Managing Virtual Economies

May 17th, 2008 6 Comments

Part of managing an online game is keeping track of the economy within the delicate ecosystem of an MMORPG.

This means close monitoring of both supply, demand and the number of rare items in a given server. Fail to this, and the economy will falter. A game with a super-inflated economy will lose players faster than you can say “dupe”.

How do you monitor economies?

Hit jump to find out.

How Rich Is the Average Joe? 

The first rule to measure the success of an in-game economy is to identify the cash flow. Most GM or game-system tools have a way for us to track the richest dudes in the game, the total number of currency, and also the total number of active users inside the game. What you do is – first, get the total number of cash in a server then divide it by the number of active users, the final integer will be the average wealth of a given character.

What do you do with this number? Simple. If this number is too big, this means that most characters are @#$^&$ filthy rich. Items sold by the NPCs lose their value since ‘everyone and his brother’ can buy ‘em. The rare drops will be sold for horrendous prices. If this happens to a game economy, managers better watch out… too much inflation will mean that players get bored easily and will start to “churn”, quit and look for greener pastures.

Don’t Screw With The Drop Rates

There are other ways to monitor. Here are other pointers…

Let’s start by keeping watch over the rare stuff.

  • First identify your top 10 items in the game.
  • Get the “percentage chance” or “drop rate” that a monster or quest will drop or give out that item. For example, once every 1,000 spawns.
  • If the monster spawns once an hour, this means that it will spawn 24 times in a day or will give out a rare drop once (at least) every 41.666 days (that’s 1,000 / 24)
  • Figure out how old the server is. For example, if the server has been going on for a year (365 days), this means that there will be approximately 9 items in that given server given the mathematical odds.

Odds and statistics don’t need to be exact. You can be off (plus or minus) by around 10% to 20%. Now if there were 50 copies of that rare item vs. the mathematical odds of only having 9 items, then someone’s either cheating or something fishy is going on.

That’s why I always train my people to NOT screw with the drop rates. There’s a reason why items are considered rare. This also applies to giving away too many powerful items as prizes for in-game events.

In conclusion, monitoring game economies is vital to the continued success of a game. Be diligent and don’t forget to do your math. It’s good to figure out screw-ups before they blow out of proportion. Hope this helps!

I’d love to hear your thoughts about the matter too… (comment below)

Ciao,

GM T

in the world of electronics everyone has a variety of electronics like computers,televisions,home theater cinemas, laptop computers,dvds,note books,digital cameras in which most of the companies offer free accessories of these products like wires,batteries and installation.

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  • http://azureapple.multiply.com Lix Tetrax

    Aren’t you guys monitoring the amount of real money converted into Yuans(PW in-game currency)? Hinde ba’t nakakasama din sa economy yun? Dahil hinde na sila mag hunt ng item na needed at bibili nalang in that case mas tataas ang demand kesa sa supply since most of the players tends to buy rather than to sell/hunt?

  • Noel

    Getting the “per capita” income of the population of a game is quite tricky in a F2P environment, because there is a tendency for players to have “dummy” accounts for one reason or another. And I think determining the wealth of the economy shouldn’t be as simple as determining the “average” wealth multiplied by the number of players. A mature economy will usually have a lot of high-level players whose needs for upgrades and higher level quests are more costly. Lastly, I am curious on how you even come up with an idea of an “average Joe”.

  • http://gmtristan.com GM T

    Noel,

    I didn’t mention that the wealth is per individual but rather per account. Multiple accounts can belong to single individuals. By “average joe”, this does not define the average user but the average wealth spread across the server vis-a-vis the population. If you have a better idea of how to start a more defined metric, then by all means, let me know.

  • Tango

    I think there are reasons to “screw with the drop rates” as the economy tends to “stagnate” after a while. New content (or lack thereof), defines the activities of the players.

    Age of the server and “churn” defines the demand for certain items. Items do not always move around and sometimes also stagnate or get replaced by other things. Sometimes the acquisition of such no longer justifies the cost in a stagnant economy.

    World Powers announce and change their interest rates to maintain a healthy economy and money trading. An online gaming company with a virtual world could theoretically do the same.

    How? Maybe change the valuation of item mall currency versus real money. But that’s a double edged sword – you can’t make “currency” more expensive because people will hoard real money or save it for a rainy day and making things cheaper encourages inflation of other in-game items. Also, it detrimentally affects your targets.

    “Screwing with the drop rate” is another solution. It will sometimes encourage hoarding but overall things become more accessible and certain “obsolete” items become once more acceptable alternatives (because of VFM) spreading out game activity rather than concentrating it. It can also attract newbies because decent items become cheaper for someone starting out from scratch.

  • Noel

    I think what I am trying to say was this (sorry, it can be hard to express on print):

    “the average wealth spread across the server vis-a-vis the population” is where I find a problem in properly monitoring a game economy. Here are the steps as I understand it:

    1. Determine an “average” wealth per unit (account, characters, etc.) – This is a crucial one. Do you really determine a sort of a “middle class” population? What’s the metric for this?

    2. Next you multiply that average wealth to the number of units to come up with the “correct” in-game economy. Depending on your threshold, you determine whether the drift from the middle is acceptable or not, and adjust accordingly. How do you adjust? You can tweak the drop rates, so that premiums lose a bit of their value, and commons become a bit more rare. Or you do one-time in-game events to redistribute wealth, sort of.

    In the F2P setup, that’s where I find some problems. For example, if there is a tendency for players to create dummy accounts, you inflate the number of “players”, you inflatae the total economy, and the inflation may go unnoticed and you continue to manage the game as if this situation isn’t happening. In a mature economy with lots of high-level players, the middle class should have a higher income than a new economy, owing to the more expensive requirements of their quests and upgrades.

    Here are some thoughts I have in terms of metrics and better economy monitoring:

    1. Make NPC prices non-fixed, even making items for sale non-infinite. Ever thought of having NPCs create even your armors from hunted items?

    2. Metric of wealth should consider the level of characters in-game, as well as their activities, rather than just the number. Dummy accounts which are usually low levels shouldn’t distort the metric.

    3. Reduce the ability to convert real-money mall items to in-game currency, by making some mall items untradeable.

    I am a newbie in all of these. I hope I am making sense :-)

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