Why Are In-Game Economies So Hard To Get Right?

Many MMOGs use in-game player markets to engage the mercantile instincts of players, and as a means of re-allocating resources. Some games support in-game markets fairly informally, such as Everquest, where all that is provided is a text chat system and a user interface and transaction model for trading goods/currency subject to the inspection and approval of both parties. Other games that feature markets more prominently, such as EVE-Online, provide more abstract tools for managing in-game auctions and ability to obtain a range of historical market data.

Why do games support, in varying degrees, market activities? A narrow view is that they provide a sub-game that players enjoy playing on the side. A more liberal view is that they provide a sub-game that players enjoy AND that somehow complements play across the other game aspects. In other words there are synergies between it and the larger game. So, for example, players can hawk goods and trade for new rare armor in EverQuest without having to "go find the spawn" themselves: thus the markets arguably serve as a means of broadening the benefit and experience (of use of the new armor) amongst all players.

These two roles are not necessarily incompatible. Consider a "two-tiered" MMOG design (short activities for casual players embedded in a larger game requiring more time) where the market can be played on either level. For example, Eve-Online supports a range of "trader" opportunities - sized by the trade network and basket traded.

The question then to ask is this: why do in-game economies for most MMOGs appear to be so terribly designed? Why do most MMOGs have markets incapable of functioning long-term without considerable external intervention? Most appear as rickety contraptions that lead to in-game instabilities from hyper-inflation and deflation. Worse still, most attempts by MMOGs to address the shortcomings seem aimed to manage the symptoms: they use item "drains", price-fixing, and market segmentation to manage the effects. But fundamentally the system is very often broken and the players know it.

A (too) simple answer might be that "MMOGs can live without 'em" - players do play MMOGs with broken markets in increasing numbers and so maybe a well-functioning MMOG economy only contributes marginally to the player experience. Said in another way: "an MMOG typically does not strive to be a market simulator."

On the other hand, perhaps there are real impacts which hobble MMOGs going forard - gee, they could do so much better, if they worked? One might claim three impacts resulting from in-game market malfunctions:

1.) A less interesting sub-game (market) for the player
2.) A less useful sub-game (market) to the game as a whole.
3.) It encumbers the game developers with additional work.

(1.) - Is hard to quantify and depends on the role of the market in the game as a whole. However, it doesn't seem unreasobable to believe that a malfunctioning sub-game is likely to impact the overall virtual world illusion.

(2.) - For many MMOGs it appears that the markets serve as a useful "lubricant" for exchanging goods among players in-game so they can broaden their experiences. But why are players largely responsible for implementing trades amongst themselves? Why not just rely upon the Artificial Intelligence (e.g. NPCs) to act as brokers, always? Does having players trade among themselves add some benefit to the broader game?

(3.) - Speaks to the already considerable effort that engage MMOG development teams when it comes to tweaking and re-balancing games (tuning item "drains" etc.) in response to perturbing new content (patches, GM events) or just drift over time. The alternative is to have a system that can "right itself" using mechanisms that are transparent to the player.

So. Why are virtual economies hard to "get right" for most MMOGs? And how important is it, really?

Comments

[Nick Douglas]

1.

Can you qualify this with examples?

[Nick Douglas]

2.

By the way, I personally find AI an increasingly appetizing solution. As NPCs become more realistic, they will satisfy more needs that human players cannot (due to avarice, altruism and other human qualities that hinder rational gameplay and thus a working "Newtonian" economy).

[Hellinar]

3.

My thoughts on this are shaped by a couple of years of playing A Tale in the Desert, mostly in the role of a trader or banker. I’ve also played some combat oriented MMORPGs like EQ and DAoC.

MMORPG economy designers tend to think in terms of the flow of platinum or gold in the game. But I suspect that many players are looking to be paid in other coin, more abstract benefits like fun or friendship. So gold based incentives don’t work so well. In a typical MMORPG there are no essentials like food and shelter, or at least very minimal ones. I played EQ for more than a year with a string of characters who rarely had more than a few platinum to their names, and had lots of fun.

In a sense, the cost of goods in these game worlds is often negative. In ATITD you gain fun by making stuff, in EQ you gain fun by killing stuff. Selling the results is just icing on the cake. And the cost of sales is high. Finding people to sell to, pricing, and bargaining. The latter function makes quite a few people in western cultures uncomfortable and is unfun. So if you are measuring your net worth in fun, and you dislike trading, your wealth may be going down while your bank balances increases.

Giving stuff away in these worlds can be highly rewarding in a number of ways. In a potlatch economy sense of gaining status by giving, in establishing favors that will be returned later, and in feeling good about yourself and your role in the world. So designing the economy on the competitive market model may be missing the mark for a significant chunk of the players.

[Hellinar]

4.

My thoughts on this are shaped by a couple of years of playing A Tale in the Desert, mostly in the role of a trader or banker. I’ve also played some combat oriented MMORPGs like EQ and DAoC.

MMORPG economy designers tend to think in terms of the flow of platinum or gold in the game. But I suspect that many players are looking to be paid in other coin, more abstract benefits like fun or friendship. So gold based incentives don’t work so well. In a typical MMORPG there are no essentials like food and shelter, or at least very minimal ones. I played EQ for more than a year with a string of characters who rarely had more than a few platinum to their names, and had lots of fun.

In a sense, the cost of goods in these game worlds is often negative. In ATITD you gain fun by making stuff, in EQ you gain fun by killing stuff. Selling the results is just icing on the cake. And the cost of sales is high. Finding people to sell to, pricing, and bargaining. The latter function makes quite a few people in western cultures uncomfortable and is unfun. So if you are measuring your net worth in fun, and you dislike trading, your wealth may be going down while your bank balances increases.

Giving stuff away in these worlds can be highly rewarding in a number of ways. In a potlatch economy sense of gaining status by giving, in establishing favors that will be returned later, and in feeling good about yourself and your role in the world. So designing the economy on the competitive market model may be missing the mark for a significant chunk of the players.

[Oracomm]

5.

>Why Are In-Game Economies So Hard To Get Right?

Two Major reasons that I can think of:

(1) Games economics are based on 'Wants' vs 'Needs'

in my days of UO and currently in SWG... I didn't NEED things... I only got them if I WANTED them. I didn't NEED food to live, I didn't NEED a house/shelter to live in or didn't NEED clothing to wear, as three basic examples. I only got those if I WANTED them.

Real world economics are based on Both NEEDS and WANTS....people need to buy food, shelter and clothing... and most people would like all the extra perks in life. ie like a car, DVDs, computers, etc. This drives the economies.

In games tho we do not NEED these things thus the economies are off... once you got all your WANTS you very really need to ever replace them.

(2) Second reason.... Most people consider it "Just a Game" and tend to play it like a game. I seen some things that happen in these games, like someone walking up and just handing over 10,000 credits.. How often does that happen to you in Real Life? It doesn't!

When people don't place a value on their credits, gold, platinum or what have you, beacuse its just a game, then they have no real value and thus the economy just doesn't work like some of us would want it to.

[DivineShadow]

6.

I would phrase it all as single question: "How would you make the economy of a virtual world deliver more fun to its players?"

The answer will be different for true-to-life simulations than for role-playing games.

The perception that "Its broken" seems to come from comparing the way real-world economies work to the way a particular VW's economy operates. It does make sense for them to operate in familiar ways, so as to be a familiar mechanic and flatten the learning curve. But why would it be exactly the same when the goals and contributing factors of these two are not the same? It would be better if we compared the economies of VWs with similar designs, and not always hold them against the real-world system - especially if your mind considers the real world economy to be axiomatically "correct".

[Bruce Boston]

7.

This question is so huge, but just to throw a thought in;

My guess is that MMOG economies 'feel broken' because by definition all economies are broken.

The old joke is that "Harry Truman got so tired of 'either/or' predictions on the economy that he once cried out for a 'one-handed economist.'" http://money.cnn.com/2003/12/23/news/economy/yir_economy/
I think that feeling is as prevalent today as it ever was, despite our access to AI, supercomputers and terabyte databases.

In fact, I'm wondering how we would know when an economy was 'not broken'. My guess is that we would all need to have near perfect information, before most people stopped thinking that an economy was 'broken'.

Near perfect information of what everyone needs, near perfect information of what everyone wants, what everyone's abilities are, what everyone's values are, how to best address every need and want without producing more than what has a marginal benefit. But even then, what happens if you would prefer to not work and just play? Wouldn't an economy with near perfect information be able to figure out how to make work fun for everyone, in fact, by understanding everyone's needs and abilities near perfectly wouldn't an economy be able to decide the near perfect mix?

At the same time, in a 'working' economy with near perfect information would everyone be equal or would everyone be perfectly compensated for their abilities? Would we all be perfectly rich or perfectly poor? etc, etc, etc And, this still includes the assumption that all the resources to meet all the needs and wants of everyone actually exist within any economy. (Which very may well be the biggest challenge for virtual economies, in that they simply don't have the resources to meet all of their participant's needs and wants.)

Personally, at the end of the day I think Economics is the social science of hard choices. I would even go so far as say that the study of economics is only interesting as long as there are hard choices to be made, with trade-offs, marginal costs, marginal benefits, scarcity, changing needs and imperfect information.

As such as we continue our never-ending quest to near perfect information, Economies may very well always 'feel broken' by definition.

-bruce

[Nick Douglas]

8.

Real-world economies have to be broken. If we're all rich, no one will mop the floors. Society runs smoothly because poor people do the dirty work.

This happens in MMORPGs and thus serves as evidence that those MMORPGs have healthy (read: realistic) economies.

As for needs: The Discworld MUD, a classic text-based MMORPG, involves some needs: clothing keeps the weather from knocking one's hitpoints down; torches keep one from stumbling in the text-based darkness ("you see absolutely nothing. exits: you can't see").

Note that reputation economies (which can be found in meatspace as well as online) can produce the same effects. For example, Friendster serves as a reputation economy, albeit a messy one.

[Randy Maslow]

9.

The answer is YES, it is important to get virtual economies "right". Or, more accurately, to get them "not wrong". By that I mean that it is important to the health of the MMOG to maintain the value of the virtual currency. Inflation detracts from the experience of the game for the subscriber-it devalues his/her time spent in the game as it increases the prices of desirable virtual property. What players want is for the currency to maintain its value. Currency maintains its value in a growing economy, and a strong currency is indicative that the interest in the game and the economics of the game remain high.

The reason it is hard to accomplish this is that the game developers do not generally recognize that the auxiliary or out-of-game markets influence the in-game economy. Until developers recognize that their virtual worlds are not independent economies but actually linked not only to each other but to real world currencies as well, controlling the circulation of currency in the virtual economy is an effort made in a half-blind fashion at best.

The effects of poor game economy management can be disastrous, and there are many examples from the recent MMOG past. The biggest problem facing virtual economies is duping, or counterfeiting of virtual currencies. Dupes create so much excess currency that currency value grossly deflates, prices soar, and players are faced with the same trauma that we would face if the cost of gasoline increased 500% in a day. Players get frustrated, they can no longer acquire items they want, they sense that the instability in the currency means the game is "broken", the game becomes less fun, they quit playing.

The game companies have more influence over such things than they think. For example, we have found that the amount of currency built into the MMOG through the treasure system affects the degree to which some players and professional players (farmers) can and will produce goods and currency to meet the demand for such goods and virtual currency on the part of other players. When the treasure system fails to get enough currency circulating in the virtual economy to allow the redistribution system meet the demand, market forces tend to fill the voids. That's when the dupers are incentivized to fill that void. And recent experience in many MMOGs has shown that its awfully difficult to prevent duping by technical means. There are always hackers that are just too good, so absent some ability to choke off distribution of duped currency, this will be a recurring problem for the virtual economies of MMOGs.

In our experience, we have found that we can take actions to stabilize currency prices on any given server in a MMOG. We can and do work to try to ensure that supply and demand for currency remains in balance on that server and that in-game fluctuations in the economy, such as currency sinks, do not apply too much pressure to one side of the equation. It is possible to effect this influence where we have enough scale, which we have achieved in several of the games which we service. But it is so much easier to accomplish this with the active participation of the game developer. Stable currency values are good for the health of the games and for the perception of the health of the games, and this in our experience keeps subscribers happy and playing the games. Good for them, good for the game developers, and good for us.

Randy Maslow
Executive Vice President and General Counsel
IGE U.S., LLC

[Richard Bartle]

10.

Virtual economies are at a singular disadvantage with respect to real ones, in that people can easily leave them.

In real life, if you're poor then you can't simply go somewhere else where you're not poor. In a virtual world, you can - there are many other virtual worlds out there. This gives a release valve to virtual economies that real economies don't have, which screws up any supply/demand curve specific to an individual world.

The fact that virtual world economies are so small that they can be gouged by dedicated groups of players doesn't help, either.

Richard

[Bill MacKenty]

11.

What a great article! As a diehard MUSH fanatic, scale and scope have been the 2 issues which seem to interfere with working econ.

As a single trader (or person) it's a reasonably easy affair: produce -> sell -> buy something else -> produce more.

But when we start looking at factoring in the virtual equivalent of Alan Greenspan, I quickly begin to see problems with virtual econ.

It doesn’t scale well. Modeling millions of merchants buying and selling (after all, we must make that assumption - players are effecting a much larger world than the one around them) tends to screw with systems I've tried.

Not withstanding, the comments and ideas expressed prior to this are spot-on.

[Tobold]

12.

Economics is all about how to attribute limited resources. MMORPG have difficulties getting it right, because many resources simply aren't limited. There is no central bank keeping a thumb on the total amount of money in circulation. If people need more money, they will simply turn to those areas of the game that bring the most money. Farming Hill Giants for platinum, in EQ terminology.

Most MMORPG suffer of "mudflation", which is actually a form of deflation, not inflation. If a certain mob drops the "sword of uberness" which is comparatively good to the other swords in the game, that mob will be permanently camped. More and more swords of uberness enter the economy. Most games not having wear and tear of items, the number of swords of uberness in the economy is growing. Meanwhile the demand for the sword levels out sooner or later. That results in falling prices for the sword.

[MM]

13.

Wouldn't much of the problem with virtual economies be solved by in-game price hikes?

When the amount of cash in the system makes cash less valuable, then raise the price of goods in stores and increase the starting money for new players. In the real world, we increase minimum wage when the price of living goes up. Why wouldn't this work online?

By the way, I made a blog :) It's called Virtually Existant. Some of you might find it interesting.

[Zelnox]

14.

I believe why NPCs are kept in low number to handle market issues is because the games are "massively-multiplayer". The developers want to generate as much player-to-player interactions as possible.

[Brask Mumei]

15.

I side with the "They aren't broken" camp.

Or, more precisely, I'm not sure how one defines a "broken economy"? A lot of people are focussing on currency - but surely there exists an economy in a barter-only society?

My understanding of a working economy would be one in which the players are willing to trade. Thus, a good indicator would be volume of trade in-world. Another indicator of a good economy would be that trades are efficient. In other words, if I need Item X, and there is somewhere in the world where an Item X is available, I should be able to effect the change.

So, rather than focussing on perennial currency devaluation and mudflation (which are not signs of a broken economy, but more signs of increased prosperity!), we should ask:

Are valuable items being junked rather than traded?

Are people stockpiling items for fear of not being able to find them, or as a result of not being able to trade them?

As for the whole AI angle? Each AI you add is like adding another player to the game, no? And each player continuously generates value by playing, no? Thus you are merely INCREASING the rate of value generation, and hence the standard of living, and hence contributing to mudflation.

- Brask Mumei

[Bruce Boston]

16.

Nick> This happens in MMORPGs and thus serves as evidence that those MMORPGs have healthy (read: realistic) economies.

Yes, totally agree. While any economy can be perceived by some to be broken, that doesn't mean there are not some that are healthy. There are obviously some models that are much healthier than others.

Randy> The answer is YES, it is important to get virtual economies "right". Or, more accurately, to get them "not wrong". By that I mean that it is important to the health of the MMOG to maintain the value of the virtual currency.

I have to agree. While getting an economy "right" may be impossible, making sure you get them 'not wrong' is vital.

I also agree with the basic assertion that healthy economies start with healthy currencies. However, I think one of the challenges is that unhealthy currency practices are often much more popular in the short-run. I'm often reminded of many of the challenges that Raph went through at UO. http://www.legendmud.org/raph/gaming/economy.html

Richard> Virtual economies are at a singular disadvantage with respect to real ones, in that people can easily leave them.

Again, I am not sure if this is true, as I don't think that VW economies map well to national economies but are closer to city economies. When we look at a vacation economy like Las Vegas or Orlando, etc, I think we will actually see participation rates much lower than you see in VWs like EverQuest. The median annual time spent in the Las Vegas economy is probably in the range of 48-72hrs, where the annual median for EverQuest is more likely 2 or 3 times that.

Nick> Real-world economies have to be broken. If we're all rich, no one will mop the floors. Society runs smoothly because poor people do the dirty work.
Richard> In real life, if you're poor then you can't simply go somewhere else where you're not poor.

So, I think that this is a very odd concept, simply that economies require poverty to be healthy, while at the same time, we would expect that to the extent an economy is healthy we would not have poverty.

Not to change the subject too much, but I think that one of the reasons that academics and governments are going to be increasingly look at virtual worlds for new economic models is the fact that real world economies are going to have the same 'design' challenges that VWs have today.

Take a country like Japan, where you have an extremely high education level. They are facing this very problem of trying to figure out who's going to 'mop the floors'. They even have a term for the jobs no one wants to do, they are called The 3k jobs (kitanai: dirty, kitsui: tough, kiken: dangerous). In that economy we are seeing a huge increase in the use of robotic technology, which is a pretty good way to mop a floor.

At some point, I think VW economies are going to address bigger issues like how do economies work when 95% of the money supply is disposable income? (A place we, while not individually but as a society, are quickly approaching in RL) And predicting questions like, At that point will we still have poverty?

-bruce

[Dan Hunter]

17.

It's interesting but a related discussion has emerged at the same time as this thread, over at MUD-Dev. Try here for the starting post, and there's been a lot more since but it hasn't been indexed yet.

The discussion there is from game devs who are actually building these economic models. Interesting to see the degree of manual control necessary to keep things on track.

[magicback]

18.

Bruce, regarding Japan's 3K, other countries import labor. Japan seems to be unable to do so culturally. I don't think VWs have any problems with utilizing cheap labor.

Regarding high disposable income in VWs, we can have larger money sinks to reduce the % level. However, players will rant against it.

My key question on this issue is what were the designer's intention when they created the economic/crafting system? The "broken" evaluation should hinge on the answer.

For example, game X have Y number of trade skills. By design, the economy around the trade skills may be solid. And let us assume that the economy around the design is solid. Players will still say, with sound rational, that the economy is "broken" because trade skill Z is not included.

Example:
I can create a sword. A sword is made of X components. One of the component is a gem for the hilt. The gem is worth currently 8 coins while the whole sword is worth 10 coins. By some in-game factor the gem is now worth 12 coins. I want to take apart the sword to sell the gem. Can I? Great if the answer is yes. The economy is "broken" if the answer is no. Because that was the design.

Following this logic current VW economic issues such as mudflation, exploits, bugs are all part of the economic design given to the players. Players will maximize the utility of the design.

Following this logic, whether intentionally or not the economy is working as designed. It's just that they didn't design it to mirror real life.

Also, on a tangent point, has the RL economics of collectable card game (CCG) affect the expectations and activities of VW participants? It may be just my perceptions, but I think VW participants are more involved in the mercantile aspect of gaming as the result of the impact of CCGs.

Is this a major contributory factor in player behavior, and subsequent effects of VW economies?

Frank

[Nathan Combs]

19.

Nick wrote:
>Can you qualify this with examples?

My personal data points...

Everquest. Experience on team pvp servers: low-end non-perishables deflating to point where you couldn't give it away. Low-end perishables seemd to inflate wildly. Rare non-perishables was severely inflated or simply couldn't be touched with currency (had to barter).

Earth and Beyond. Small pool of goods you ended up really trading as they were introduced by storyline, and apparently for limited windows of time (before markets saturated - seemed to not drain). Most was stuff was NPC mediated (price controlled).

Dark Ages of Camelot. DAOC the first year it came out - trade was anemic. Seemed to me that problem was two fold: (A.) very little free working capital around to go buy things - cash drained heavily from system (I know a lot of games opt for this strategy -but they seemed a bit more gung ho about it); (B.) because items were level-banded it meant that the market was fragmented (smaller pool of buyers). Twinking may have been evil elsewhere in the game - but I don't think this helped the markets. I hear they have player vendors now - no data here.

Eve-Online. I'm still evaluating this. I've had some great insights from Dan at http://dislogue.dansch.net/ My feeling at the moment (tentative) is that the game manages the "staples" (price fixed, guaranteed supply) while allows more liberal trading of basic commodities (minerals) and discretionaries (big ships).

I recall stories about Ultima Online having problems with inflation (I played it only in passing). With GameSpy article - we see how UO tried to create a self-sustaining economy - but gave up going back to developer managed:

""It was very difficult to balance for a fun experience," recalls Ultima Online Producer Anthony Castoro, "and very taxing on the servers. As a result, UO changed its ecology system to be more developer specified." "

[http://www.gamespy.com/amdmmog/week5/index2.shtml]

I've heard some good things about SWG markets - no data here.

[DivineShadow]

20.

Randy: "We can and do work to try to ensure that supply and demand for currency remains in balance on that server and that in-game fluctuations in the economy, such as currency sinks, do not apply too much pressure to one side of the equation."

Interesting. If a venture finds a niche in a game's economy, it must over time evolve to adapt to a changing environment or ensure the conditions for its continued existence remain so by taking action to prevent its host environment from changing in ways that would shrink, eliminate, or stunt its growth. Or even better, once a certain point is reached the venture might manipulate the host environment to support a larger growth rate. ... Given sufficient size the venture can now branch branch out to other host environments where that niche might be smaller, then perform similar adaptations and environment manipulations to achieve maximum growth, then optimal size and keep moving on to other niches. Excellent model.

I'm sorry for the unsightly parallel here, but somehow I'm reminded of parasites that drive their hosts insane so the parasite can reproduce itself.

[Euphrosyne]

21.

I tend to think along Brask's "willing to trade=working economy" lines. All economies are broken, or rather none of them are...or rather, the fact that they aren't perfect is what allows them to work at all. Complete transparancy and perfect information for everyone would destroy the market as we understand it. There would be none of Bruce's hard choices left to make--when the market becomes a crystal rather than a fluid, the only remaining variable is redefining of personal priorities. There are no market choices left to make. This might be a workable system, but it wouldn't resemble Wall Street.

In response to one of Nathan's questions: "Why do most MMOGs have markets incapable of functioning long-term without considerable external intervention?"

Replace "MMOGs" with "nations" and the sentence still holds true. I don't know how economists define it, but when Greenspan "adjusts" interest rates, that's an external force as far as most individuals are concerned. Fluctuating currency exchange rates exert a (corrective?) pressure on national markets. As Randy implies, maybe developers should consider their actions analagous to the Federal Reserve, rather than that they are clumsily hacking the game economy from "outside". It might not be productive to regard the game economy as seperate and sovereign, and that adjusting the code or values is somehow a failure of original design.

In which case chasing after the fabled "self-sustaining economy" may be a chimera.

That said, there are of course better ways and worse ways to go about it :)

[Edward Castronova]

22.

I knew this thread was coming but I was on the road so I have missed most of it :/

Some thoughts:
I don't get the grammar that labels 'economy' with 'broken' or 'not broken.' Economies just are. Or, societies just are, and their institutions and practices achieve some goals and not others.

Example: inflation is largely irrelevant to most objectives we might have for an economy. It doesn't matter how many zeros are on the dollar bill. Relative prices (price of that Coke compared to price of my time = my wage) are all that matters. Money is just a unit of account. The only exception - and economists debate this hotly - is when inflation has some effect on investment and growth. Not clear to me that there's a connection between VW inflation and overall in-world economic activity.

Let's see, what else. Um, OK, so the goal of a VW economy is to provide the player with an enjoyable experience, period. I don't think our measures of RL economic health are viewed that way, but at their core, that's what theya re about too. The difference is, there's a lot more going on in the RL economy, especially as pertains to long-run / short-run issues. So one of the reasons you don't want hyperinflation in the RL economy is that it starts to dampen general confidence in government, and investment, and so on. Very long-run feedback effects. Worry about defaults, collapsing central banks, violent revolutions, etc. Also, inflation eats up fixed incomes and can impoverish people. In VWs, nobody cares about the poor, no fixed incomes, no central banks, no investment, etc., etc. So, inflation is much more tolerable.

Foreign trade imbalances are a different matter. For a coutnry like the US, trade deficits are really unimportant - its a small part of our economy, and anyway, it means that foreign people are giving us real goods in return for scraps of paper. So long as the scraps of paper (dollars) retain their purchasing power, we can keep playing this shell game forever.

Conversely, in a VW, foreign trade is a very serious issue. that's how I view eBay. Like the fellow who said the VW economy is like a city economy: i think of it as a small open-economy international trade and currency exchange model. the VW economy is tiny compared to the US dollar economy. the US dollar price of any good, including currency, is the 'price on the world market', and the internal price will always adapt to that. BB is always making that point: you have to keep an eye on the outside market.

now that is one kind of game design problem when the outside market is a huge amorphous mass of buyers and sellers. its another kind of problem when that market is in the hands of a single entity. we are moving from the former scenario to the latter. game design needs to adapt to that reality. generally, if a market is changing from being a competitive supply-and-demand market to a monopolistic one seller-many buyer market, well, its typically only a good outcome for that one seller. thats why we have anti-monopoly statutes.

indeed from a political perspective, i dont think any small open-economy country - think Trinidad - would be happy knowing that all dollar-based trade in its currency was commanded by one bank. in effect, whoever that bank is just became the country's Central Bank. And unlike the Central Banks we know and love (the Bank of England, the Federal Reserve), this central bank is private and for-profit. its not necessarily acting in the public interest at all. Not Alan Greenspan here; Sam Walton. Food for thought.

What to do? I personally think there are ways to control inflation in VWs without having immersion-breaking sinks and without having to rely on an outside central banker. But I still think that's a little bit off-focus.

The point of a VW economy is to create a personalyl satisfying experience for the player, by immersing her in a carefully-crafted fantasy environment within which she can play out scenarios that feel good. From that standpoint, all this monetary stuff is not very important. Its not inflation that's the problem: its unjust redistribution. eBay allows ostensibly poor characters to become rich overnight, without doing diddly in the VW. That tosses every element of challenge in the design out the window. Its no longer about achievign or succeeding or solving; it's just buying. Worse, every other player then feels like a dupe - unless he eBays himself. eBaying encourages itself and fundamentally distorts the nature of gameplay.

If using dollars to buy your way forward is the design, then the trade that makes it possible should be in the game. And if thats not the design, then the design needs to make sure that the incentives that lead to this outcome are taken care of. If you think its OK for one player to use extra dollars to buy in-world stuff from other characters, or whole accounts, then build it in. If you don't think its OK, then design it away:

1. Limit charitable giving.
2. Charge fees for item and money storage
3. Impose progressive taxes
4. Stop giving out treasure for every GD monster. Take hold of the money supply and keep your hands on it.
5. Shift from a durable-goods based economy to consumption goods. Yes, item decay.
6. Use level restrictions
7. Ban eBayed accounts. Buy eBay items, poison-pill them (gold that explodes for 5000 instant perma-DD to the bearer), sell them again. Use tactical media (bidding bots, feedback bots, etc) to disrupt the trade.
8. Change gameplay to render sweatshops impractical.

Some designers react to this with 'players will hate all that.' no they won't. a game without eBay can reall be a game. a game with eBay isn't a game, its Mall of America. those people in your eBayed world aren't game-players, they're shoppers. did you get into this business because you wanted to help a company attract shoppers and make a billion dollars? or because you wanted to make games?

This became a rant, but I've been forced to sit on some thoughts about eBaying for far too long.

[Richard Bartle]

23.

Edward Castronova>did you get into this business because you wanted to help a company attract shoppers and make a billion dollars? or because you wanted to make games?

What a brilliant highlighting of the issues!

Ted, you should rant more..!

Richard

[Christopher Armstrong]

24.

To all the people shouting "it's not broken!"::

Indeed, "brokenness" is irrelevant (or meaningless). But there is still a problem. When designing MVWs, we don't have to worry about making the economy "correct" or "not broken", but making it *self-maintaining*. The ideal state to maintain is "fun for the player", of course. Having to maintain (tweak) item/cash sinks, etc, is 1) a pain for the developers and 2) inherently centralized, which sucks. :-)

[magicback]

25.

I agree too.

Like I said: whether intentionally or not the in-game economy is working as designed. It's just that the designers didn't design it to mirror real life situations.

Chaos factors just disrupts and distorts how we envision VWs should be, and at internet speed.

Frank

[Euphrosyne]

26.

Christopher: "When designing MVWs, we don't have to worry about making the economy "correct" or "not broken", but making it *self-maintaining*. The ideal state to maintain is "fun for the player", of course. Having to maintain (tweak) item/cash sinks, etc, is 1) a pain for the developers and 2) inherently centralized, which sucks. :-)"

I agree that 1) it is a pain, and 2) centralization sucks in that it trends against player interest if the centralization is private and for-profit (which developer tweaking isn't, or shouldn't be). But I'm confused about this grail of "self-maintenance". I'm aware that VW and RL economies are different animals with different mechanics, but the implication here seems to be that VW economies should be self-maintaining "just like RW economies". RW economies, of course, aren't self-maintaining either. If by self-maintaining you mean having a capable AI relieve the developers of the burden of tweaking the system then that seems viable. But if you mean crafting a perfect system which can then run indefinitely without adjustment...I don't think there's any historical precedent for that. The programmers I know tend to have a strong unspoken ethic of "get the code right and let it run." This has worked in the past only because the code they were writing didn't have to deal with the irrationality and complexity of social exchange (ie economics). Developers could stop treating the (necessary) maintenance of their virtual economies as a annoyance or design flaw, and hire economists to treat it seriously...the implication of a single-currency economy with no extra-market adjustments would seem to be a static and perfectly predictable player base.

[Bruce Boston]

27.

Richard> Ted, you should rant more..!

I second that!

Edward Castronova> did you get into this business because you wanted to help a company attract shoppers and make a billion dollars? or because you wanted to make games?

Are you suggesting that gamers that are willing to spend more are less happy with the experience they are being provided? Or that, profit is a poor indicator of the level of market value being created?

Edward Castronova> Some designers react to this with 'players will hate all that.' no they won't.

I think this brings up an interesting question simply, how much value does open trade add to a MMORPG? IOW, would EQ be 'funner' if you had to 'earn' all your equipment? I understand that without in-game trade, eBay trade would switch to the character level, but not only is this trade much easier to track/deal with, but from what I have seen the NPCs in the game have a tendency to weed out the eBay bought characters. (I guess there is also the probability that PL services might be used more in such a world.)

Again, I not suggesting that a MMORPG do this on all servers, but maybe trying it on one might give some insight into how much value trade adds to the game. To make this experiment even more valuable, it would be interesting to also add a 'mall of america' server at the same time and see which was more popular.

-bruce

[Edward Castronova]

28.

Bruce> I think this brings up an interesting question simply, how much value does open trade add to a MMORPG?

I think that IS the interesting question. Clearly, eBaying exists because there are some things that users want to do, very badly, but they just can't do it within the game's parameters. In EQ, it's dragon raids. In DAoC, it's RvR. The Elder Game - with current designs, you can't do it unless you have lots and lots and lots of time. That's why dollar-based trading is there - people who have money but no time can use these markets to get ahead.

In my rant, I said that one response to this is just to shut down eBay. More enlightened would be to design the game so that people with money and no time can get to the elder game, but without it seeming unfair and without shattering the magic circle all to bits. Example: Let only higher-priced accounts be enabled for certain classes, specifically, a set of classes that can level up in their expertise area when the user is offline. There'd be tension among the players - some have leveled up the hard way, others the soft way - but that kind of tension could be turned into entertainment. Kind of like the way everyone in EQ hated druids before the PoK portals came in - those people were just lucky enough to have rolled druids, so they could travel anywhere, and solo-kite to gain XP at four times faster than anyone else too. I think so long as you make it clear that you are trying to accomodate the needs of the player base, and that everyone is free to choose either path, most players won't mind that, in effect, someone has chosen a high-money, low-time method. The critical thing is that the rules of the game are sitting there on the table, and everyone is playing by them.

From a profit perspective, these systems are also preferable because they satisfy the drives that lead to eBay entirely within the game. That means the publisher can effectively capture the eBay revenue, in the form of more subscriptions (all those low-time, high-money users).

If someone told me that a Tolkien game was coming out with some kind of higher-priced account with a Wizard class that could reach top level, guaranteed, in X months with only a few hours a month play time - I'd be all over that in a hurry. And I'm sure lots of other Moms and Dads would be too. We just don't have time to level up.

ANd I'd love to see a parallel worlds experiment, one world with level-buying being OK, the other not. It would be a great way to sort the player base in terms of their interests and approach to the game. Kind of like PvP and PvE servers - as a designer, you can use the shard system to give all your players the kind of world they would like most.

[DivineShadow]

29.

Bruce,

"I think this brings up an interesting question simply, how much value does open trade add to a MMORPG?"

Does is add value? Or change the nature of the game altogether?

"would EQ be 'funner' if you had to 'earn' all your equipment?"

It would just be different. As different as going to see a Hockey game is from going to see a Ballet show. EQ where you have to 'earn' your scars being the Hockey game and There/PE where you can buy your things being the Ballet show.

Different rules, different expectations, different audiences - The problem arises when you go in expecting a Hockey game and a guy in a tutu shows up.

[Tom Hunter]

30.

I was preparing a brilliant post in my mind and then got near the end of the thread and found that Ed had already written it. Instead you all get this:

I strongly agree that in VWs broken means: makes the game no fun to play and working means: adds fun to the game.

I will add that I think item decay is critical and (IMHO) its one of the big failures in the current set of popular games. In the real world things break and in combat they break all the time. It took 6 to 12 people to keep a knight in the field (not to support him in total, just to march him around) because his equipment needed constant care. Swords break, shields are actually a disposable item, armor gets dented, splits and falls apart, straps break and keeping it clean a major job as well. But in these games once I get a shield of low maintained it works forever. I know that there are potential problems with this but its a design issue, there are potential problems with everything in a VW.

Item decay is also good because it happens in the real world so its no surprise. It also adds an element of logistical challenge to the game that does not exist now but designed well could be fun. Unfortunately the current round of games have taught people that it does not happen in VWs but that could be changed.

I strongly disagree with Ed on the question of playtime vs. pay at least as described in his first (more ranting) post. Time equals money in the real world and the fact that it does not in VW is a bad thing, its a barrier to many people entering VWs and having fun.

Where does that fit into the broken economy question? Well again its a design issue. Right now the game economies are designed to reward people with time to spend generating VW economic activity. This seems to me (and I would love to see other more knowledgeable people weigh in on this) to create opportunities and incentive for people with the time to hack the economy as well.

I hope its possible to design an economy that rewards player who spend more of their time in RW economic activity without short changing those who choose to operate in the VW economy. I think there is the possibility of attracting new players to VWs for the first company to do this and maybe making a much better game.

As for the question of outside intervention I think it will always be necessary after all it happens all the time in the RW so why shouldn't it happen in VWs as well. I see two problems with managing economies, the first is that you can manage them in a way that causes pain and that is bad for the participants in the economy. The second is that you can attempt to solve the problems causing the pain deftly as one might argue was done in the last US recession or in a way that causes more pain as was clearly done in 1930s America. Since Adam Smith we have gotten much better at understanding and managing RW economies and I suspect the same thing will happen even faster (in less than 200 years) in VWs.

[magicback]

31.

Ted> The critical thing is that the rules of the game are sitting there on the table, and everyone is playing by them.

Can everyone play by the same rule? What sanctions can we impose that does act as a strong deterrent in an mostly anonymous environment?

DivineShadow> Different rules, different expectations, different audiences - The problem arises when you go in expecting a Hockey game and a guy in a tutu shows up.

Are external trading now a part of the MMORPG experience? Is there an expectation that you'll have to pay to get ahead?

Tom> Since Adam Smith we have gotten much better at understanding and managing RW economies and I suspect the same thing will happen even faster (in less than 200 years) in VWs.

Does 'will happen even faster' implies higher economic volatility and shock? Will we have a Black Monday event?

Oh, nevermind that most MMORPG are still treadmills to "fun." IMHO, this is much easier to do "right." There are more treadmill "experts" on the payroll than economic "experts".

Frank

[Randy Maslow]

32.

Ted Castranova>a game with eBay isn't a game, its Mall of America. those people in your eBayed world aren't game-players, they're shoppers.

I disagree that “those people….aren’t game players” or that players should not be able to buy the items they want for RL $. That this makes it “not a game” is a value judgment that tens of thousands of MMOG gamers disagree with. Some players play all day, everyday, and get the Sword of their Dreams. Others work 12 hours a day and come home and play two hours a night for entertainment and to hang with their EQ friends. That guy can never get the Sword of His Dreams and so he buys it. I think he has the right to do that and denying him that freedom unfairly limits his game playing experience and tilts the field in favor of those players who spend their entire lives in the game. He still thinks it’s a game and he’s having his version of “fun”.

Ted>now that is one kind of game design problem when the outside market is a huge amorphous mass of buyers and sellers. its another kind of problem when that market is in the hands of a single entity.

This is still a vibrant market with many competitors. Gaining a true monopoly is almost impossible, There are always scores of competitors rising up, undercutting the status quo. I don’t see the “monopolistic one-seller-many buyers market” that you fear. And by the way, it is not difficult to envision significant positive effects of scale—duping remains the biggest enemy of in-game economies, and the only effective way to keep the dupers out of the game may be a significant ability to choke off distribution of duped currency and dupers’ access to the player base. Only wish it were possible today—dupers have the ability to spoil the fun for everyone.

Ted> More enlightened would be to design the game so that people with money and no time can get to the elder game, but without it seeming unfair and without shattering the magic circle all to bits. Example: Let only higher-priced accounts be enabled for certain classes, specifically, a set of classes that can level up in their expertise area when the user is offline.

I think its unfair to limit the player’s choice and attempt to define the player’s enjoyment. Our experience is that most players do not want to buy a better character, suddenly coming out of their coma to discover they are the new $6 Million Man. They want to start at the beginning and go through the experience of leveling up, even if it requires some help to get there a little faster in the way of currency/cool stuff. So now the game companies would have to sell currency and items to meet their customers’ needs, not just provide a “guaranteed top-level” character. But the devs cannot just manufacture the currency/items out of thin air or they deflate the value of the currency or item by removing all scarcity and wreak havoc on the economy. So they need to function as an intermediary in the redistribution of wealth and treasure in the game. A function already efficiently served today by private enterprise. In my opinion, the game company is a government and its method of profit should be taxation and not manufacturing. Tax the value of the wealth redistribution.

Of course, none of this addresses the liability issue for the game companies if they actively participate in the redistribution chain and acknowledge that virtual property IS property. But that’s another whole can of worms.

[DivineShadow]

33.

Magicback,

"Are external trading now a part of the MMORPG experience? Is there an expectation that you'll have to pay to get ahead?"

The expectation is that most of the time the game will be played by the rules.
Sure, some exploit bugs, some loopholes, and some buy their way. Dealing with this as a player is part of the game, just like in a sport dealing with an elbow to your face is normally regulated against but also part of the physicality of the game and dealt with by the player as well as by the regulators of the game.

Back to my hockey parallel, although things regulated against in the rules *will* happen, it will still be a hockey match. If the instance of a player showing up with a tutu and dancing ballet happens more and more frequently, then after some experience in the matter when it happens again you are no longer surprised. At the same time you recognize you are there for a hockey game; one is not an issue, you can probably ignore the dolt. If most or all of the players suddenly came out with a tutu and started dancing ballet, would you stay? Or would you go to a stadium that actually has the type of game they advertise?

Randy,

"Some players play all day, everyday, and get the Sword of their Dreams. Others work 12 hours a day and come home and play two hours a night for entertainment and to hang with their EQ friends."

I belong to the latter category... Work a lot and have little time for my favorite games. And frankly, there's a problem here. It's a problem of scale. Virtual trinkets, when compared to real employment gains, have laugable prices. You can easily buy all the resouces you'll ever need for little time compared to what it takes to obtain it through gameplay. The ideal scenario would be: I work 12 hours, play 2. Another player plays for 5 hours. I go ahead that day and spend the disposable income I get with 3 of thse hours I worked instead of played. In a perfect world we would both be at the same 'spot' within the game. In reality I wind up about a month ahead of him just with those three hours of disposable income I spent.

[Richard Bartle]

34.

Edward Castronova>If someone told me that a Tolkien game was coming out with some kind of higher-priced account with a Wizard class that could reach top level, guaranteed, in X months with only a few hours a month play time - I'd be all over that in a hurry.

Why wait months? Why not go to eBay and buy a wizard right now that someone else already created X months ago?

The developer could get in on the act. They could sell top-level characters straight out of the box. Indeed, because so many people clearly want top-level characters, why not give in and simply make all characters top-level to begin with? That way, you can get rid of the whole levelling thing: you only have one level, "top level", that applies to everyone.

You can apply the same argument to anything else that makes one character "better" than another. A levelless, skill-based system? Hey, make everyone have 100% in all the skills they want. A property-based system, where who you are is defined by what you own? Just give everything to everybody - they're only going to buy it offline if you don't, so obviously they must really want it.

If the end game is so good that everyone wants it, why not give it from the beginning?

Can we all go home now?

Richard

[Christopher Armstrong]

35.

Damnit, I wanted to stay involved in this thread, but it's absolutely *painful* to follow this horrible format. Does anybody know if there's a way to gateway these comments to email or NNTP or something? RSS, maybe?

[Euphrosyne]

36.

Richard makes the point pithily, as usual. A system that incrementally guarantees level/ability/etc to some character types with minimal effort isn't significantly different than a point-of-sale mechanism. And you'll have people farming and eBaying those characters, compounding the problem.

But how about a parallel worlds experiment similar to what Edward suggests--not with mixed characters, but a server with only these self-leveling characters? That gets rid of the class animosity. Additionally, newer/younger characters could increase skills on a curve: faster than the original characters, to further reduce the appeal of buying pre-made avatars.

This leads to a different sort of avatar idea, where avatars are (in theory, if not actual simulation) interacting with the world and possibly each other in the player's absence...the avatar becomes less of a precisely controled, exclusive manifestation of player will, and more like an entity that the player possesses on occasion. Scale the amount of leveling done in the player's absence to the quality of equipment the avatar has equipped--which may be lost; the player can gamble to some degree.

But the problem of everyone being powerful would still persist. The only way around that might be to occasionally "recycle" the world, and start everyone back at a lower level (possibly keeping some items/abilities). Change minor aspects of the world and let the players go through a *similar* world with *similar* characters, let there always be something new, and always new ground to cover--even if that ground is covered "automatically". If we're dealing with players who don't have much time to play, this might prove more entertaining to them than an indefinitely persistent world which they can never master as well as the time-rich players. But this is starting to sound more like an entirely different game, rather than a different way to play existing ones.

[Dan Hunter]

37.

Christopher> Damnit, I wanted to stay involved in this thread, but it's absolutely *painful* to follow this horrible format. Does anybody know if there's a way to gateway these comments to email or NNTP or something? RSS, maybe?

RSS details available here.

[DivineShadow]

38.

Edward, Euphrosyne

Ultima Online has a very nice server called "Test Center" in which your character -upon creation- starts with huge amounts of every single resource, including currency, plus all the items you might need for *every* aspect of the game. This server also has a set of special commands any user can use which simply bring whatever skill or character attribute you want to whatever value you specify (saying "Set Anatomy 1000" will grant you 100.0 skill points of the Anatomy skill instantly).

The shard is fun for some... Some people make it their semi-permanent home, mostly for PvP purposes. It essentially removes the character advancement and resource scarcity from the equation and leaves a crippled medieval isometric slow-paced version of Quake. Looks to me like an interesting view into what would happen if EA started selling everything, or if everything was eBayed/eBayable. Its a totally different game...

[Edward Castronova]

39.

Fascinating. DAoC also has a test server - once you get a level 50 character, you can start another one of any kind on the test server and get acceptable equipment as well.

Somehow that also breaks the immersion for me. I am having trouble articulating what it is about role-playing and immersion that is so critically important in my view of what these worlds do. eBaying and insta-leveling solve the time problem but do so only by breaking the immersion effect. I'm looking for an intermediate answer, something that solves the time problem within the context of a successfully immersive atmosphere.

[Tom Hunter]

40.

Frank asked: Does 'will happen even faster' implies higher economic volatility and shock? Will we have a Black Monday event?

I think we already have economic volatility and shock. There have been currency duping problems in a number of games in the US and from what little I know of the Asian games the shocks over there may have been even worse at times.

Going back to the original question “why are these economies so hard to get right?” A large part of the problem seems to be developer expectations. I am reading the parallel thread on Mud.dev and I see numerous posters trying to design an economy that will manage itself.

Real world economies do a terrible job of managing themselves. In the real world governments spend a lot of time and effort to manage the successful economies. I am beginning to think that attempting to design a good self managing economy is a red herring. It would be better to design good economic management tools into your VW and then use them to actively manage the economy.

Are the bad economies bad because they are poorly designed in the first place or are they bad because the only way to fix a problem is with heavy handed intervention such as Black Monday

[Tom Hunter]

41.

Sorry this got clipped from the end of my post above:

financial panics (or their game equivalents) or Soviet style confiscation of bank accounts?

[DivineShadow]

42.

Edward,

"Fascinating. DAoC also has a test server"

If this were such a fun model, you'd think the 200k+ UO players would all be clumped together on Test Center which would prompt EA to alter the other servers. This hasn't happened in the years that this style of Test Server has been up and running. There has to be a reason there is only one Test Center and 20 regular shards. Enough players like the Test Server to the point of it being a permanent feature of UO - at the very least its a neat environment to try things out, plus sometimes they copy a production server onto it and you get to play on an alternate of your own server and try what-ifs. But evidently its not enough players to warrant a server like this without any sort of wipes. Perhaps wipes are a key element of this type of environment, much like when a new game of Quake starts you do not inherit your old "fragcount".

[Euphrosyne]

43.

Edward> "I'm looking for an intermediate answer, something that solves the time problem within the context of a successfully immersive atmosphere."

Maybe the answer in this case is not to try and boost the time-poor players' avatars to the level of the time-rich, but to lower the ceiling for all avatars: either make the system unappealing to the time-rich, or make it so that heavy time investment doesn't outrageously favor those avatars' abilities. If the standard power scale were greatly compressed, and "trivial" details like customization and social abilities (somewhat like a MUD) were the fruits of time, a variety of players could still enjoy teaming up and killing monsters, getting loot, etc. Obviously, players are willing to put vast amounts of time into playing a game with zero character advancement (Quake, UT) if the gameplay is compelling and they feel they are enhancing their *personal* skills...tap into this factor, add world persistence and ego rewards, and you might have a great low-time system.

[Christopher Armstrong]

44.

Dan, I don't think the actual comments are available via RSS. At least, I can see no link to that.

Sorry for being off-topic here, I didn't find a "webmaster" contact or anything like that. :-(

[William Baglivio]

45.

Perhaps when people keep in mind that time is also currency, then it will be far easier to accept the fact that players with a great deal of "free time" to play games and "work for" wealth/stuff in the game are really no different then those players who lack "free time" and choose to purchase their virtual wealth/stuff with real world currency.

One type of player purchases these things with time. The other type of player purchases these things with money.

Time=Money

Is it really so different?

[DivineShadow]

46.

William,

"Time=Money
Is it really so different?"

eBay rate: 1 Million UO gold pieces = $15
Time needed to make $15 in real-world USA: 3-30 minutes.
Time needed to make 1 Million gold pieces in Ultima Online: 120-1200 minutes.

Foud the problem yet?

[Euphrosyne]

47.

Well, this is a pet peeve of mine, so forgive me, but:

Yes, William, it really is different. The original context of the "time is money" quote was that wasted time caused a loss of potential profit. Time is *not* equal to money, or those bums in the park would have a car just like yours. Time + effort *does* tend to equal money, to differing degrees.

In the reverse case however, (at least in RL), money can be converted fairly directly into time--if you are rich you don't have to work for a living. That's because the "effort" component of the equation is implicitly bound up in your possesion of the money. Players who buy levels, items, and the like with money are expending their effort out-of-game, while the time-rich players are putting their effort into the game. It's not so much that eBaying is inherently evil, but the discrepancy and friction caused between the classes.

I don't fully subscribe to this view myself, but I sympathise with Edward's sentiment, and I think this reflects his position (as well as many players').

[magicback]

48.

DivineShadow> The expectation is that most of the time the game will be played by the rules.
Sure, some exploit bugs, some loopholes, and some buy their way. Dealing with this as a player is part of the game, just like in a sport dealing with an elbow to your face is normally regulated against but also part of the physicality of the game and dealt with by the player as well as by the regulators of the game.

The penality for fouls so far is a low barrier. So the tradeoff is still high for certain players. Therefore, is the low penality for poor sportsmanship an expected part of the game?

Richard> Can we go home now?

Yes, I have :)

State the point in another way, the variables are the different types and quantities of content and the speed of consumption. If the content is backend-loaded, then start the game there.

Looking in another way, compare choosing VWs to choosing a regular savings plan into a mutual fund. You make regular payments, paying certain frond-end loads, management expenses, etc. Your investment return will vary. Your investment compounds. You may even get away with insider trading. You get to the elder game where you become a master of the universe and affects markets, etc.

Tom> I am beginning to think that attempting to design a good self managing economy is a red herring. It would be better to design good economic management tools into your VW and then use them to actively manage the economy.

Which one is harder, for VW specialists? Designing or managing VW economies? Are VW specialists putting enough resources into these two areas?

Edward> I'm looking for an intermediate answer, something that solves the time problem within the context of a successfully immersive atmosphere.

I think Euphrosyne is right. The intermediate answer is balance player-skill and avatar-skill and design roles and content for different playstyles. Casual players may play warriors, easy to level and keep up. Regular gamers may play a more complex role like thief that requires more player-skills. Hardcore players may play mages that require lots of time doing in-game activities in addition to advanced player-skills in casting to perform well.

However, if the game is low-fantasy with less loot and strong identification and history of individual avatars then you'll lose the Diable and eBay crowd. Depending on your perspective, this could be good or bad.

Time=Money...

I like to de-link the association as much as possible. I don't want Game=Work.

Frank

[DivineShadow]

49.

"The penality for fouls so far is a low barrier. So the tradeoff is still high for certain players. Therefore, is the low penality for poor sportsmanship an expected part of the game?"

Good question, although frankly I feel like I'm talking to the Eliza program from decades back. There is a penalty applied by the rule-keepers, and there is a penalty applied by the other players. In ice hockey it seems since the penalty applied by the rule-keeper is low, they correct that lack of punishment by beating each other silly. In other games the penalty applied by the rule-keepers is higher and in turn the punishment applied by the players is lower. This would suggest that the more a game tends towards turning a blind eye with regards to enforcing its rules, the more its players will pick up the slack. There's probably a breaking point in there. To answer your question, it doesn't seem like "low penalties" are an expected part of a game, it seems that "proper punishment" is the truly expected part of it, with the players picking up the burden when the system fails to meet their expectation of fairness.

[magicback]

50.

DivineShadow, sorry if I am acting like a Eliza program. Just wanted to tackle this from a different angle.

While players may want "proper punishment and enforcement of rules", as the probability of such is so low, that the current expectation is the opposite.

I also think expectations are different for elder players and newer players. Elder players like those on Waterthread have a different set of expectations on how the game and the economy should work properly while newer players expect that eBaying is part of the game. It's a trend towards greater consumerism. Buy now. Instant everything! eBay everything! One-click purchase! No hassle!

What's "broken" is purely based one's expectation of what is "not broken." As we don't have a body of benchmarks to work with, it is still up to individual opinions and expectations.

Designers design VW to work a certain way and as the world evolves things occur that shapes expectation and actions. As the seed was the given design, players are just working with the design given. Therefore, nothing is broken. They are working as designed. Unintended, but as designed-bugs and exploits included.

Frank

[Bruce Boston]

51.

Bruce> I think this brings up an interesting question simply, how much value does open trade add to a MMORPG?
DivineShadow> Does it add value? Or change the nature of the game altogether?

My guess: maybe both.

When I was in the Auto Industry, I worked with a company that designed convertibles for the Auto Manufactures. With the Toyota vehicles,Toyota Solera and Toyota Celica, we actually designed them based on the coupe models. This involved slicing the roof off, gutting the vehicle from the back seat to the trunk, welding in reinforcements, adding a rag-top, replacing the backseat with a unique assembly and re-finishing off the trunk.

At the end of the day, a Convertible is a very different animal from a Coupe, but we still had to ask the question 'is this adding value?' because if its not, you are much better off saving yourself the work and just selling Coupes.

"Is this adding value?" has been in the production planning process, since the first stool was turned into a chair, and the chair into a dining set, and the dining set into a full household of themed furniture, and a themed set of furniture into a fully themed house, into a fully themed neighborhood, into a fully themed city and then into a national/ethnic style of living.

Just to use Japan as an example, you have to wonder how a country of 125+ Million all ended up with a similar definition of what types of products are 'Japanese' (Japanese Furniture/Japanese Food/Japanese Politics/etc./etc.).

In a similar way, over the next few years, I would guess that MMORPGs are going to be tested, twisted, expanded, contracted, redefined and morphed by Darwinian market forces that demand an answer to the age old question of "Is this adding value?" at each stage in the evolutionary process.

-bruce

[DivineShadow]

52.

"While players may want "proper punishment and enforcement of rules", as the probability of such is so low, that the current expectation is the opposite."

That is the expectation of the veteran player, the one who read message boards and found out what is going on behind the scenes. These players apply the punishment of rejection - avoiding "twinks" and shunning them from guilds.
For a new player, how you made the knowledge jump between what's on the game box, on the developer's website and on the magazine reviews back to discovering that the Wizard of Oz is hidden behind the eBay curtain is not simple, either you have an insanely commercial mind, someone told you, or you did extraordinary researh for an in-store purchase.

"I also think expectations are different for elder players and newer players. Elder players like those on Waterthread have a different set of expectations on how the game and the economy should work properly while newer players expect that eBaying is part of the game. It's a trend towards greater consumerism. Buy now. Instant everything! eBay everything! One-click purchase! No hassle!"

Newer players expect eBay to be part of the game? I disagree. Your perception may have been corrupted by the amount of exposure you have to this subject. I frequently bump into people who tell me in awe and shock that they know about a friend who sold their game stuff for money on eBay. Last time this happened I was holding a copy of DAoC Gold Edition in my hand and it was the sales clerk that walked up to me. I've heard this story probably around 20 times already. Whenever I hear about the eBaying phenomenon *outside* the avid-MMORPG-gamer circle it's always about cashing in on the MMORPG eBay market (ie: playing and selling 'nothing') I normally try to refrain from rolling my eyes out of respect. Then whenever I hear about eBaying inside groups of avid MMORPG gamers its always about how it ruins everything. On one side it's about "cashing in", on the other it's about "selling out", nowhere in there have I found someone that walks up to me and tells me:

-"Buy XXX game, I play it and it's great because if you don't have time to play it, or you suck, you can pay someone to play it better for you, or you can just buy the game stuff on eBay and get ahead."

This has *never* happened to me. I have never-ever in many years heard that argument as a selling point of an otherwise cash-free MMORPG system. Anyone experience this phenomenon? What's the message here?

[Richard Bartle]

53.

DivineShadow>"Buy XXX game, I play it and it's great because if you don't have time to play it, or you suck, you can pay someone to play it better for you, or you can just buy the game stuff on eBay and get ahead."

This is a cogent observation.

There are many reasons that people buy and sell stuff in virtual worlds. The "economist's argument", that buyers are paying for time and sellers are servicing that need, currently holds sway. However, no-one who starts to play a virtual world regards being able to pay to skip levels (or whatever) as itself a positive reason to choose one virtual world over another; if anything, they are more likely to regard it negatively.

What, then, causes many of them to wind up buying and selling stuff anyway?

Richard

[magicback]

54.

Richard> What, then, causes many of them to wind up buying and selling stuff anyway?

Sense of competition is one.

Need to keep up is another.

Peer pressure is present too.

I sumarize it as Keeping up with Joneses or Leave effect.

My personal journey through the whys and whatnot started with Magic: the Gathering (M:tG), the collectible card game (CCG). My friends and I spent a lot and made a lot of money to keep up with this hobby. Richard Garfield, the designer of M:tG, struck gold with this innovative design.

With Pokemon and other CCGs hitting the mainstream, a whole new generation are growing up with this tradition.

Whatever the reason, growing number of transactions proves that the practice is meeting certain demands.

It's not a selling point, but it may be part and parcel of the genre whether or not 99.9999% of the player base hate it.

Frank

[DivineShadow]

55.

Richard,

Is the eBay market for otherwise cash-free games a needful service which helps these games? If so, what need does it service? Is this the best way to fulfill it?

Or does the eBay markey represent the emergence of a path of least resistance? If so, where does it lead? Is this the best way to get there?

"What, then, causes many of them to wind up buying and selling stuff anyway?"

Are we looking at a shark three feet away, or a sardine two inches from our nose?
I understand some companies rumor themselves at huge numbers, I'll believe them when I see an SEC filing. Until that day, has anyone looked the the number of people doing the eBay buying and compared that to the subscriber base?

Magicback,

"I sumarize it as Keeping up with Joneses or Leave effect."

The phrase does summarize the individual points. It makes evident why game companies might want to curtail the practice.
Frankly I don't see a train leaving the Sony Station heading towards a new Horizon (pun intended), I see a domino effect, a viral invasion that transfoms the evironment, or more precisely, a crumbling card castle. There has to be a better way.