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Eve Online's New Chief Economist
eldavojohn writes "Recently CCP, the folks behind the online game Eve Online, hired a real world economist to advise them on their in-game economy. Says the new hire, Dr. Eyjolfur Gudmundsson, 'There's a lot of discussion in the game about inflation and that is my job, to find out if inflation is going on. This makes the consumers behave in a more natural way because they are competing against each other on multiple levels, not only on a tactical level in combat but for logistics and resources. That builds consumer behavior and patterns that you see in the real world.' Is this a serious step to keep Eve Online competitive in the virtual land of MMOs despite scandals, Ponzi schemes & scams?"
This is interesting, since CCP is actually preparing the introduction of T3 equipment. For a very long time, they've had a very particular way to work with T2 (better than T1) equipment, and that's to raffle the Original Blueprints for T2 items. This was a compromise between many different systems that didn't work very well, but gave many people unfair monopolies over much-wanted items. They've been stepping further and further away from this by introducing invention (which lets you 'invent' limited-run blueprints of T2 ships and modules). I wonder what this new economist will have to say about T3... I don't think there's been any official mention of how the T3 market is going to work.
I think the main problem with the devs playing the game is that they are insiders. Just like you aren't legally allowed to trade stocks based on insider info, they shouldn't be able to provide their corp with an unfair advantage due to their insider info. Of course if the devs don't play the game, then they aren't as familiar with the ins and outs of it as they should be, so that can present problems too. If there's no strong oversight though, these problems will continue to pop up.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
What a silly question, Zonk. No way is Eve doing this to stay competitive! Why would they care about that? They just think economists are fun at parties!
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They do have a free trial on the EVE Online homepage.
Honestly, if the devs simply formed their own guild and (more or less) remained "neutral" there'd be no problem. Super-rare/powerful ships at their disposal? As long as their not selling it off to the highest bidder or using it to smash the other guilds, who cares? They know exactly where and when certain items will appear? Just toggle the dev-only invisibility feature and disable all outgoing messages for the devs then watch players go into a frenzy when someone finally spots the target. Devs REALLY want in-game experience? Limit which guilds they can join and monitor what information/equipment they have access to (for god sakes don't let them join the #1 guild and then expect the community to not suspect foul play.)
Except I'm not. I'm in a much smaller corp. I mine, I build, I sell. I fight if I have to. And still, the game grinds on - not because I'm trying to grind for the "leet" gear, but because it takes forever to do anything. Eve rapidly devolves into a time (and money) sink that has you snoozing on a late night at the keyboard, because drilling a 'roid in a 0.7 belt is boring enough to peel paint. You still didn't give me a reason. Yes, I realize that it's a game, and game economies should be fun - and that's kinda my point. Eve's economy isn't in any way, shape or form fun. Now if there were 10-20 miners during a mining op, or a guild of builders that work with each other, then that would bring some kind of social interaction, ie. "fun", even if it was just shooting the breeze about nothing in peticular. But no...it's just you, your mining barge, and some floating rock. Wake me when we need to run the jetcan back to the station (yawn).
Was it Vendetta Online that had twitch-based combat?I know there's some space MMO out there that does it. Either way, I personally enjoy EVE's combat system. It's very technical, lots of micro-tweaks and spreadsheeting, which is very different from most MMOs I've played out there. I'm also under the impression that a twitch-based space sim would be very very hard to pull off with current technology (or technology from 4 years ago), while still keeping the obscenely huge size of EVE's single-'shard' cluster. Heck, the cluster barely holds up as-is. Also worth noting that there's an 'Ambulation' feature in the development process, with videos already out. They're starting with just basic station walking and access to basic station resources through that interface. Going on planets has also been explored, and I've seen concept screenies, but that's just another one of those things that just doesn't seem to be needed right now. CCP doesn't get enough credit for the stuff they do. All people cry and moan about is a couple of controversies involving a few employees, which CCP definitely went and took care of. I'm amazed how just because a bunch of butthurt SA Goons make a big fuss out of something, EVE is considered the most corrupt MMO out there. It's as if everyone suddenly forgot all the s**t other major MMO companies have pulled (discriminatory bannings from Blizzard staff, major, high-rank GM corruption in AO, EverQuest, and UO after the move to EA, the destruction of SWG, and that's just a couple of the ones I've played...). Eve is a solid game, with a very good company behind it, regardless of what the /. and Goonfleet fear-mongering likes to make it seem. No, I don't work for CCP, but I've played enough MMOs to be a bit startled that EVE takes so much flak over relatively minor offenses.
"Maybe the first step towards keeping inflation stable is making sure developers aren't allowed to create epic/rare items repeatedly. That would be a good start."
Or just maybe don't treat a games economy like a real economy all together it's supposed to be a god damn game (no true scarcity), it's not supposed to be real. Our real economies are not very fun, oppressive, unjust and boring, indeed, people haved die over economic ideology and how the economy should be structured.
Funny you should say that, because EVE's economy IS based on work, and almost exclusively work.
Killing NPCs in asteroid belts for bounties and loot ? Work.
Running missions ? Work.
Mining ? Work.
Setting up a scam ? Work.
Ransoming people ? Work.
Research ? Invention ? Manufacture ? Trading and/or hauling ? Begging people in Jita for money ? Work, work and all work.
Sure, different kinds of work, different amounts of "boring" versus "fun", different amounts of attention vs smarts needed, but work nevertheless, in all cases.
So, sure... nobody wants to work in a game, but you pretty much have to, if you plan on getting in-game wealth.
That's why you have so many "ISK farmers", that's why GTC prices have gone up through the roof, that's why there's so much scamming and whining going on.
Because nobody wants to work, but everybody has to.
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1. Yes, the current state of "the stockmarket" sucks donkey balls, because there isn't any. It's all player-driven, and trust-based. No in-game support for a genuine stockmarket exists, we barely have three decent features: paying out dividends, corporation votes and voluntary share transfers.
As you might have noticed that most developements in EVE were originally player suggestions... it usually takes at least a year to see it in-game if it's a decent and heavily requested feature, but I am sure we'll eventually get an actual stockmarket and many other corp-related tools.
2. Yes, the way the market is handled sucks even more, especially the recent nonsense with "contracts".
They should just merge these two features into one single comprehensive whole, with the ability to buy/sell/trade/auction stuff everywhere in the galaxy from anywhere else, with extra rules and limitations based on personal/corp/alliance standing with the entity you interact with in that transaction.
I have my doubts this will ever happend, though... but you never know.
3. The "monopoly" is all but broken in most of the cases. Everybody and his dog's mom can manufacture T1 or "find" named T1 gear by himself, and with a little bit of effort you can get just about anything T2 by yourself too.
Sure, those that USED to have the monopoly have a financial / "first mover" advantage with their more efficient manufacture methods, but the days of 10000% markup are long-time gone.
4. Mineral pricing is the trickiest possible issue in EVE. It's not actually a free market, it has very "heavy" limits both on top and bottom for most of the individual minerals (the harshest caps are for "low end" minerals, least cap for "high ends"), but also a very narrow bottom AND top cap for an agregate lump of minerals of all kinds. You might be simply mistaking simple game mechanics and smart refiners and traders making a profit for "price fixing monopolies".
If anything else just might, minerals simply CAN'T possibly be monopolised for anything but a very small timeframe and with huge effort.
5. So what if raw resources are infinite ?
I'll tell you what resource is NOT infinite : manpower.
That's right, for each and every bit and piece of "mineral" you see out there, somebody spent time getting it.
EVE's economy is based on that resource mainly... namely, time of its users.
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