In recent years, extensive studies of many interesting aspects of virtual community dynamics promoted a better understanding of this area. One of the most challenging problems facing builders of virtual communities is the design of incentive mechanisms that can ensure user participation. However, running virtual community experiments in the real world is expensive, and requires a great deal of motivation from users. We believe that simulation can help study the impact of incentive mechansisms on the dynamics of participation. There are two apporaches for simulation that can be used: system dynamics approach and agent based approach. We explore both approaches in the context of AnyLogic and compare their advantages and disadvantages.