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?"

the first step

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.

Re:the first step

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.

Form their own guild

Or the devs could simply, you know, form their own guild/corp?

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

Re:Form their own guild

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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Let's keep it simple, what with lawyers, politicians, corporations, marketing and now economists, eve online is about to become as boring as it is slow and clunky, just like the real world people are trying to escape from.

So the next big question is will

Re:Form their own guild

Heh. Really, really funny you shoud say that. I mean, seriously funny. Because... THEY ARE doing that :)
Check out http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid =401 [eve-online.com]
They call it "ambulation", everybody else just calls it "walking in stations".

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Now they just have to combine space stations/planets with a GTA IV style engine and it would be a space sim that I actually want to play :P I heard Frontier IV was going to actual model populations on each planet. Flying around in space is all well and goo

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As it turns out temporary brain fugue, Secondlife was on my mind, as for Eve Online, never played it, perhaps one day. When it comes to keeping the game alive, specials tend to have limits, variations in game play, variations in required strategy, real var

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CCP has been very forthcoming with player accusations, and as open to communication as can possibly be expected from a company

Actually, no they haven't. CCP has a track record for denying or outright covering up these incidents for weeks or months at a ti

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There are several ships that are the only one in existence. 1 of them has changed hands via sales and theft repeatedly. It currently resides in the hands of a ship collector. There are a few ships that no longer exist because people destroyed them.

The devs

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"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

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"Our real economies are not very fun, oppressive, unjust and boring" Eve online is not very fun, oppressive, unjust and frequently boring. It's sadomasochistic leanings are part of the appeal.

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It so happens, that when playing a game, dying and killing for economic supremacy is fun!

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If the economy being realistic makes a game more fun, developers should strive to make the economy realistic--after all, games should be fun. But does treating a game's economy like a real one make the game more fun? Well, economics is all about trying to

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"Does this mean that the better the economic system is, the more fun the game is? You tell me; I don't know."

The the real world you are doing things you don't like to survive, with some people finding work they 'do like' but even work you do like has times

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Maybe the first step towards keeping inflation stable is making sure developers aren't allowed to create epic/rare items repeatedly.

Umm...that really wouldn't affect inflation at all. Remember that inflation, simply stated is, "The nominal cost of all go

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Actually, in the EVE Economy, there are very few money "faucets" and many more money "Drains".

Faucets (Isk Generators):
-Bounties on NPCs
-Mission Rewards
-NPC Trading
-Default insurance payouts on uninsured ships

Drains
-Taxes
-Fees
-Office Rentals
-Repairs
-Clonin

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If that's true, then there shouldn't be any issue of inflation (at least ISK inflation) in the universe, so it seems the premise of avoiding inflation in that particular economy is a non-starter.

However, I'd question the fact that there are more currency

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If you want to see a *really* screwed up, inflationary economy, look at the economies of the original WoW servers; that economy does not have any market balance forces to eat up the supply of goods (the way to fix that would be to have NPC controlled auct

More than just Titans and Mining...

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 am not a ship

[Insert rant here about the importance of identity in role play games]

I guess around the 4th of never someone will finally make a space sim that has realistic physics, and lets you float around your ship, board space stations and other spinning bodies, go

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They do have a free trial on the EVE Online [eve-online.com] homepage.

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There goes that virtue. Free trials are "please dis me to everyone who will listen so you don't have to pay even though you really want to" invitations. Personally, I think this phenomena is proof that MMORPGs are not addictive. After all, you never hea

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I dunno, I tried EVE and kinda liked it. It seems a lot more mature than most other MMORPGs, in the sense of less-cartoony. It is, of course, also a massive time-sink, as with all MMO games, and so I didn't partake of a subscription.

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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 M

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You should probably go back on the lithium.

Either that, or buy yourself 20 cats and start throwing them at people who walk by.

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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

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I stopped playing eve because of freelancer, I thought the action was much more fun in freelancer than eve (also CCP decided to nerf my guns during maintenance while I was in a 0 system, cost me a ship and a shit load of grinding).

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Do you know why no multiplayer "space sim" has completely realistic physics ?
Because realistic physics SUCK for fun.
And you want to have fun in a game, don't you ?
That's why all "space sims" actually handle (ship motion-wise, that is) like a very futuristi

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By invention again, except you put T2 BPC's in and (hopefully) get T3 BPC's out. Atleast thats the last I read.

Great!

Now they just need to hire programmers, artists, story writers, customer service reps, and auditors that monitor the employees and they will have a great game! (kidding...mostly)

No Way!

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!

Baloney Economy

There is no functional economy in Eve, because current real-world economic models are based on the concept of scarcity. Given that there are (theoretically) infinite resources in the form of mineable asteroids that respawn twice a week, infinite pirate bo

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You're absolutely right. Quite apart from the fact that this is a game, and therefore obviously a real economy is not going to work. Why? Because real economies are based on work and who wants to do work in a game. The purpose of economics in a MMORPG

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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 ? Inv

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You pretty much summed it up. Eve is just too much work, and pretty much the only fun is griefing other players, be it through piracy, ganking or just plain scamming and sabotage. I disagree with your last sentiment though; no one has to work in Eve. Which

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You sound just like a Goon

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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 ti

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It's your choice however to be in that small corp solo-mining. There are corps that do those 10-20 person mining ops. There are corps that are basically builder guilds. There is plenty of social interaction in many of those, as well as in my PVP alliance (

Re:Baloney Economy

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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Couple this with the near-impossibility to get into any kind of social interaction (all corporations want 3 or more months experience, and while I easily have more than that, many mistreat their members and are demanding) and you can see why such a good id

Update: Kind of ironic

Kind of ironic they make such a fuss about their economics now, considering today they've announced the closure of their official moderated Trade forums. [eve-online.com] Their suggestion? For everyone to use a third-party site.

The most likely reason? Because they're te [scrapheap-challenge.com]

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I wonder if he had his fingers in this. One hopes not, really.

I've rarely seen a thread rocketing at over 60 postings per hour CREATED BY CCP, with universal agreement from all sides, even some historic CCP supporters.

I mean, it's not really a surprise: Th

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Well, it is official, about the volunteers getting the boot. [eve-online.com]

Their forums are fun for a read and keeping up with the game's goings-on. Though you're right, not really designed very well -- they only just came off the "main" servers so that they dissapeared

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I'm glad some EVE players with a clue had mod points today. I've never seen a worse troll in my life...