Video Game Economies

One thing a lot of video game players face is a video game economy. Most of these systems are rather simple. But some can be amazingly complex.

The purpose of this thread is to discuss the function, problems, solutions, and other related topics of video game economies.

This thread is in video games for Two reasons. One it allows us to go off topic more then an OTC thread would, meaning we can blow off steam by goofing off or going off topic. However please try and keep it on topic. The second reason is this is the section that will have the most people affected by the subject at hand and likely the best place to find people to discuss it. Other people from the other parts of the fora are of course welcome to participate.

Common systems, common subtypes, and other factors. As defined here.

• Closed: The system is affected by only one player. No outside influence such as other players can affect the economy. The player is the only influence on the system. Trade is done strictly with NPC's and prices and vlaue of goods and overall value of money is affected by the one player only and the game mechanics.
• Open: Co-Op/Multi-Player games are open systems. Other players influence the economy from value of money, cost and value of goods, and often add an additional facet of inter player trade and economy. Other players influence the economics as well as the games mechanics.

• Sub-Types
  • Finite: When the game ends so does the economy. Mostly seen in the closed system but some open system games can incorporate this feature. The economy resets with the start of a new game.
  • Continous: The economy is continous for as long as it is played. Mostly seen in Open games with multi-player/co-op gameplay. Can also be found in some closed systems.

New Game+/Feature Caveate

• New Game +/Game Feature Caveate: Some game features like New Game + can make a game economy Finite or Continous depending on how the features are implimented in the game. Games that allow players to carry over wealth from previous games for example are continous. Some games reset or eliminate wealth on the start of New Game +.

Suggested Research.

These will be suggestions the actual research is up the individual posters and readers. Google is your friend and general tool. Or your search engine of choice. Please feel free to share articles and research.

• Currency: What makes a good currency.
• Inflation: The rise and fall of value of money and in-game items.
• MUDFlation: A type of inflation common to video games without proper means to control or balance inflation.
  • Gold Sinks: A type of measure used to control MUDFlation.
• Actual Game Economies: Look at the actual economies of games. Suggestions. Terraria, Eve Online, Borderlands 1 and 2, Skyrim, Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas, plus any others players care to discuss or suggest.
• Solutions to Video Game issues like Hyper Inflation, Player Money Printing via game mechanics, organized currency gathering ie high effeciency grinding and gathering.

Please note various economic models may or may not apply to a game depending on how the games economy is set up. Games have a wide variety of economic systems ranging from the very simple to the dizzyingly complex.

edited 23rd Feb '13 1:23:51 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Hmmmm...

Well, let's be frank: The Gold Farmers are a major problem in any MMO with an open system where resources are tradeable.

I forgot to grab a link but I saw a blurb about how Gold Farmers had heavily damaged the balanced economy of one of the Final Fantasy online games. The inflation rate rose sharply in a few short months and severely limited players purchasing power for items necessary for game play.

The people running the game made the decision to eliminate a large number of them. They pursued that goal agressively and the net result was a restoration of the economic balance in a few short months.

Most interesting economy is (imo) Team Fortress 2's. It's fascinating how the user base has crafted a usable economy out of the different items.

Dwarf Fortress had such a bad economic system it had to be disabled. I reached it only once before it was gone.

The player determines all production in the fortress, all goods are shared among the dwarves. At some point after a noble or two arrived, the economy switched on and you had to live with it. Goods now had a price tag, a proper bedroom required rent, the dwarves suddenly needed currency they didn't have. The player, the vague "government" entity, gave items to stores to be sold. I'm not even sure if they could earn a wage working or if the only way to receive money was to sell from a store.

I'm reminded of the unpredictable nature almost mirroring real economics in World Of Warcraft. Particularly the Burning Crusade era.

Monopolies would rise, fall, and rise again by someone else at the Auction House purely by market forces long before the Game Masters could act. Conversely, the price of goods was priced almost exactly according to supply and demand. If all the supply of Thorium Ore got bought out by the Jewelcrafters (trust me, at the time that part of the Jewelcrafting tradeset was exceptionally hard to pass through owing to no socket gems), the price of it went up whenever some Miners started harvesting more until somebody came along and undercuts them.

Conversely like the economics the money and people clustered where there was biggest opportunity, freedom of movement, biggest accessibility and ease of production. Which meant at the time the biggest economies on the Alliance faction were purely Ironforge and Stormwind. Darnassus and Exodar by comparison were third world hellholes nobody went to. (For obvious reasons, they were out of the way, it was hard to make things, and in the case of Exodar damn hard to navigate the city.)

The neutral city (Booty Bay, Gadgetzan, Ratchet) stuff got weird bordering highway robbery and criminal economics. (Go on try buying the pages for the Green Hills of Stranglethorn for that quest. It will cost you mightily in Booty Bay.)

Whenever I played World Of Warcraft the economy was usually pretty "Stable", with fixed prices on the auction house aside from a few changes here and there. Some people would make a fortune buying, selling and farming the right items though.

It's interesting how some exploits haven't been fixed for years though. Specifically; Wool Cloth. Wool cloth is the second tier of cloth needed for crafting, and very importantly it's used to level the "First aid" skill that pretty much everyone needs. Thing is, most people blitz past the level range it drops in since it's so narrow and contains so few humanoid enemies that drop it. So on the auction house, with high demand and low supply, it goes for a king's ransom. Maybe it's intentional, to give lowbies who do manage to get their hands on an amount a way to make some cash.

Still, I think World Of Warcraft's economy isn't as exciting as it could be. Most people have one harvesting profession and one crafting profession, and they usually fit together well. I hear LOTR-Online forces you to take predefined sets of professions that don't always fit together perfectly, forcing trade.

Quick Note: I changed and expanded the systems. I have broken it down into five different categories that for now seem to better reflect the common options used in games.

Open and Closed are redefined. Finite and Continous are defined as subtypes now. There is a New Game +'/Feature Caveate.

Wow is noted to have a resonably stable economy in general. They have a Dynamic money sink system meaning some of the key money sinks match the players wealth and/or advancement to keep the game generally balanced. They have also undertaken more thorough and effective efforts to control the gold farmers.

Tom; Eve online has caught the eye of various economist for it's size and complexity. It has the economy of a small nation.

edited 23rd Feb '13 1:19:53 PM by TuefelHundenIV

That I understand, EVE Online is economics. With piracy and occasional supervillain-level terrorism.

Has anyone ever taken a look at Wakfu's economy? I played around with the game when it was in beta, and a friend and I saw the potential for a lot of political/economic shenanigans.

EVE online has the benefit of being a "Sandbox" MMO. Pretty much the only one in existence with the fall of Star Wars Galaxies. It's a very dynamic economy, with monopolies and faction politicking being the order of the day.

Oh, a video game economics thread!

MMO economies typically work different from normal economies in that Money Spider is a thing, meaning grinding up inflation is possible. As a result, what game designers have to do is put in "money sinks" that draw excess currency out of the economy. How balanced an MMO economy is depends on how well the money sinks appeal to players, and the number of players around. There are also sub-elements, as Major Tom mentioned, such as producers of specific goods (crafting professions), and how many of them exist.

There are also two general types of money sinks. Static and Dynamic. The Dynamic ones are ued in WOW and apparently work very well.

In general, Gold Sinks are the only thing that really justify having gold at all in World Of Warcraft and similar games. Things like equipment repairs take down your income, but ultimately buying a shiny new mount or bag are the only reason anyone ever tries to earn money through the auction house.

Wish there where more games that did more with gold, and while cool are ultimately temporary. Like letting you recruit a small army for Pv P skirmishes.

edited 23rd Feb '13 5:05:36 PM by ShirowShirow

Path Of Exile seems to manage its economy fairly well.

It doesn't have a conventional kind of gold; scrolls that identify items, orbs that add prefixes/sufixes to your items, orbs that change the color of sockets or the linking of sockets in your items, they all function as currency, and you use them when buying and selling things.

In this way, currency is its own gold sink. And as far as I can tell, it works.

I've been playing that a lot recently (Ineegoh, level 21 Duelist. Look me up, fellas) and it surprised me that it did things that way. Considering it's a Dark Fantasy Scavenger World it makes a lot of sense too. I want to see a single player game that functions like that. Bartering in Fallout was always fun like that.

I was thinking of games like Terraria recently. Where the economy is easy to break.

Other things like players deliberately trying to maximize effecient income gain via in game mechanics. Think of mob grinders and abuse of villagers in Minecraft for example.

Terraria it was fairly easy to rack up a small fortune with the world hopping and raiding. Resources rapidly lost value as did items as you advanced up the tiers. More and more became just another component in a player currency churning engine. Even the death penalty is not enough to stop it because players can sack away cash in safes, piggy banks, and chests. Then there was easily repeated boss grinding by creating items to summon bosses and spawn in valuable resources via random events like meteor strikes.

Also repeatedly fighting enemies like the the wall of flesh were highly profitable.

In short they enabled players to easily break the games economy and killed player to player commerce because of how easy it was to make cash. It got to the point where giving valuable stuff away barely got a second look from the players.

I am also thinking of Starbound in a similar vein as Terraria because of similar gameplay elements and the fact the player effectively has access to infinite worlds potentially loaded with resources. Also has the similar model where gain of materials and resources increases as the players become more powerful.

Mount and Blade has a closed system that resets itself every time you play. With the trader skill you can make a small fortune pretty handily, assuming you can avoid being broken by bandits before picking up a small army to scare them off, but you have to diversify to do it.

Every time you sell something, you get a little less for each successive item of that type, unless you wait a while for your products to be bought by NP Cs. It's the same way in reverse for buying. The prices rise for each successive irem of the same type that you buy. Pretty nifty economy, I'd say.

Then you get to Warband. they upgraded the economy there with businesses you could own. If you're willing to invest in turning common items into rare ones, you can rack up the riches fairly quickly for a while. Just diversify again based on the region and avoid flooding the market.

This all feeds into the Gold Sinks. You need troops to do much, unless you cheat to make yourself a superstrong Rambo type. In which case, why even play? In the original, troop promotions didn't require gold, but Warband fixed that. Another sink. You also need food to maintain morale. Yet more gold sunk in. Equipment for yourself and your companions. . . . all the riches you accumulate don't last very long before you've sunk them into something you need.

Reinforcements, yet more food. Another equipment upgrade. The game's wealth balances itself out pretty handily so long as you don't abuse the system.

edited 2nd Mar '13 8:37:40 PM by Journeyman

Mount and blade takes quite a bit of effort to abuse outside of cheating.

The hallmark of a good system, no? You grab all the loot you can, sell as much in one place as you can, then go off to somewhere else to sell/trade the rest. Give it a week or two, rinse, repeat. Or you can go the trader route, sit in the tavern for a few hours whenever you reach the next town, and buy up to 4 of whatever's selling the hottest to trade in yet another town.

Either way, you have to win or avoid battles to get anywhere.

And I partially take back the "resetting economy" part. There's an export/import button in the character screen. You hit your character's picture on the character sheet, it'll show you your kills/knockouts, both friendly fire and hostile, and to the side there's the two buttons. When you export, it not only brings your sheet, it brings your cash with you.

Beat the game, export your character. Start a new one, import your character. Suddenly, you might not have to worry about the economy for a while.

edited 3rd Mar '13 7:11:04 AM by Journeyman