Of course, EVE is one of the readiest examples of a game that wants to have a player-driven economy, but doesn't. EVE has always had incessant economic crises resulting from their coercive economic mechanics, for example the fact that shuttles came at a fixed price from NPCs, which created an absolute and arbitrary maximum price on the minerals that a shuttle could be reprocessed into. CCP even hired a supposed economist (hah!) to correct the game's problems and improve the enjoyability of its economic systems, but he was unable to do anything meaningful as a result of CCP's infatuation with introducing coercive economic influences.

If any game is to have a truly player-driven economy, the currencies must be freely selected by the players, and there must be absolutely zero external, arbitrary source or sink of resources in the game. You will never come close to balancing currency sources and sinks, if you make the foolish mistake of introducing them. Let each transaction be a barter of resources, and don't even consider letting NPCs participate in the economy

It seems like the EVE economy is player-driven, since players get to set prices for their sales and purchases. The reality, however, is that there are coercive influences that, most optimistically, provide boundary conditions on the economy, but, realistically, poison and drive it. Here are a few of the circumstances that make EVE's economy not player-driven:

• Natural resources are arbitrarily limited. This comports with the real world, sure, but we're talking about a game and discussing player-driven economies. You don't want natural resources to be unlimited and unthrottled, but when considering the balance between availability and effort to acquire, EVE is so dramatically on the side of restricting availability as to remove effort to acquire entirely from the picture. There is so little effort required to acquire resources, once territory has been captured, that several of the notable major alliances don't harvest them at all. I am all too intimately acquainted with the real-money negotiations certain major alliances routinely engage in with ISK sellers for harvesting privileges.
• CCP has established territorial ownership mechanics which disproportionately reward those who already have territory over those who would acquire it. Defense is far too heavily weighted over assault, which, when coupled with the catastrophically small map (another arbitrary limitation), results in a total absence of frontier and grossly limited opportunity to displace, giving existing territory-holders coercive pricing influence.
• CCP continues to create market-breaking systems within the game. Every time they make a half-hearted swipe at revamping FacWar, for instance, they create more mechanisms by which their fiat currency enters the game, generating market exploits and inflating the economy. Then they introduce more ISK sinks to try to balance their colossal screw-ups, resulting in both more market exploits and greater market disruption.

EVE's economy is only nominally player-driven. In reality, it is a detestable amalgam of the CCP-protected influences of key alliances and the forceful disruptions of CCP attempts to band-aid their mistakes.

Does anyone here at MD have anything to add to this discussion?

I can't identify a coherent argument to respond to, despite the existence of sporadic points that may be valid.

WHEN CCP GIVES YOU LEMONS MAKE LEMONADE

If any game is to have a truly player-driven economy, the currencies must be freely selected by the players, and there must be absolutely zero external, arbitrary source or sink of resources in the game.

There are interventions and 'artificial meddling' all the time in real economies. The political part of the equation is simultaneously being villianized and forgotten about as a factor in any and every 'real' economy.

Part of the problem is of course that there is very little endogenous technological innovation in EVE - in the real world a shortage of some raw material will inspire people to look for alternatives and develop new technologies. A classical example would be how the development of synthetic rubbers was greatly accelerated by Germany losing access to natural sources of rubber during WW1 and WW2.
In EVE CCP has to "fix" shortages by rebalancing (making the undersupplied product less desirable), by changing resource distribution or by granting new technology (e.g. Alchemy) like mana from heaven.

Maybe a player-run economy is not possible within the framework of current gen MMOs but that doesn't change that in my opinion advertising EVE as a player-run economy is frivolous.

In EVE CCP has to "fix" shortages by rebalancing (making the undersupplied product less desirable), by changing resource distribution or by granting new technology (e.g. Alchemy) like mana from heaven.

This also leads to the rather unfortunate situation that the best way to make money in eve, both in absolute and in isk/hour terms, is to speculate on divinely ordained changes to mechanics. It has always seemed a little sad to me that there is no purely in-game economic activity that can match up to making in-game economic choices on the basis of out-of-game events or variables.

Does anyone here at MD have anything to add to this discussion? He has made some fair points I think, there are some strong external factors that influence EVE's economy, but he hasn't convinced me that everyday players are the main driving factors of the economy, and not some mega CCP-BOB conglomerate.

...hence the argument the attacker has to be lucky once while the defender has to be lucky always...

It seems like the EVE economy is player-driven, since players get to set prices for their sales and purchases. The reality, however, is that there are coercive influences that, most optimistically, provide boundary conditions on the economy, but, realistically, poison and drive it. Here are a few of the circumstances that make EVE's economy not player-driven:

• Natural resources are arbitrarily limited. This comports with the real world, sure, but we're talking about a game and discussing player-driven economies. You don't want natural resources to be unlimited and unthrottled, but when considering the balance between availability and effort to acquire, EVE is so dramatically on the side of restricting availability as to remove effort to acquire entirely from the picture. There is so little effort required to acquire resources, once territory has been captured, that several of the notable major alliances don't harvest them at all. I am all too intimately acquainted with the real-money negotiations certain major alliances routinely engage in with ISK sellers for harvesting privileges.
• CCP has established territorial ownership mechanics which disproportionately reward those who already have territory over those who would acquire it. Defense is far too heavily weighted over assault, which, when coupled with the catastrophically small map (another arbitrary limitation), results in a total absence of frontier and grossly limited opportunity to displace, giving existing territory-holders coercive pricing influence.
• CCP continues to create market-breaking systems within the game. Every time they make a half-hearted swipe at revamping FacWar, for instance, they create more mechanisms by which their fiat currency enters the game, generating market exploits and inflating the economy. Then they introduce more ISK sinks to try to balance their colossal screw-ups, resulting in both more market exploits and greater market disruption.

EVE's economy is only nominally player-driven. In reality, it is a detestable amalgam of the CCP-protected influences of key alliances and the forceful disruptions of CCP attempts to band-aid their mistakes.

I would be willing to bet money that the guy who whined that hard to you is a libertarian. They confuse economy with free market all day everyday.

I thought the same. The root problem lies in thinking that the economy or GÇ£the MarketGÇ¥ is somehow a spontaneous, organic force of nature, always set upon and constrained by external coercive mechanics like GÇ£the StateGÇ¥ (or in this case, CCP). In fact, it is precisely those coercive mechanics that allows markets to exist at all.

The dead giveaway is the statement that, GÇ£the currencies must be freely selected by the players, and there must be absolutely zero external, arbitrary source or sink of resources in the game.GÇ¥

As a few posters have already pointed out GÇô if those are the criteria for a legitimate economy, then they have never existed IRL and will certainly never exist in an MMO.

This person is wearing the blinders of a utopian political ideology that masquerades as economics. That, and the butthurt that mynnna mentioned.

I thought the same. The root problem lies in thinking that the economy or GÇ£the MarketGÇ¥ is somehow a spontaneous, organic force of nature, always set upon and constrained by external coercive mechanics like GÇ£the StateGÇ¥ (or in this case, CCP). In fact, it is precisely those coercive mechanics that allows markets to exist at all.

No government was required to encourage cave man Grog to trade meat for spears with cave man Gonk

The dude seems rather butthurt over the influence large alliances hold in nullsec and apparently believes CCP is specifically catering to them (e: us) because

So I had a discussion with a gentleman about player-driven economies in video games, and he had the following to say about EVE's economy, and how it was a bad example of a player-driven economy.
.

And to follow up after I asked him to explain exactly why players didn't drive the EVE economy:




Does anyone here at MD have anything to add to this discussion? He has made some fair points I think, there are some strong external factors that influence EVE's economy, but he hasn't convinced me that everyday players are the main driving factors of the economy, and not some mega CCP-BOB conglomerate.

No government was required to encourage cave man Grog to trade meat for spears with cave man Gonk

Actual history, however, suggests the opposite.

Ok, feel free to explain to everyone how and why communities came together in the first place or is it your suggestion that the state existed prior to any community?

I havenGÇÖt the faintest idea how or why communities came together in the first place, or whether the state or the community came first. And anybody who says they do is full of it.

Markets, as we think of them today ...

As for Grog and Gonk, what little pre-historical evidence there is suggests that if they relatives or were in the same clan or tribe (or community), they didnGÇÖt trade or barter at all.

There were strict, traditional communitarian mechanisms that distributed things to people who needed them. And if they werenGÇÖt in the same tribe, then Gonk was far more likely to use those spears to take the meat from Grog, or die tryinGÇÖ.

Well-played, my friend. You have skillfully avoided making a substantive counterpoint, while cherry-picking quotes from my post and giving the appearance of participating in a debate.

I see a career in politics in your future.

Are you going to respond to what he said?

1. So people just gathered together for some unimaginable reasons. Got it.

2. Moving the goal posts, how convenient for you.

3. You just mentioned above that anybody who says they know what happened must be full of it. So how do you know? You know when it is convenient for you to know, and no one else can know anything when it is not convenient for you.

I suppose doing a search on google for prehistoric trade is too much effort.

This is not chicken or egg stuff. A little common sense goes a long way.

Well-played, my friend. You have skillfully avoided making a substantive counterpoint, while cherry-picking quotes from my post and giving the appearance of participating in a debate.

I see a career in politics in your future.

So I had a discussion with a gentleman about player-driven economies in video games, and he had the following to say about EVE's economy, and how it was a bad example of a player-driven economy.
.

And to follow up after I asked him to explain exactly why players didn't drive the EVE economy:




Does anyone here at MD have anything to add to this discussion? He has made some fair points I think, there are some strong external factors that influence EVE's economy, but he hasn't convinced me that everyday players are the main driving factors of the economy, and not some mega CCP-BOB conglomerate.

Everytime this issue comes to light, people on the "condescending" side of player driven market says the same. I came to this thread to avoid having to write all that is written here again in another thread talking about industrialists.

This is the causality link in that:

Player driven market would be when raw materials are harvested by players, sold to other players or used by them to make goods sold to other players, and otherwise not available.

... loves all the pseudo-intellectual windbaggery concerning "real world" this and "ingame" that, and thinks CCP should get Warren Buffet to be a Market "guest Dev" for awhile.

following the OPs quotes one can easily argue that reality has no "human driven" economy.

Ccp always used to be bob and goons and kept the o.o politics going. But than t20 came around and made a woopsy so bob had to go... now only goons are left

Sounds like some right wing whacko religious kook anarchist tea party libertarian trying to apply his mental masturbations to a video game

define objective? Is it not a bit nebulous also like our op's "friends" anarchist/barter driven economic werldview?

oh god, ive been accused of a rant. Have it your way, I'll trade you 800 bajillion rifters for a titan, all union made of course

but kooky libertarians and their sorts reserve the right to not be part of the consensus, to not agree so that the rest of us can have nothing of value, no trust, no order, anarchy.

You do not know what libertarianism is, and you do not know what anarchy is, in the context they use it, more to the point, anarcho-capitalisim.

If you're going to argue against something, best to know what it is you're talking about. Words like "kooky" just make you look ignorant.

... also.. he was taunting you I believe....by purposely muddling them all up in a pretty pile

Tell me again who is the slave