The F-Words of MMORPGs: Faucets

In the second installment to Gamasutra’s “F-Words of MMORPGs” series, the author tackles the challenges involved with creating a balanced economy in a massively multiplayer title and why “drains” (money sinks) are a necessity to avoid inflation from “faucets” (currency-laden monster corpses). Few games truly get it right, and obviously supply and demand are always difficult variables to deal with:

Provided that your game is well-designed, that all key goods needed by new players have floor and ceiling prices, all new players will have the same opportunities to earn and spend money no matter how much money is in circulation or how inflated player-market prices are.

Take, for example, World of Warcraft. Players can basically treat WoW as a single-player game, questing on their own, earning money on their own, and spending it at vendors on their own.

Neither the game’s money supply nor inflation in the auction house have actual bearing on the experience of a new player who sticks to the game’s solo content. However, at some point, that player might click on an auctioneer… and what happens then?

This is where I get to repeat myself. Time = Money. I said it back in Part 1; I’m saying it again now. It’s a basic, crucial truth upon which every economic reality is based.

When the player looks at the prices of things on the auction house, the player has to make a choice: buy it at that price on the AH, or go get it yourself. One costs money, the other costs time. If a player is equally willing to spend either resource, then they should do whichever is cheaper: if the player can get the money to buy the thing in less time than getting the thing itself, then they should buy the thing.

Really, this is the basic idea behind real world economies, too. How much time would it take you to make a loaf of bread if you didn’t buy (or steal) anything?