Money, money, money. Most things in this world are all about the money, even if we like to deny it. Sure family, friends, love, happiness are all important, but it’s fairly hard to enjoy or find those things without at least some cash in your pocket. Ultimately if it applies in the real world, someone will try and mirror it in the virtual, so it’s time to talk about virtual money and economies.
Sure a lot of games do now feature some form of in game currency, but they don’t exactly do it in a complex or meaningful world. From RPGs to racers to platformers you earn cash either randomly or based on some measure of your success and then go and spend them on fixed priced items in a fairly basic shop, which rarely seem to have any competitors. I’m not positive, but I think it’s a safe assumption that whoever’s designing these systems isn’t really educated in supply and demand or even any sort of basic theory of shopping around for a good price.
Of course there are always exceptions, and some games manage to pull it off pretty well. Fable II’s system, including property and business management, seemed pretty impressive and certainly moved beyond the simplistic methods noted above. However probably the king of in game economies is the system that emerged in EVE. Obviously being an MMO gives it a significant advantage in not having to rely on building an artificial model of a complex economic system, but large portions of the game’s economy are still driven by AI agents.
The depth and realism of the game’s markets really is impressive, and does feel about as close to a real system as a game can easily model. Supply and demand curves are in obvious effect, risk/reward ratios play out when weighing up where to transport mined resources to, and players have even developed a stock exchange with player driven corporations being able to offer there companies up for IPOs. There just isn’t another game I know of with this amount of depth or detail, although a lot of it comes from the types of players that the game attracts.
That’s probably enough about how great EVE is, it’s time to let you guys offer up your own suggestions. Are you sick of games that don’t really seem to try with their economies? Would you rather they felt more real, or are you happy to collect your money and know exactly what you can afford with it?
Thanks to bunimomike for suggesting this topic. Have your own topic you’d like us to talk about? Why not suggest it?