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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."
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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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.