Market Discussions

So I had a discussion with a gentleman about player-driven economies in video games, and he had the following to say about EVE's economy, and how it was a bad example of a player-driven economy.
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And to follow up after I asked him to explain exactly why players didn't drive the EVE economy:




Does anyone here at MD have anything to add to this discussion? He has made some fair points I think, there are some strong external factors that influence EVE's economy, but he hasn't convinced me that everyday players are the main driving factors of the economy, and not some mega CCP-BOB conglomerate.

All I have to add it that Eve's economy is order of magnitudes better than other MMOs.

Is it a 100% perfectly player driven economy? No. CCP needs controls in order to properly manage the game, and the economy is just a slice of the Eve pie.

This guy just seems to be a negative whiner: " In reality, it is a detestable amalgam of the CCP-protected influences of key alliances and the forceful disruptions of CCP attempts to band-aid their mistakes."

When I look at the Eve economy, I see the best MMO market mechanics out of thousands of MMOs. If he's that against game elements, he should just stick to playing with the real equity markets. Anyone who looks at the complex Eve economy and calls a "detestable amalgam of CCP-protected influences" probably isn't cut out for playing online video games.

It sounds like he should find a hobby he enjoys instead. Eve is a game controlled by a game company, and you have to accept that if you want to play.

I think his argument is more or less the economy isn't truly player driven because of all the external, some of which are controlling, factors that effect it. I get what your saying though, I just want to share.

I would say the economy is player driven in most, apart from NPC goods like Command centers and books.

Otherwise I think CCP is just looking over the market place to make sure there's enough of almost anything available fairly to every one, AKA healthy regulation that the population seems to benefit from.

-to present a quiq argument:
Once upon a time, the population said NO, to Pay-to-win AUR mechanics, the players made the choice, - in my opinion, this is the cleanest economy iv ever seen anywhere, period.

As for SOV mechanics, yes they could use a little bit of a touch up, but there's just to many players assets and local healthy markets already entrenched to even think of doing something fast, if change comes its probably best to make it gradual.

Many things can be said, both negative and positive about the game, but overall I think the game is enjoyable, a good storyline, unmatched quality of choice in just about anything you want to do, the market system is already good,Overall the game is of much better quality then just about everything else around because indeed, it is player driven at its core.

Of course this is a very gray discussion, never the less those are my 5 iskies.

Player driven economy does not equal free market.

Economies can be capitalist, communist, even socialist or fascist.
I think eve leans toward a fascist economy.


CCP is the Eve central bank.
Central banks **** up economies all the time. Why would it be different in Eve?


Max resources are a part of real life too.
The amount that is "Max" can change based on many factors like new technology.


Did eve do a good job on the economy? Nope.
Did they do a bad job? Nope.
Just a decent attempt at middle of the road results.


Hiring an economist is just funny.
I find most have no passion to learn economics but only regurgitate what they were taught.
(( Maybe even brain washed into ))


Even with all the mess ups, bumps in the road or solar storms they went through it's still the best example of a player driven economy.
I would be willing to bet money that the guy who whined that hard to you is a libertarian. They confuse economy with free market all day everyday.

I will try to offer a counter to each point:

The first point where he says natural resources are arbitrarily limited shouldn't and doesn't affect if the economy is player driven. Being limited is good, by being limited you create an atmosphere where players will fight for the given resources. The argument that there is no effort involved also doesn't hold credence since you can easily refute it with real world examples, such as oil fields. After you establish the oil field and the rights to extract the oil its takes very little effort (relatively) from the oil company to actually extract the oil. Yes there is laborers and managers on the site but you can consider such things as fuel costs and the time needed to manage the pos. You can see that actually building the pos, hauling and selling it is all done through players, so that only adds to the player driven economy. The last sentence makes zero sense to me, how does not harvesting the resources and rmt play into the argument? Even if there is rmt the things you sell are sold to players based on demand and supply, and you will want the best prices.

This argument is probably the weakest of them all, since the map being limited is not a real argument. It is like saying the earth is limited so we can't have people driven economies in the real world. Is he saying the map should be infinitely large? Saying defense is so much easier than offence is arguable at best ( in any balanced game that should be the case, the attacker always has the inherent advantage of picking his fights, hence the argument the attacker has to be lucky once while the defender has to be lucky always). The data also supports the argument as we have seen numerous powerful alliances get rooted from their space. And even if that was true I still don't see how that makes EVE a "not" player driven economy? Even if some major alliances control some prices that doesn't mean anything since in the real world we also have organizations and powers controlling commodity prices (HAI OPEC). I think your friend is confusing perfect capitalist market (perfect competition model) and player driven economies.

Now as a developer of a game CCP will always produce new features, and sometimes (not intentionally) they will affect the economy, but these mistakes are quickly fixed. We have to remember that although creating sinks will affect the economy, it's up to the players if they want to use them or no. Lets take taxes for instance, although the isk goes to npc, taxes are only paid when you do a transaction with other players and is decided upon that. Even BPO's are bought based on the profitability of that item being sold to other players. EVE is not like the real world, but in both we have isk (cash) generating activities. In the real world that gets countered by inflation and the government limiting the supply of cash. Sinks include increasing rrr buying government bonds and increasing the rate of borrowing from the central bank. Sinks are necessary and the supply of cash needs to be controlled or the inflation rate will spiral out of control. So I still don't see how the existence is something bad. And fyi (according to my knowledge) it has been a while since CCP introduced notable ISK sink. They fix the screw ups by fixing them, FW got fixed, no sinks were added.

I'm not saying eve is a 100% driven economy, but it's damn close (hopefully npc orders on everything will cease to exist and we live happily ever after) and CCP is taking major steps to making this happen. Hiring an economist is a big leap in the gaming industry and I don't appreciate your friend making fun of it. Unless he's an economist (if he is he is truly a bad one) don't undermine things you don't understand. And having a business degree doesn't make you an economist.

Sorry for the long post but it was required

That warped fruit loop instantly discredits himself multiple times. I'm almost thinking that's a troll. This is a classic combo of ignorance coupled with bias and a moderate vocab so as to appear intelligent, when in reality that's some of the most hideously stupid trash I've read in a while. I think I'm dumber for having read it. Just wow.

It would seem according to that pedantic 'gentleman' there can be no 'actual' player/human driven economies on the planet. Sounds like a paranoid extremist with little reasonability or sense of reality.

To be honest I disagree with most of OP's arguments in support of his thesis (e.g. EyjoG is a qualified economist, EyjoG did successfully push CCP to reduce the number of artificial price floors/ceilings, the mere availability of resource faucets/sinks does not matter, currency is irrelevant [ISK is a natural resource and there's nothing wrong with that ], ...) but I whole-heartedly agree with the thesis itself.

CCP does intervene (through rebalancing of droprates, of PvE plexes, of production cost. of invention chance, of moon distribution, ... to name just a couple of recent examples) whenever prices take a turn they don't like.

CCP is often slow (whcih allows for a greater illusion of economic freedom) but at the end of the day they do make sure that prices stay at levels they are comfortable with.
They don't tend to interfere with the market itself anymore (save for PLEXes), instead they interfere with the mechanisms that govern supply and demand so that the market will have to arrive at CCP's desired result (price).

The "player-run economy" thing is grossly overhyped in both CCP's marketing and the perception of many EVE players. The EVE economy is only allowed to run freely for as long as it produces the desired results (and when the EVE economy doesn't behave it gets shocked into submission by CCP). A (mostlly) free market for raw materials and goods does not constitute a free economy.

Part of the problem is of course that there is very little endogenous technological innovation in EVE - in the real world a shortage of some raw material will inspire people to look for alternatives and develop new technologies. A classical example would be how the development of synthetic rubbers was greatly accelerated by Germany losing access to natural sources of rubber during WW1 and WW2.
In EVE CCP has to "fix" shortages by rebalancing (making the undersupplied product less desirable), by changing resource distribution or by granting new technology (e.g. Alchemy) like mana from heaven.

Maybe a player-run economy is not possible within the framework of current gen MMOs but that doesn't change that in my opinion advertising EVE as a player-run economy is frivolous.

that meddling is endogenous to the economy - you don't have benevolent alines coming down from the skies gifting you technology or redistributing resources in real-life.

Well, not too long ago we did have magical fairies from the US Gov swoop in for the infamous 'bailout' of private companies, so, yeah, we kind of do see that.

CCP is still analogous in most senses to a composite central bank/government/Resource Organization(OPEC etc).

And as in Eve, in real world economies and not dreamland, these entities are required for stabilizing actions.