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So which is really Gini Coefficient of EVE? And for corporations?

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Nhanderu Mbaekuaa
Tribal Liberation Force
Minmatar Republic
#1 - 2014-03-28 14:31:21 UTC
Googling for it, I can find some trolling comments about EVE unequality, but not actual measurement.


Has CCP delivered some report/blog entry with the Gini Coefficient and Wealth distribution of EVE and its evolution? Or it is just random guessing?

Also, it could be ineresting to see it for corporations, in both senses... it could be interested to know if wealth distribution between corporations is more or less unequal that across individuals.

And it could be interesting also to see the Gini index of a corporation, as it could be of some value when considering to apply: some people would like to join corporations with high Gini, as they indicate some meritocratic structure, and some other people could prefer flatter corporations.
ISD Ezwal
ISD Community Communications Liaisons
ISD Alliance
#2 - 2014-03-28 20:43:33 UTC  |  Edited by: ISD Ezwal
Nhanderu Mbaekuaa wrote:
Has CCP delivered some report/blog entry with the Gini Coefficient and Wealth distribution of EVE and its evolution?
Not to my knowledge. It would be interesting to know though.

That said, I have taken the liberty to forward your question to CCP.
Keep in mind that I can not guarantee an answer will be given, as that is up to them.

Edit: And for those that have no idea what the OP is talking about: Gini coefficient
I have also removed some rule breaking posts and those quoting them. As always I let some edge cases stay.
Please people, keep it on topic and above all civil!

The rules:
5. Trolling is prohibited.

Trolling is a defined as a post that is deliberately designed for the purpose of angering and insulting other players in an attempt to incite retaliation or an emotional response. Posts of this nature are disruptive, often abusive and do not contribute to the sense of community that CCP promote.

ISD Ezwal Community Communication Liaisons (CCLs)
Nhanderu Mbaekuaa
Tribal Liberation Force
Minmatar Republic
#3 - 2014-03-30 16:45:55 UTC
ISD Ezwal wrote:
Nhanderu Mbaekuaa wrote:
Has CCP delivered some report/blog entry with the Gini Coefficient and Wealth distribution of EVE and its evolution?
Not to my knowledge. It would be interesting to know though.

That said, I have taken the liberty to forward your question to CCP.
Keep in mind that I can not guarantee an answer will be given, as that is up to them.


I say, thanks you very much. I was already abandoning hope in this thread. I was surprised that it was webbed so fast . Porbably it was a mistake to use the general subforum instead of market.

In fact, I was thinking already about asking CCP but I didn't know who to ask (I guess Quant, given that he was propossing to help with "Player Driven Analytics" whatever it is). They probably could draw the evolotion of the index and see the effect of expansions and maturity of the play., if any. My guess is that EVE is going to be more equalitary that real countries; there is a lot of free food for newbies and a traditiong of tipping which could help in the redisitribution.
Trevor Dalech
Nobody in Local
Of Sound Mind
#4 - 2014-03-31 06:55:11 UTC
Interesting question, I see a few complications when you try to calculate this though:

First of all, how are you going to define income?

If I transfer 1b ISK to my hauler alt for a shopping trip, that's clearly not income, however if I ransom somebody and they send me 500m, that is. So ISK transfers are ambiguous, but can be a significant part of ones income. Also, market trader might buy for 99b and sell for 100b. I would call that 1b income, not 100b, so one would have to calculate profit instead of looking at sales. Profit calculations can get very hairy.

I suggest we make every player file income tax reports. On the other hand, looking at the average rate of increase of (liquid) assets might be easier.

Second, are you going to look at income per character, per account, or per player?

Imagine an industrialist with 5 accounts, 3 characters per account, one of which does all the market trading. Saying these are 14 characters earning nothing and one being filthy rich, will favour a very high Gini coefficient. Even saying these are 5 accounts, 4 earning nothing will result in a skewed view. So grouping by player would be ideal, except I'm not sure CCP is able identify all the alt account belonging to players (looking at payment data perhaps, but what about PLEXed accounts?)
H3llHound
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#5 - 2014-04-01 09:43:52 UTC
We will not allow this discussion!!! Get back to work


We are 1%
Ramona McCandless
Silent Vale
LinkNet
#6 - 2014-04-01 09:45:36 UTC
My gini coefficent is itchy

"Yea, some dude came in and was normal for first couple months, so I gave him director." - Sean Dunaway

"A singular character could be hired to penetrate another corps space... using gorilla like tactics..." - Chane Morgann
H3llHound
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#7 - 2014-04-01 09:49:05 UTC
Sounds like you have sand in your vaGini
Ramona McCandless
Silent Vale
LinkNet
#8 - 2014-04-01 09:51:08 UTC
I think I have my coefficent in a bunch

"Yea, some dude came in and was normal for first couple months, so I gave him director." - Sean Dunaway

"A singular character could be hired to penetrate another corps space... using gorilla like tactics..." - Chane Morgann
Nhanderu Mbaekuaa
Tribal Liberation Force
Minmatar Republic
#9 - 2014-04-02 00:44:08 UTC
Trevor Dalech wrote:
Interesting question, I see a few complications when you try to calculate this though:

First of all, how are you going to define income?

I suggest we make every player file income tax reports. On the other hand, looking at the average rate of increase of (liquid) assets might be easier.

Second, are you going to look at income per character, per account, or per player?



Hmm perhaps it could be easier to measure the coefficient for wealth instead of income. For countries, both coefficients are published from time to time.

Tax reports are fine to me. Still better, a VAT tax in the system would allow to follow the track of each selling in the market. Of couse, local police should consider contraband and tax evasion any transfer of cargo between players ... ok, we are opening a can of worms here... lets stick to the idea of average rate of increase. Perhaps both for liquid and total, as CCP already does an estimate of the value of your assets.

In fact here it is another interesting stat for the local economist to look at: how does the income correlates with wealth. Is it just a linear "money call money", or can the starting players hope to climb up in the ladder if they put some dedication in the game?
Mocam
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#10 - 2014-04-02 07:22:16 UTC
This would be fairly valueless and meaningless.

With multiple characters, each "player" can focus all income or assets towards any given character at any given time.

Net effect: A seemingly completely broke character that earns nothing may in actuality have access to trillions of isk at any given moment and that isk may simply be sitting on a "holding char".

Hell, it's like trying to measure how much "value" someone has access to based upon counting the change in their pockets at any given point. It's not going to work.
Nhanderu Mbaekuaa
Tribal Liberation Force
Minmatar Republic
#11 - 2014-04-02 10:08:13 UTC
Mocam wrote:
This would be fairly valueless and meaningless.

With multiple characters, each "player" can focus all income or assets towards any given character at any given time.

Net effect: A seemingly completely broke character that earns nothing may in actuality have access to trillions of isk at any given moment and that isk may simply be sitting on a "holding char".

Hell, it's like trying to measure how much "value" someone has access to based upon counting the change in their pockets at any given point. It's not going to work.


Well, if the player moves ISK from one to char to another, the coefficient does not change: there is one rich characted, and one poor character. If the players likes to keep all the players with equal wealth, that is a information about game patterns that is translated to the coefficient. And again, if such patterns have changed during the ten years of the game, it could be interesting to know.

Anyway, lets forget players and their characters. What about whole corporations? We could also measure how equal or unequal they are. Instead of asking if the 20% of the characters own the 80% of the wealth, we could ask if he 20% of the corporations own the 80% of the wealth.

H3llHound said above, "We are the 1%". Well, are we?
Mocam
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#12 - 2014-04-02 10:51:49 UTC
Nhanderu Mbaekuaa wrote:
Mocam wrote:
This would be fairly valueless and meaningless.

With multiple characters, each "player" can focus all income or assets towards any given character at any given time.

Net effect: A seemingly completely broke character that earns nothing may in actuality have access to trillions of isk at any given moment and that isk may simply be sitting on a "holding char".

Hell, it's like trying to measure how much "value" someone has access to based upon counting the change in their pockets at any given point. It's not going to work.


Well, if the player moves ISK from one to char to another, the coefficient does not change: there is one rich characted, and one poor character. If the players likes to keep all the players with equal wealth, that is a information about game patterns that is translated to the coefficient. And again, if such patterns have changed during the ten years of the game, it could be interesting to know.

Anyway, lets forget players and their characters. What about whole corporations? We could also measure how equal or unequal they are. Instead of asking if the 20% of the characters own the 80% of the wealth, we could ask if he 20% of the corporations own the 80% of the wealth.

H3llHound said above, "We are the 1%". Well, are we?


Don't get me wrong. If it's possible to come up with *MEANINGFUL* statistical values - that I'd like to see but I've seen some very poor logic from statistical use in the past.

Player based values won't work - I'll stick to that without going into all the details.

Corporations should work to a degree but that will be a bit tricky. Lots of caveats on measuring but it should be workable. Players don't own POS's, POCO's, etc. Corporations do so values would show differently from that point but ... lots of little points to watch out for.
Rainbow Dash
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#13 - 2014-04-02 14:49:33 UTC
I can almost guarantee 20% of the corps hold 80% of the wealth, as there are a bunch of 1 man alt corps out there. I mean, i think i have 5-6 corps myself.

It would be interesting to get some numbers on active characters and net worth. Given supercarriers went from only toys for the rich to almost everyone having them, i suspect its quite high.