October 24, 2006...10:35 pm
Video Game Economics
I have played enough video games to say this one thing, the economics of video games are very unrealistic. Of course, I don’t expect it to be too realistic since the variables that affect our economy are too many and too complex to be simplified into something that could be programmed into a game. What I am saying is that the economics in video games should be at least sound in terms of basics like the law of supply and demand and factors of production (labor and capital).
How realistic is this? You play World of Warcraft and pick up an expensive piece of armor that you don’t want to use. First instinct would be to sell it. Every time you try to sell a merchant something, he/she automatically buys it. You earn money!. Questions that you might ponder about:
Did he/she really want that?
Everything in the game seemes to be perfectly inelastic and so highly demanded that merchants would buy anything and everything that sell them. Sometimes you wonder why a weapons merchant would buy a peice of armor.
Did he/she have the capital to buy that?
These merchant never run out of money to pay you for stuff you sell them.
In a real life situation, when a merchant goes into a buying spree most likely he/she will lose money. This will force the merchant to raise prices to make up for lost profits. You don’t see this happening because the merchant doesn’t lose money from buying too much of your stuff. How unrealistic!
Imported from The Babbling Introvert v 1.0
3 Comments
November 13, 2006 at 11:57 am
Well, the great thing about games is that you can change reality to make it more fun!
Some elements, like supply and demand, can be used to great effect, but how enjoyable would absolutely realistic economics be in a game world? 
December 11, 2006 at 8:33 pm
Good insight. What the game fails to show you is that the NPCs/merchants you are selling to represent regulation by the government: a unified economy, at least for your faction, that has a (low) set price for buying the items you no longer want to keep. In tandem with the Soulbound mechanic, it makes for a cleaner server environment and gameplay… unlike some games where any rare item one picks up can be sold even after use for tremendous amounts of ingame or even real money. I for one am all for the attempt at simplifying the World… i get too much stress dealing with the factors of real life as it is to bother dealing with them all again in a diversion.
September 23, 2007 at 6:07 pm
I think that with much more rare equipment in the World of Warcraft, you see the basics of supply and demand working. There certainly are MMORPGs that are much “closer” to following the laws of supply and demand. Have you checked out EVE Online?
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