Economics of MMO, avoiding inflation

usser · 2004-01-22T00:17:18

This question relates to the economy of an MMO. I have some limited experience of Ultima Online but not enough to judge how they solve this problem. If anyone has any design suggestions how this has been solved in the past, by all means, please post. Imagine you have a trading-centered MMO, to make trading simple you want your players to be able to carry out transactions between themselves with money. To avoid money to be created out of nowhere all players start with zero money. The players can then extract various natural resources and eventually trade it with other players for money. As more and more players join the game more wealth will be created and there will be a steady flow of money entering the game, depending how much people play, more wealth will be created over time. BUT, where does this money come from in the first place? Do all MMO''s have to have some sort of central bank that regulates the inflow of money into the game, i.e. by buying resources from the players in exchange for money (and by selling resources to decrease money supply)? But in this case how does the central bank know what exchange rate to set for natural resources to avoid inflation? And a follow-up question, is there any current MMO where money has been rendered useless due to hyperinflation? Best regards, Nick

Game Design and Theory Game Design

Started by usser January 16, 2004 11:22 AM

19 comments, last by usser 20 years, 3 months ago

hplus0603

11,916

January 22, 2004 12:17 AM

Sources and sinks makes for a reasonable way to create a game, but not to create an economy.

If you want your online economy to work as well as the real economy, you have to make it exchangeable to the real economy, meaning that you can "cash out" to US dollars, and also "buy in" with real US dollars.

Yeah, that means Mr Moneybags can get his full Rubicite for the price of a credit card swipe. Economies are like that.

The corollary is that you have to be able to back all your gold pieces in US dollars. Makes you think twice about the design of the resources system in your MMORPG. And puts a real price tag on duping bugs :-)

enum Bool { True, False, FileNotFound };

Economics of MMO, avoiding inflation

This topic is closed to new replies.

Popular Topics

Recommended Tutorials

Economics of MMO, avoiding inflation

This topic is closed to new replies.

Popular Topics

Recommended Tutorials

Reticulating splines