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The In-game Economics of Ultima Online

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Figure 1 illustrates the original design of the macro-economy. Notice that all of the drain paths lead back up to the top, forming a closed loop. The impetus for this design was to prevent resource inflation; the theory being that... See more » Figure 1 illustrates the original design of the macro-economy. Notice that all of the drain paths lead back up to the top, forming a closed loop. The impetus for this design was to prevent resource inflation; the theory being that a fixed quantity of resources would simply circulate from abstract to concrete and back again thus preventing the inflation that had plagued many similar on-line worlds. While this sounded good in theory, it was a failure in practice. What the designers had not counted on was the deflationary effects of hoarding. What actually happened was that many of the resources accumulated as inventory (box 6) with little flowing back to the top via the drains. As the virtual resources in the "bank" (box 1) dried up, there were no longer resources available to spawn creatures and their loot. The result: the world became boring and the players began to complain loudly. At first, the designers attempted to solve the deflation problem by pumping more resources into the world – they simply increased the total quantity of resources in the bank. But, no matter how much they added, the resources always flowed into inventory and just sat there. The problem, they concluded, was the lack of drains – not enough stuff was flowing out. However, players are (understandably) extremely resistant to rule changes which take things away from them. Thus, significantly increasing the decay or degradation rates is politically unfeasible. New drains were proposed: taxes, maintenance fees on housing, etc. Unfortunately, many of these drains feel too much like real world "work" and are therefore politically unacceptable (see ‘Fun’ Chapter 2). After a few changes to hoarding rules, such as limits on the number of objects which can be practically kept inside of a house, the designers were forced to give in. It was clear that the drains were not going to be steady enough to count on so the answer was to disconnect the output from the input. This is demonstrated in the drain difference in figure 2. In this diagram, all outputs flow to the ultimate drain where they are simply destroyed. At the top, new resources are created out of thin air (the "faucet") and flow into the world at a more or less constant rate. While this solves the deflationary problem, it does not solve the server congestion problem; the server backups are still growing and some sort of improvement in the drains will have to be created sooner or later. This is a contentious topic because it is filled with politically sensitive solutions. The first question that must be asked is, "Why do players hoard?" It is a difficult question to answer. Among the theories proposed are: * Decoration. People will line their houses with such things as helmets or cloth to make their space interesting and special. * Laziness. Why bother throwing things out if there is plenty of space and it doesn’t cost anything to warehouse? * Speculation. If players think that the price will go up on an item, they will hold it in hopes of selling it for more later. * Pack-rat syndrome. "I might need this someday." * Mementos. Objects can serve as reminders of old adventures. "Remember when I got that from the dragon during…" * Status symbols. Huge piles of wealth show how experienced the player is and can be used for bragging rights. * Achievement. Many games are filled with arbitrary goals, some players will create them even when they don’t exist. "I have a million gold, I win!" Regardless of the psychology, new drain mechanisms will ultimately have to be adopted to combat hoarding. There are as many ideas of how to do this as there are theories of why people hoard. Unfortunately, most of them suffer from the same political problem: player’s don’t want new rules which take things away. Among the ideas: * Taxes. Charge fees for maintaining a character in proportion to their property, income, or purchases. Although this would be fairly easy to implement, it is politically explosive. See less »

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From the list : CMS 998 by alist

Nick Hunter's assigned reading for 10/17 class.

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The In-game Economics of Ultima Online

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