Gamespot's Connor Sheridan recently did an article on in game economies. It really got me thinking about how to kick start this one.
What I'm probably not going to do:
- Simply inject an insane amount of credits (Epic Space Currency - ESCs for short) into the game universe. You don't have to be an economist to know that's a bad idea.
The ESG economy needs to be real, and that means it would probably have to grow slowly. The alpha test is the perfect sandbox to test these kinds of ideas. But in the short term I've thought up are a number of options, and this one has my interest:
- Make the process of buying credits out of game, make an impact on the value of the credits in game. Sounds risky, and very interesting.
Whether the Kickstarter Campaign is successful or not, all the funding raised out of game would be like buying stock and would reflect in game.
Destroying celestial objects such as planets, resources, even stations would have a significant impact on the local, regional, and maybe even, the intergalactic economy.
But I'm no Ben Bernanke.
What do you think should be done? Post your tip in the comments below.
Riding on the coattails of the original Star Trek? You've lost me.
I guess you could try simulate money flows for each spacestation/planet/whatever or something like that. then make the wealth (and also perhaps availability of certain products) of each community or sector dependant on the existing money flow rate.
PS by money flow I meant: if money changes owner when you purchase or sell goods
Interesting idea b5cully
Don't make any gamer feel special, treat players and AI factions/characters the same way when it comes to economy. Try to make everything dynamic, no fixed prices. The prices will evolve naturally by supply and demand. This should make the economy interesting enough for gamers to think more about what they buy/sell, maybe it even allows for economic "wars", monopoly etc. I know this is pretty difficult, but it should pay off if done correctly.
Oh, and an auction house for direct player-to-player sales would be a good addition.
Don't make gamers feel special? What kind of back-wards logic is that?
Okay, I didn't put that right. Let me elaborate: Players should of course feel special. But when it comes to economy, overpowering someone automatically makes the rest weaker. It's not like the monsters in MMOs who respawn every 5 minutes, waiting for the next player to come by and slay them. If you have a dynamic economy, that means that the programmer doesn't dictate the prices, the game does.
If human players were given economic advantages against the AI, this would mean that the AI would soon be weakened enough on the economic front to not pose any serious threat/assistance, which kind of makes it pointless to have the AI in the economy in the first place. I suggested that the AI would be included in the economy so that it would seem more realistic, but of course this could be very difficult to pull off and might not happen at all.
So I guess what I meant by "feel special" was "overpowering".