ABSTRACT
The terms “economy,” “game economy,” and “economic system” are used frequently and interchangeably in games. When game players refer to a game’s economy, they often mean the types and amount of currency earned and spent in a game. Creating an economic system can be challenging, because (like much of design) it is several steps removed from the player experience, and game designers do not directly design or control the player experience. In fixed economic systems, the game economist or designer sets the market price or cost for objects in the game. In general, the market price of items is often tied to both the game’s anchor and rarity. In player-dynamic economies, it turns out that even absent knowledge of the true value of an item (the value in the store, for instance), players converge rapidly on the market value that is predicted from the supply and demand curves.
