomics isn't a science because it has no laboratories and isn't reproducible in experiments" to "macroeconomics is a science but its laboratories are videogames and we have under studied them and especially aren't building enough reproducible studies", I am happy to be on the side of it that sees hope in better macroeconomic science even if it isn't currently taken seriously enough.