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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
People associated with CCP (the company that runs EVE) have a few special case clauses to their gameplay.
That doesn't include just the game developers, but also members of the volunteer staff, which have to sign a NDA to join the ranks of the bughunters, interstellar correspondents, moderators or be a part of event teams. CCP has a history of recruiting GMs and other staff from the ranks of volunteers, so there's enough incentive to join and perform well.
Now, the thing with "CCP accounts" is that they're public and have access to various "world manipulation" tools. All their actions are audited, and for over half a year (at least) there's something akin to an "Internal Affairs" department (like the one in the police) tasked with making sure they don't do anything fishy with their rights.
At the same time, all people ALSO MAY have (if they want) a regular account, which they pay for like any other person... and they are subject to the same rules and regulations like all other players.
Moreso, they are subjected to one EXTRA rule: they are NOT allowed to disclose the fact they are "related" to CCP.
In case they slip up, common operating procedure is to, well, *cough* "enter them in a witness protection program". They get a new name, a new face, a fake corporation history. They lose all friends they might have made so far. They basically start from scratch relationship-wise... and that's the most horrible thing to lose in EVE, IMHO.
Sure, they might have some inside knowledge, and there have been a couple of occurences of abuse, but all short of ONE incident were very harshly punished (and of course, they no longer work for CCP, except that one incident I was talking about).
CCP has been very forthcoming with player accusations, and as open to communication as can possibly be expected from a company.
Of course, many people still feel "cheated" or think CCP is hiding something, but what would be the world without conspiracy theory nutjobs ?
So no... they CAN'T just do the stuff you're afraid they can do, and no, they don't get away with it.
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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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Heh. Really, really funny you shoud say that. I mean, seriously funny. Because... THEY ARE doing that :)d =401
Check out http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bi
They call it "ambulation", everybody else just calls it "walking in stations".
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