It's The Economy, Stupid
If you've spent any time reading my other posts, you should have probably figured out my view, generalized, though it may be, that people are morons.
Yeah, as much as I like to believe that there's intelligent life out there, people frequently cause me to question that belief.
If you've read my posts, you no doubt also know that I'm a gamer and computer guy.
Some other things I've read that also help reinforce the 'people are stupid' view are The Bastard Operator From Hell (and the original ones) and a recent find [GM]Dave's Bannable Offenses.
Both are at least based on reality, as the BOFH is/was an IT guy, and [GM]Dave probably is a GameMaster.
While they most likely haven't done everything they've written, I'm sure whatever they haven't done, they'd like to do, at least once or twice.
The club I work at has been a club for quite a long time. Something like 20 years or more.
When the current owner bought and remodeled it about 2 years ago, he had to put in an elevator to comply with the A.D.A. because it's below ground level.
I'm kind of surprised that he got such a cheap elevator when he spent so much money on other things in the club, like the sound and light systems, bars and tables, etc.
Yeah, that stuff is used by everyone and the elevator was mainly intended for use by handicapped folks, so I'm sure that's part of the reason.
But we use it to load in gear as well.
It's rather slow going between floors, not really big (basically big enough to fit a wheelchair and maybe someone pushing, if they aren't bigger than Calista Flockhart), and has no sensor for the door.
No eye to detect obstructions, no pressure strip to make sure no one is crushed.
It does have some kind of logic that deterimines if the door isn't closed in a certain amount of time that it's blocked and reopens.
So we generally use a key to turn it off until it's loaded then send it and they turn it off, ad nauseum.
It's rather touchy and doesn't like to be broken, so we won't discuss our use of it in a way that isn't really intended.
Sometimes the key isn't available and we just use the call button to keep the door open.
When we have new helpers around, it's explained about the no sensors issue.
I've had to tell a couple people several times not to try and push the door back open. Occasionally getting rude glances and the like.
I guess I'm just a codgy old fart that doesn't want to carry 30 or more cases that weigh 20-300 pounds up and down the stairs.
How inconsiderate of me.
Anyway, that's just an example 'stupid' story.
As you may guess, the post is supposed to be about the economy, and how stupid people are pertaining to it.
Just not the U.S. economy. Or any other country's economy.
Online game's economies to be exact.
Online role playing games have currency to allow players to buy and sell goods to other players. Or other creative ideas they come up with.
Each game has their own name, valuation, and distribution system of their currency ('C.' from here on).
Star Wars Galaxies has 'Credits'
Matrix Online has '$i' (short for $info, using the 'information = power' analogy)
EVE Online has 'ISK'('InterStellar Kredits', but is also the official abbreviation for the Icelandic Kronur, the currency of the game's developers home, Iceland)
Puzzle Pirates has Pieces Of Eight (POE) and Doubloons (Dubs) (both real currencies from the past)
Some fantasy games use a generic 'Gold' as their C., which is where the term 'gold-farmer' comes from. (Discussed later)
In some games 500,000 C. is a lot, in others it's almost nothing.
Missions are a common form of 'faucet' (entry point for C.) in games.
Players do X to get Y C.
Kill 10 Ogres for 50 C., deliver this to my friend for 10,000 C., etc.
Usually, missions themselves are not the most lucrative thing in a game to gain C., just the most prominent. Most C. from missions comes from valuable items looted from an NPC encountered at the end of a mission.
Players save their C. to buy new gear that they need, be it cloths, weapons, armor, ships, levels, insurance, healing, resources, or whatever else the developers and players decide is worth trying to sell.
Generally, people see what's what and play by the rules.
Goods and services find their natural price points and it's more or less a happy place.
Things are priced at a reasonable level for the quality of the item or service.
But inflation is a fact of game life just as it is in real life.
The longer you play, the more wealth you accumulate. This is always true in general, but is more pronouced in some games.
In games like SWG and MxO, there is a finite source of 'drains' or 'sinks' for C. to exit the economy. Actually exit the game, not just exit from your pocket to another player's.
So as a game ages, it's easier for the veterans to afford whatever they want, whenever they want it. Which drives prices higher.
There is some real life comparision to this in the supply and demand market system.
Low supply and/or high demand equals high prices and vice versa.
But an artifical inflation like accumulated wealth hurts the casual, and especially, new players because they can't afford the new gear they need as easily.
In EVE Online, the advanced versions of gear (Tech 2) are distributed by a lottery based on a mission system. Players accumulate points and are entered into this lottery every week and have a chance to win a blueprint for a T2 item.
There are a finite number of blueprints available for each T2 item, which creates the supply vs. demand.
Some items are in very high demand and are sold for several hundred to several thousand % over production cost.
Profit is a fine thing, and because some people can afford to pay any price, some people know no limits when setting their margins.
CCP is introducing a 'reverse engineering' field to allow players to take an item and obtain a limited run blueprint, say 3-5 uses.
Some people believe that the original limited number of blueprints was based on a lower player population and are now insufficient for current subscriber numbers. And they'd be right, as newer blueprints have more copies available.
Some folks believe that the reverse engineering and/or releasing more blueprints will increase the supply and thus lower prices, and they'd be right, to an extent.
Just as with the veterans that having more C. creates a higher standard price, with limited supply, players get used to paying a certain amount for an item, and while a larger supply will lower prices, I predict it will only be by 5%-10%. Not a huge difference really.
But that's still a bit divergant of the main reason for the post.
I mentioned 'gold farmers' earlier and here's a good place to expand on it a bit.
You can read what Wikipedia has to say, but in brief, a farmer is someone who (usually) does a task repeatedly to gain C. or an item to be sold for C. A 'gold farmer' typically does these tasks as quickly as possible and sometimes using other software to do it easily or by flat out cheating, to sell the C. for real money on various web sites.
There're various arguments for and against gold farming, and I'll not go into that here. Though I am against it, except where some designers allow it on purpose, like SecondLife.
EVE Online also allows some 'real' items to be sold for game currency, both buying a character from another player for ISK and selling game time cards for ISK are allowed by CCP, and anyone attempting to scam players on these items is dealt with accordingly. (Other in-game scams, like selling a ship saying it's 'fully loaded' when it's actually not, are allowed, so always caveat emptor)
In Puzzle Pirates, Doubloons are bought with real money, and 3 Rings allows Dubs to be traded for POE.
Generally, game companies word their terms of service to state that it's not allowed to sell in-game items or C. for real world money. Enforcement is usually haphazard as it's time consuming to track and sometimes hard to prove.
People seem to not have a clue about the economy and how they can affect it.
People don't look at a game economy and see the comparison with a real life economy.
The systems is going along on it's own and fairly well balanced and some nimrod comes along and twinks it a bit.
Over the long run, it balances itself out, but in the short term, and eventually the long term if often enough, it ruins the market for everyone else.
Two examples taken from my personal experience.
EVE Online - Item sells for an average of 75,000 ISK. I looted a couple from badguys and attempt to sell them on the market. I undercut the lowest bidder by maybe 2000 ISK to try for a quick sell. Next day, I check my sales, they haven't sold. I figured there could be someone undercutting me, I kind of expected it. What I found was 6-7 people listing the item for 5-10% lower than the lowest guy when they listed. So now it's selling for about 50% less than I listed for just 24 hours ago, at about 40,000 ISK.
You could say I brought this on myself by undercutting, and I can somewhat agree, but I was still within 5%-10 of the average price. I'm very conscience of what I list items for and the deviation from average and would have sold at the same 5%-10% under average regardless of what others had listed for.
The 'average' value players see when selling an item is based on the average of the actual sale price of an item over a period of time, say several months, not an average of the listed items price. Players will see the cheapest price is 50% below average and assume that it was overpriced and now this is a new standard.
These 6-7 people have just ruined the market value for that item.
Depending on how popular that item is, everyone now makes less C. when they sell it, which hurts the producers most, as their margins are usually very slim.
Eventually, it may or may not raise in price again.
Puzzle Pirates - Doubloons are used on the 'free' oceans as a way for the developer, 3 Rings, to make money on a pay-as-you-go system instead of a monthly-fee-subscriber system.
It works pretty well too.
All players can do the 'important' things like pillage and have clothes to wear using the basic items that only cost POE. But 'fancy' goods like nicer looking clothes, better swords, ships, etc., have a Dub cost as well. This allows 3R to pay for the servers and staff to run the game.
All items decay at varying rates from 30-90 days. Generally, the more expensive it is, both in POE and Dubs, the longer it lasts.
Dubs can be traded for POE, and vice versa, on an open, player controlled market.
Players put in buy and sell orders and they are traded when and if someone wants to trade for that price.
Some players have never bought Dubs for real money and only trade POE gained from pillages against NPCs. I've bought a few and traded for a few.
Hunter is the newest Dub ocean and prices average about 670 POE/Dub for buy orders, and 690 POE/Dub for sell orders. Recently buy price lowered to about 625-630 POE/Dub and the sell price lowered a touch as well, though I don't remember exactly how much.
Some genius listed a buy price for about 660 POE/Dub for 20-30 Dubs, and as such, the price went back up to 'normal'.
Obviously it was an artificial and temporary low price anyway, and was bound to rise again, but this Einstein ruined the chance for a lowering of the standard market value a little.
It's really a toss-up whether it was someone who regularly sold Dubs and wished for the prices to be higher, or some chowderhead that just wanted his Dubs 'right-bloody-now!'.
Whether it was an impatient prat or a regular Dub seller, they lowered most everyone's potential enjoyment of the game just a bit by manipulating the prices, whether they were conscience of it or not.
For some reason, a lot of people have to be 'better' than everyone else at a game. And for many, having more currency means they are the best.
Even if that means having millions of C. despite having absoulutely nothing to spend it on.
Even if it is detrimental to the game as a whole.
Buying C. from farmers, using programs to cheat, creating said programs and adding a key logger that sends you the login info of the unintelligent saps so you can steal everything they have, finding loopholes in the mechanics of the game to use to their advantange.
I know it won't really do any good, but I'll say it anyway.
Come on people, use some common sense and consider what you are doing.
Take that extra 5 seconds to think about how it's going to affect the game as a whole.
What would happen if everyone did what you are going to do?
You wouldn't actually go into a store and offer to pay more than the marked price would you?
You don't expect that someone is going to make a business of buying at wholesale and then selling for 1/2 the profit of everyone else just so they can sell a lot more units and do more work for the same profit that everyone else gets, do you?
Yeah, as much as I like to believe that there's intelligent life out there, people frequently cause me to question that belief.
If you've read my posts, you no doubt also know that I'm a gamer and computer guy.
Some other things I've read that also help reinforce the 'people are stupid' view are The Bastard Operator From Hell (and the original ones) and a recent find [GM]Dave's Bannable Offenses.
Both are at least based on reality, as the BOFH is/was an IT guy, and [GM]Dave probably is a GameMaster.
While they most likely haven't done everything they've written, I'm sure whatever they haven't done, they'd like to do, at least once or twice.
The club I work at has been a club for quite a long time. Something like 20 years or more.
When the current owner bought and remodeled it about 2 years ago, he had to put in an elevator to comply with the A.D.A. because it's below ground level.
I'm kind of surprised that he got such a cheap elevator when he spent so much money on other things in the club, like the sound and light systems, bars and tables, etc.
Yeah, that stuff is used by everyone and the elevator was mainly intended for use by handicapped folks, so I'm sure that's part of the reason.
But we use it to load in gear as well.
It's rather slow going between floors, not really big (basically big enough to fit a wheelchair and maybe someone pushing, if they aren't bigger than Calista Flockhart), and has no sensor for the door.
No eye to detect obstructions, no pressure strip to make sure no one is crushed.
It does have some kind of logic that deterimines if the door isn't closed in a certain amount of time that it's blocked and reopens.
So we generally use a key to turn it off until it's loaded then send it and they turn it off, ad nauseum.
It's rather touchy and doesn't like to be broken, so we won't discuss our use of it in a way that isn't really intended.
Sometimes the key isn't available and we just use the call button to keep the door open.
When we have new helpers around, it's explained about the no sensors issue.
I've had to tell a couple people several times not to try and push the door back open. Occasionally getting rude glances and the like.
I guess I'm just a codgy old fart that doesn't want to carry 30 or more cases that weigh 20-300 pounds up and down the stairs.
How inconsiderate of me.
Anyway, that's just an example 'stupid' story.
As you may guess, the post is supposed to be about the economy, and how stupid people are pertaining to it.
Just not the U.S. economy. Or any other country's economy.
Online game's economies to be exact.
Online role playing games have currency to allow players to buy and sell goods to other players. Or other creative ideas they come up with.
Each game has their own name, valuation, and distribution system of their currency ('C.' from here on).
Star Wars Galaxies has 'Credits'
Matrix Online has '$i' (short for $info, using the 'information = power' analogy)
EVE Online has 'ISK'('InterStellar Kredits', but is also the official abbreviation for the Icelandic Kronur, the currency of the game's developers home, Iceland)
Puzzle Pirates has Pieces Of Eight (POE) and Doubloons (Dubs) (both real currencies from the past)
Some fantasy games use a generic 'Gold' as their C., which is where the term 'gold-farmer' comes from. (Discussed later)
In some games 500,000 C. is a lot, in others it's almost nothing.
Missions are a common form of 'faucet' (entry point for C.) in games.
Players do X to get Y C.
Kill 10 Ogres for 50 C., deliver this to my friend for 10,000 C., etc.
Usually, missions themselves are not the most lucrative thing in a game to gain C., just the most prominent. Most C. from missions comes from valuable items looted from an NPC encountered at the end of a mission.
Players save their C. to buy new gear that they need, be it cloths, weapons, armor, ships, levels, insurance, healing, resources, or whatever else the developers and players decide is worth trying to sell.
Generally, people see what's what and play by the rules.
Goods and services find their natural price points and it's more or less a happy place.
Things are priced at a reasonable level for the quality of the item or service.
But inflation is a fact of game life just as it is in real life.
The longer you play, the more wealth you accumulate. This is always true in general, but is more pronouced in some games.
In games like SWG and MxO, there is a finite source of 'drains' or 'sinks' for C. to exit the economy. Actually exit the game, not just exit from your pocket to another player's.
So as a game ages, it's easier for the veterans to afford whatever they want, whenever they want it. Which drives prices higher.
There is some real life comparision to this in the supply and demand market system.
Low supply and/or high demand equals high prices and vice versa.
But an artifical inflation like accumulated wealth hurts the casual, and especially, new players because they can't afford the new gear they need as easily.
In EVE Online, the advanced versions of gear (Tech 2) are distributed by a lottery based on a mission system. Players accumulate points and are entered into this lottery every week and have a chance to win a blueprint for a T2 item.
There are a finite number of blueprints available for each T2 item, which creates the supply vs. demand.
Some items are in very high demand and are sold for several hundred to several thousand % over production cost.
Profit is a fine thing, and because some people can afford to pay any price, some people know no limits when setting their margins.
CCP is introducing a 'reverse engineering' field to allow players to take an item and obtain a limited run blueprint, say 3-5 uses.
Some people believe that the original limited number of blueprints was based on a lower player population and are now insufficient for current subscriber numbers. And they'd be right, as newer blueprints have more copies available.
Some folks believe that the reverse engineering and/or releasing more blueprints will increase the supply and thus lower prices, and they'd be right, to an extent.
Just as with the veterans that having more C. creates a higher standard price, with limited supply, players get used to paying a certain amount for an item, and while a larger supply will lower prices, I predict it will only be by 5%-10%. Not a huge difference really.
But that's still a bit divergant of the main reason for the post.
I mentioned 'gold farmers' earlier and here's a good place to expand on it a bit.
You can read what Wikipedia has to say, but in brief, a farmer is someone who (usually) does a task repeatedly to gain C. or an item to be sold for C. A 'gold farmer' typically does these tasks as quickly as possible and sometimes using other software to do it easily or by flat out cheating, to sell the C. for real money on various web sites.
There're various arguments for and against gold farming, and I'll not go into that here. Though I am against it, except where some designers allow it on purpose, like SecondLife.
EVE Online also allows some 'real' items to be sold for game currency, both buying a character from another player for ISK and selling game time cards for ISK are allowed by CCP, and anyone attempting to scam players on these items is dealt with accordingly. (Other in-game scams, like selling a ship saying it's 'fully loaded' when it's actually not, are allowed, so always caveat emptor)
In Puzzle Pirates, Doubloons are bought with real money, and 3 Rings allows Dubs to be traded for POE.
Generally, game companies word their terms of service to state that it's not allowed to sell in-game items or C. for real world money. Enforcement is usually haphazard as it's time consuming to track and sometimes hard to prove.
People seem to not have a clue about the economy and how they can affect it.
People don't look at a game economy and see the comparison with a real life economy.
The systems is going along on it's own and fairly well balanced and some nimrod comes along and twinks it a bit.
Over the long run, it balances itself out, but in the short term, and eventually the long term if often enough, it ruins the market for everyone else.
Two examples taken from my personal experience.
EVE Online - Item sells for an average of 75,000 ISK. I looted a couple from badguys and attempt to sell them on the market. I undercut the lowest bidder by maybe 2000 ISK to try for a quick sell. Next day, I check my sales, they haven't sold. I figured there could be someone undercutting me, I kind of expected it. What I found was 6-7 people listing the item for 5-10% lower than the lowest guy when they listed. So now it's selling for about 50% less than I listed for just 24 hours ago, at about 40,000 ISK.
You could say I brought this on myself by undercutting, and I can somewhat agree, but I was still within 5%-10 of the average price. I'm very conscience of what I list items for and the deviation from average and would have sold at the same 5%-10% under average regardless of what others had listed for.
The 'average' value players see when selling an item is based on the average of the actual sale price of an item over a period of time, say several months, not an average of the listed items price. Players will see the cheapest price is 50% below average and assume that it was overpriced and now this is a new standard.
These 6-7 people have just ruined the market value for that item.
Depending on how popular that item is, everyone now makes less C. when they sell it, which hurts the producers most, as their margins are usually very slim.
Eventually, it may or may not raise in price again.
Puzzle Pirates - Doubloons are used on the 'free' oceans as a way for the developer, 3 Rings, to make money on a pay-as-you-go system instead of a monthly-fee-subscriber system.
It works pretty well too.
All players can do the 'important' things like pillage and have clothes to wear using the basic items that only cost POE. But 'fancy' goods like nicer looking clothes, better swords, ships, etc., have a Dub cost as well. This allows 3R to pay for the servers and staff to run the game.
All items decay at varying rates from 30-90 days. Generally, the more expensive it is, both in POE and Dubs, the longer it lasts.
Dubs can be traded for POE, and vice versa, on an open, player controlled market.
Players put in buy and sell orders and they are traded when and if someone wants to trade for that price.
Some players have never bought Dubs for real money and only trade POE gained from pillages against NPCs. I've bought a few and traded for a few.
Hunter is the newest Dub ocean and prices average about 670 POE/Dub for buy orders, and 690 POE/Dub for sell orders. Recently buy price lowered to about 625-630 POE/Dub and the sell price lowered a touch as well, though I don't remember exactly how much.
Some genius listed a buy price for about 660 POE/Dub for 20-30 Dubs, and as such, the price went back up to 'normal'.
Obviously it was an artificial and temporary low price anyway, and was bound to rise again, but this Einstein ruined the chance for a lowering of the standard market value a little.
It's really a toss-up whether it was someone who regularly sold Dubs and wished for the prices to be higher, or some chowderhead that just wanted his Dubs 'right-bloody-now!'.
Whether it was an impatient prat or a regular Dub seller, they lowered most everyone's potential enjoyment of the game just a bit by manipulating the prices, whether they were conscience of it or not.
For some reason, a lot of people have to be 'better' than everyone else at a game. And for many, having more currency means they are the best.
Even if that means having millions of C. despite having absoulutely nothing to spend it on.
Even if it is detrimental to the game as a whole.
Buying C. from farmers, using programs to cheat, creating said programs and adding a key logger that sends you the login info of the unintelligent saps so you can steal everything they have, finding loopholes in the mechanics of the game to use to their advantange.
I know it won't really do any good, but I'll say it anyway.
Come on people, use some common sense and consider what you are doing.
Take that extra 5 seconds to think about how it's going to affect the game as a whole.
What would happen if everyone did what you are going to do?
You wouldn't actually go into a store and offer to pay more than the marked price would you?
You don't expect that someone is going to make a business of buying at wholesale and then selling for 1/2 the profit of everyone else just so they can sell a lot more units and do more work for the same profit that everyone else gets, do you?
posted by urbnsol at 11:58 PM
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