Casual Connect panel on designing, balancing and managing a virtual economy August 3, 2009
Posted by jeremyliew in economics, game design, game mechanics, games, mmorpg.trackback
Freetoplay.biz has raw notes taken from the session on Designing, Balancing and Managing a Virtual Economy. Some good quotes include:
On inflation:
Gaia
- did not manage economy when they started
- want ppl to earn quickly for initial wow experience
- down the line, someone who has been playing for months and months get really rich – what is left for them to buy?
- need to manage these disparities correctly from the beginning
- company has one full time economist balancing it
3 Rings
- don’t screw up
- mudflation – overinflation of currency is easy to introduce if you are not being rigorous about sources of attention currency
- need to have some level of instrumentation… need to pay attention and be set to react when something goes awry
- it is a discipline that is tough to master
On creating one time currency sinks to battle inflation:
3 Rings
- incredible opp to take fantastic amounts of wealth and turn it into a one-time exclusive item
- when we shut down alpha server we challenged people to throw Pieces of 8 into a hole… winning group got their name on top of a list
Gaia
- we wanted to redo our amazon-like stores within the site, so we created a fiction inside Gaia that stores were getting shut down because of recession… asked users to help donate to help build higher quality stores… we created a concept of leaderboards… where largest donating teams got their names in lights… they felt as though they were getting status within the site
On pricing and maximizing ARPU:
Nexon
- you want your players to spend all the money they have so they need to get another payment card, etc
- you should offer your players lots of diff ways to spend their money
- players are not buying 1 item at a time… they are batching… buying $10 of virtual currency at a time… so you need lots of options for purchase so people don’t have money just sitting there
2 Fish
- i love pricing… counterintuitive in some places
- barrier pricing… i.e. everybody wants one of the cooler cars
- initial thought is that cars should be expensive
- but really they should be cheaper as they are a barrier item
- once they have a new car they can spend more on customizing it
- think about what kind of behaviours you want and price to encourage that
Nexon
- we actually do sell cars for $10
- we sold 120,000 cars for $10 apiece
- agrees re: barrier
- but barrier for ppl in game is not 10c, but $10 for initial payment… so you need enough items to justify that
- if you have 100 ppl playing game, what % are going to pay and how much
- what items can you create to get to a $15 ARPU
Gaia
- we do exactly that re: modeling an ARPU
- interplay between getting ARPU up vs getting percent of people who pay up
- clearly they should be complementary
- but fascinating thing is that we are not really clear on which one matters more, we go with what is easy
- getting dollars per player up is always easier
- people who want to pay are willing to pay a lot of money
- relatively easy to find small % of ppl who pay and pay
- more interesting thing is how to get a higher percent of ppl to pay
- that has more ramifications on long term business health
- barrier is getting the money into the game via cc or payment card
On dual currencies and managing fraud and chargebacks:
Gaia
- we need to be clear… if you can get your money out, then it is a big issue
- SL has a currency where you can invest your time and get it out in real dollars
- as soon as you do that, you can run into regulation issues, but more primarily, people will try to game the sytem… bots, farming, etc
- if you are going to go down that path, plan on having half your dev team working on managing exploits for the next few years
- you have then become the best target for money laundering
- we chose not to do that… greatly simplifies life… branding decision as well – is your site a place where you can spend time and earn money? a career? or is it a fun experience where you put in your money but don’t expect to get it out
Gaia
- ways to avoid hitting the 1% chargeback
- not allowing you to purchase on day 1
- maxing the amount ppl can spend in a month
- making sure ppl can’t pull money out
3 Rings
- we hit chargeback problems … we hadn’t switched on address verification… turned it on and problem went away
- WoW has big chargeback isseus as people farm on stolen CCs
Fascinating — could some general online social and economic principles be extracted from these? I’d be tempted to give it a try but some of the notes are too raw.
thanks — good stuff in here.
adrian
That is really fascinating, sounds like a lot of this stuff is a science. I plan on joining the gaming industry some day, so learning to design a virtual economy would be good knowledge. Since I know I’ve played Mmorpg’s before where the economy is ridiculous. The FlyFF economy used to be bad.