I’ve spent some time working with MMRPG market data before (i.e. data on prices of goods traded in-game), as a way to test economic models of market dynamics. I know there’s also a decent number of economists who do this sort of thing, although I don’t have papers on hand at the moment.
For a lot of purposes, existing MMRPG economies are already great testbeds as-is. In-game markets are remarkably efficient, and the well-defined production pathways in most games let us directly check relationships between the structure of production pathways and the structure of price variation.
That said, game economies obviously diverge from reality in many respects. Some major differences:
Negative price of (some types of) labor. In a game, players do some kinds of “work” for fun or for upskilling. As a result, it’s common to see more-processed goods which cost less than their inputs; players pay to do the work of producing things (often to skill-grind).
Capital requirements and capital markets. Most games have relatively little opportunity for real capital investments, and minimal-if-any capital markets. That means no banking system, no public stock market, etc. That makes such games a bad model for most macroeconomic questions, especially development and crashes.
No flexible, enforceable contract system. This makes joint ownership/investment much harder, and is one of the factors underlying the lack of capital markets.
Games typically contain mechanisms for players to directly produce “money” de-novo, or sinks which permanently remove money. These often make the currency value highly unstable—games can see very high inflation rates, or sudden massive deflation when a feature involving a new money-sink is released.
Negative price of (some types of) labor. In a game, players do some kinds of “work” for fun or for upskilling.
In the real world people do volunteer and do some work for fun. There are people who run events with entrence fees but where the entrence fees don’t cover the full cost.
I’ve spent some time working with MMRPG market data before (i.e. data on prices of goods traded in-game), as a way to test economic models of market dynamics. I know there’s also a decent number of economists who do this sort of thing, although I don’t have papers on hand at the moment.
For a lot of purposes, existing MMRPG economies are already great testbeds as-is. In-game markets are remarkably efficient, and the well-defined production pathways in most games let us directly check relationships between the structure of production pathways and the structure of price variation.
That said, game economies obviously diverge from reality in many respects. Some major differences:
Negative price of (some types of) labor. In a game, players do some kinds of “work” for fun or for upskilling. As a result, it’s common to see more-processed goods which cost less than their inputs; players pay to do the work of producing things (often to skill-grind).
Capital requirements and capital markets. Most games have relatively little opportunity for real capital investments, and minimal-if-any capital markets. That means no banking system, no public stock market, etc. That makes such games a bad model for most macroeconomic questions, especially development and crashes.
No flexible, enforceable contract system. This makes joint ownership/investment much harder, and is one of the factors underlying the lack of capital markets.
Games typically contain mechanisms for players to directly produce “money” de-novo, or sinks which permanently remove money. These often make the currency value highly unstable—games can see very high inflation rates, or sudden massive deflation when a feature involving a new money-sink is released.
In the real world people do volunteer and do some work for fun. There are people who run events with entrence fees but where the entrence fees don’t cover the full cost.