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MMO Creators Follow The Virtual Money Trail
Thanks to Wired News for its article discussing the dysfunctional economies of massively multiplayer games. The piece references an economic analysis by Raph Koster regarding Star Wars Galaxies, in which he mentions the game "...uses what is called a faucet-drain economy. You can visualize a spigot of cash coming into the game, a big ol' sink where the money sloshes around, and a set of drains where the money goes out the bottom." Virtual economist Edward Castronova also comments, concerned about the proletariat and the bourgeoisie: "The wealth distribution is not just unequal, it is incredibly unequal... Raph says it is similar to the distribution of wealth in (real-life) economies, which it is, but even the worst robber-baron economies were not this bad." In the end, though, Koster argues: "You don't get to ignore the economy, but absolutely, the goal is the fun, not Berkshire Hathaway."
for a long long time on the Mud-Dev mailing list. In fact a point of discussion many times, and not just the faucet drain economy model either.
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Full archive here
I must make another post about how Puzzle Pirates is the best. The entire game is based on economy. Sure, money comes in and out, but it sloshes a whole hell of a lot. The entire game is based on the economy, shop owning, pillaging, trading. Getting raw materials and manufacturing them into stuff that you use to make other stuff that you use to get more materials. What really makes puzzle pirates have the best economy is that labor plays a critical role. If you want to make stuff you need actual people to devote their labor to you. In turn you must pay them money for their services. Not only that, but first you need to have a very expensive shop to even begin thinking about it. It's complex and that's what makes it great, play puzzle pirates the only mmo worth playing right now.
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Devaluing Items and Currency is a big problem in many MMOs. Items/Currency are really one of three reasons people stay in the MMO game they're in, the other two are "People Social" and "Skills/Character".
An MMO with a more stable value on high-value items and large sums of money will be more likely to keep players around. It's just no reason to stay if EVERYONE has that Vorpal Sword of Timespendedness that you spent 5 months getting, but can now be had for 5 minutes of play-time because they're manufactured for mega-cheap by Craftsman1, Craftman2, Craftsman3, or had by camping for a few days in some random location with a dozen other people.
...that MMOs are just like Real Life(TM), only expensive!
Wait, Real Life is too. Never mind :-)
True but in a player run economy, most things that PLAYERS sell at generally the premium stuff. Whereas the stuff sold by NPCs are the more generic, bland stuff.
For example in FFXI (which I play in now), theres two primary classifications of equipment. Starting/Basic equipment and Premium equipment. The first group is basic, your cheap basicly RAGS equipment and whatever gets tossed your way (its actually not uncommon to see level 20+ players running around in level 9 equipment sometimes).
The second class is where the article at hand seems to have the biggest beef. We all know the basics of a player run economy, players craft certain items that are sold NOWHERE ELSE and sell them to other players. However the problem with this is, it comes down to the age old rule of 'supply and demand.' MOST players DEMAND to have that badass +1 Sword to go along with their +1 Armor, +1 Rings, and +1 Helm. However theres only a FEW number of people who can SUPPLY these items (visit the Auction House in FFXI, any server, and more than 50% of the items listed there won't have that item up for bid). So what happens (after raising the price to cover expenses)? You raise the price some more!
That +1 leather armor which ANYONE can make for 500 gil? That only costs 300 gil to make. But that special, job specific, quest only, high fame only, high level only armor? 300,000+ gil. The legendary fishing pole which LITERALLY takes MONTHS to obtain? (You have to hand in 10,000 of a certain type of fish and they sell for 300 EACH at the Auction House. You do the math.) Well, lets just say the only listings of them being sold (on my server at least) were from the owners, to themselves.. for 3 MILLION GIL. (I've heard of listings going as high 8 million on other servers.)
In real life, robber-barons (most notably) with oil. In MMO games they deal with the 'phat l3wt'. But they never dealt with things such as food, clothes, and shelter.
Koster responds that while "the truly obscene amount of money is in the hands of a few," the situation is not as bad as it sounds. And that, he says, is because there are tens of thousands of what he terms "try me out" Galaxies characters lying dormant that skew the distribution numbers.
/.ers running around with Atlas Shrugged images and quotes on their websites. In an pure market economy where value is placed on everything, there are people whose lives the market decides aren't worth supporting. In a 100% open market economy, survivial of the fittest is right back in play, and people die.
"They are dirt-poor," Koster says, "and they really distort the statistics."
This is the part that gets me about all the
Though you might argue it's also very easy for us to ignore the dying caused by our own present system, it's a factor I haven't seen one economist mention in plain speak in their studies, anecdotal and more rigorous. The fantasy equivalent of death (a stream of unrenewed accounts, among other things) is being ignored.
I played Ultima Online for quite some time, and I have to imagine the routine of, "Hack tree, build bow, repeat *100, sell bows, buy adventuring gear, get player-killed [by another player], rinse, repeat," didn't appeal to everyone.* These people left the game -- their account were, for all practical purposes, killed. These players gave up the will to live in this fantasy world. And the money they earned during their brief lives stayed right where the market placed it -- with the powerful.
Anyhow, not to belabor the point, but I wonder if those "dirt poor" characters "lying dormant" don't represent the people a true, ideological market economy would leave in our gutters even moreso than our governed market does today.
(* -- Yes, I realize UO changed the rules to eliminate pkilling quite a bit, but the old days, phew!)
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
The sink is basically the whole game. It's the bank accounts, the player inventories, all the money that is used for trades and transactions among players.... When money goes out the bottom, it's deleted from the system, rather than circulating back to a central bank.
Having never played Galaxies, perhaps I'm speaking out my ass, but this doesn't sound like a money sink. The faucet-drain system implies that money is entering the system by being created ("minted"), but is also exiting the system by being destroyed or spent. Sitting around in inventories or banks does not destroy money. Paying NPCs to repair items, having items degrade over time, having "upkeep" (Inns, consumables like food/water), essentially "paying" the game to keep your character healthy, that's a sink.
Maybe I'm not understanding the Galaxies system. Does the game take 10% of every trade? Do your bank accounts get taxes? That was a wonderful system in Trade Wars, every day (if you were a good alignment player) you got taxed, just like in real life, and if you were bad alignment, you were safe...except for the ISS's roaming the galaxy that would blast you on site. Can anyone tell me a little more about the Galaxies economy? Now I'm all interested...
--trb
I understand why most online RPGs have items and money, and therefore economies...
...to bring it back to the discussion about virtual economies, the choice of the developers in this particular game to exclude such things really, for me at least, makes the game more enjoyable, and just seems to work with the comic book theme.
But I have to say that I'm really enjoying the comic book goodness of City of Heroes-- The inventory is limited to a dozen or so slots where you can store power-ups (One-time use powerups called "Inspirations", and longer term but still not permanent powerups that enhance your powers called "Enhancements").
The only currency to speak of is "Influence"-- which can only be gained by defeatomg bad guys, and which can be used to obtain Inspirations and Enhancements to a degree...
But the focus of the game is pretty much to get your your bad (err, "Good" I should say) super-hero self together with some super hero buddies, form a super-hero team, and go beat some evil-doer butt.
Extremely satisfying, and delightfully free (in my opinion) of feeling like you're "level grinding". Plus, designing your very own super-hero outfit is disturbingly satisfying.
Here is some data about the real world.
It probably sucks to start in SWG as a crafter, but I have been doing combat professions for about 5 weeks and have a decent amount of money. Most weapons on my server are less than 25k, and I can earn that much in one mission on dantooine.
The tricks:
1) get buffed by a master doctor
2) get a set of good composite armor
3) buy vasarian brandy and spice to boost your mind
4) get a decent gun
5) learn novice medic, and work your way up ONLY the third skill tree (buy stim packs off the bazaar)
6) group with people more powerful than you are to run missions
7) read the trade forums for your server, so you can understand the economy better and know who the best weapon and armorsmiths are
This will take about 120k credits (on my server), but once you get there you're in pretty good shape.
Alot of experienced players will pay you upwards of 1k to train you in skills (they need apprenticeship points to master their professions).
My favorite starting combo is scout/marksman. You have to kill stuff to get marksman xp, and you have to 'harvest resources' from dead things to get scout xp. The two are pretty complimentary. Get a bundle of about 600 good quality hide (overall quality better than 500), and sell it on the bazaar for 6k.
If you do those two things (and don't waste money on a speeder bike and clothes and stuff), you can get your composite armor and weapon in just a week or two.
Try to master the scout and marksman professions, then you can be a bounty hunter. (I'm almost there!)
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
The piece references an economic analysis by Raph Koster regarding Star Wars Galaxies, in which he mentions the game "...uses what is called a faucet-drain economy.
And the faucet drains right into e-bay . I played SWG for the first month, and quit after I realized it was an annoying timesink and that Jedi were a sick marketing ploy. I had some money to play around with last month, so I bought myself a Jedi on ebay for $600. The Jedi was mislisted, so I got it pretty cheap. I played for a week, realized it was still boring (You have killed a generic monster, you gain 100 Jedi XP! Only 190000 more till you can get your next box/level!) so I relisted it on ebay. And I got $2000 for it. $1400 isn't a bad profit for a weeks work/play. Thanks for improving my real life economy Ralph. Maybe I'll see you again after pub 10 when being a Jedi is fun, or when the vehicle expansion comes out this fall.
Virtual economist Edward Castronova also comments
Virtual economist?
Is that like: "I'm not an economist, but I play one online" ?
Raph is correct about unused characters skewing the statistics.
I have a second account on SWG that consists of idle characters
that are used only to provide extra building lots for my
main characters.
The characters in my main account have a fair amount of cash,
but those in the second account are "dirt poor".