Posted by Kromey at 9:50pm Feb 27 '08I've talked about the unparalleled player-driven economy of EVE-Online before on the Gaming board, but now it's starting to get more attention from an academic point of view.
As some of you may know, CCP (the company behind EVE) hired a full-time economist (actually, a small team of them it turns out) a year or so back to study and provide feedback on the economy of EVE. Well, they've turned into an invaluable resource, with literally thousands of players changing their economic strategies in the game based on his quarterly economic reports (which are in fact fascinating reads) - they are the Wall Street Journal of EVE-Online.
Not only that, but they're now partnering with academic institutions to study the virtual market of EVE in more detail. EVE is an ultra-capitalistic world, devoid of tariffs and other market restrictions while encouraging the accumulation of wealth as the primary goal of one's virtual existence. Crime (from simple piracy to corporate espionage to full-blown conspiracies that take months and months to come into fruition) runs rampant in this virtual world, with nearly all of it being economically motivated.
There is another side to EVE, the conquest and control of regions of space, but in the end those, too, are economic goals - control more space than your competitors and you have a significant economic advantage over them.
While EVE-Online is of course not a direct mirror of what the real world would be like if it too were ultra-capitalistic and free-market, it's nevertheless providing amazing insight, and the significant interest from both academic and business fronts in this virtual world is tantamount to what CCP has created here: A full-depth, intricate and very real free market.
EVE-Online is proof that free-market economics work, at least within the givens of this virtual world.
As some of you may know, CCP (the company behind EVE) hired a full-time economist (actually, a small team of them it turns out) a year or so back to study and provide feedback on the economy of EVE. Well, they've turned into an invaluable resource, with literally thousands of players changing their economic strategies in the game based on his quarterly economic reports (which are in fact fascinating reads) - they are the Wall Street Journal of EVE-Online.
Not only that, but they're now partnering with academic institutions to study the virtual market of EVE in more detail. EVE is an ultra-capitalistic world, devoid of tariffs and other market restrictions while encouraging the accumulation of wealth as the primary goal of one's virtual existence. Crime (from simple piracy to corporate espionage to full-blown conspiracies that take months and months to come into fruition) runs rampant in this virtual world, with nearly all of it being economically motivated.
There is another side to EVE, the conquest and control of regions of space, but in the end those, too, are economic goals - control more space than your competitors and you have a significant economic advantage over them.
While EVE-Online is of course not a direct mirror of what the real world would be like if it too were ultra-capitalistic and free-market, it's nevertheless providing amazing insight, and the significant interest from both academic and business fronts in this virtual world is tantamount to what CCP has created here: A full-depth, intricate and very real free market.
EVE-Online is proof that free-market economics work, at least within the givens of this virtual world.