Game economics is a tedious subject. Not only because of the complexity of the issue or the mind-boggling mathematics involved. But because virtual economies are notoriously difficult to maintain. Some game developers have gone as far as to hire a professional economist to manage their titles’ economies. Even with this expertise on board, the benefits of interventions are often short lived.

In this short essay, we're going to delve into the engine of economy development. We'll explore some core principles, some economic interventions and how they’ve been implemented in Discovery.

Game economies are not like real economies. You can't (or really shouldn't) just copy and paste an economy model from the real world into a game. Because aside from the fact that real economies are harsh and confusing, it's nigh impossible to replicate certain functions of real economies in a game setting. What's more is that some of these functions serve to stabilize an economy and stop it spiraling out of control. Let's explore some of these problems:

To keep things simple, a video game will usually have one currency. This, from the get-go introduces a monopoly-style infrastructure. This causes a unique problem, because without a second currency, traders must resort to using a commodity with a stable value as a measuring stick against a currency’s worth. In the real world an equivalent would be gold. But you can't simply replicate this relationship by putting a gold commodity in the game. More on this later.

Inflation isn’t unique to game economies, but creates some unique problems. For those of you who need a quick reminder; inflation is an economic state whereby a currency loses part or all of its worth due to an increase in the quantity of that currency in circulation. To better explain: what gives a currency worth is the wealth of the country that prints and controls that currency. A traditional example of a country’s measure of wealth is the size of its gold reserve. Where inflation comes in is; say there are 100,000 units of a currency in circulation in a country. Each unit of that currency is equal in value to one 100,000th of that country’s gold reserve and indeed can be traded into the reserve for its value in gold. This is commonly referred to as the gold standard. Now if that country prints more currency without acquiring more gold to match it, the currency inflates, i.e. each unit loses value. Because the overall value of the currency is only as valuable as its share of the gold reserve; if there are now 200,000 units of a currency in circulation, then each unit’s worth in gold is halved. The way the market responds to this is to increase the currency cost of its commodities to better represent those commodities’ worth in gold. This is where we hit a snag. The problem here for economy developers is that adjusting the cost of features in a game cheats players. Players need a set goal to work toward and motivate them. If the goalposts move, the game becomes unfair and they stop playing altogether. Our only option then is to keep market prices for items and features static. As a result, the currency isn’t kept in check.

This creates a unique problem where if the currency inflates and loses value, then anything bought by that currency also loses value. And since game economies trade in game features, it’s those features that lose value. This is why inflation is such a big problem for games. Because ultimately, what is being sold to the player in the game is the game itself. When a game loses value it becomes cheap, routine and unchallenging; in other words - boring.

While inflation is detrimental to economic stability, it is a necessary evil in game economy design. The reason why is quite simple. In any game, there is an exchange of one’s time for forward progression. Forward progression could be the acquisition of an item, an ability, accumulation of currency, exploring hidden areas or just rising through a game’s levels. If the majority of players feel they are not achieving a justifiable amount of forward progress for their time investment, they get frustrated and abandon the game. Naturally, it’s in the game designers’ best interest to keep players interested in their game. So they reward players generously for their time investment, albeit at the cost of devaluing the overall experience. This most commonly translates to rewarding players with a proportionate quantity of the game’s main currency. This is why the first thing to become inflated in any game is its economy. This dependency also raises interesting questions like: if the economy must always inflate, then is inflation irreversible?

Another key difference between the real world and game economies is what a game’s currency is representative of to a player. As aforementioned, you can't just create an item with a fixed price and declare it the gold standard. A conventional market would choose gold as it's standard because it is valuable and stable. But as we've already discussed, fixing the cost of an item causes it to lose value along with the currency. The most important question then is: value in what? The answer is time.

Think about it. Why would we use a measuring stick with values that are directly influenced by the currency it is attempting to measure? The numbers would be biased. The true measuring stick of a currency's worth must be truly independent of that currency.

Time is valuable and necessary to acquire in-game currency through engaging with money-making activities. By investing more time, you generate more currency. The way inflation plays out with time as the gold standard is thus: time is exchanged for units of a game’s currency. The game’s currency is exchanged for features and assets. If the time investment required to generate enough currency to access a feature is too high, players will resign the challenge. This encourages developers to give players more of what they want, but this too is dangerous. Being overly generous to players can actually shorten a game. This is because if all end-game content can be accessed for a small investment of time, then players won’t assign much value to that content. Instead they will write off the game as ‘completed’ and simply move on.

In a real economy, the worth of the currency and the goods are both measured in gold but are independent of each other. Gold gives worth to the currency which is used to buy goods. The price of goods is checked against the goods' worth in gold. The price is adjusted for inflation and the currency's worth is clearly reflected in the price tag of goods.

Even in a game where there is virtually no currency, you can see how this gold standard of time is measured against a game’s features. Take a game like Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II. This game was widely criticised for its short length (approx. 4 hours of gameplay). A player could plough through it in an afternoon. What’s interesting is that when you break down the quality of its graphics, its features and its plot, it has all the hallmarks of an excellent game. But its features were practically handed to the player from start to finish. There was no real challenge in completing it or unlocking its content. It took a fraction of the time it would take to complete any other mainstream game to see everything that Force Unleashed II had to offer. An absence of a challenge can make a game forgettable and its rewards almost routine. When there is a lack of challenge in a task, the reward becomes dilute and trivial. If anyone can do it, how special can it be?

The ultimate question posed to economy developers is this: how can we mitigate the effects of inflation without over-frustrating the player base? This problem is regarded by most to be unsolvable. Most ‘solutions’ people have come up with actually end up becoming part of the problem. And some solutions are considered to be so extreme that they are far beyond what players will tolerate. Let’s explore some solutions which have been deployed by economy developers from other online RPGs:

Solution #1 - Cash Sinks

Cash sinks are arguably the most effective means of balancing virtual economies. They are widely used and can take the form of a feature, a consumable or a mechanic. The principle is to tempt players with cool new activities and materials to sink their savings into. This ultimately removes currency from circulation, reducing inflation. Cash sinks make up the latter half of what economists call the sink and faucet dynamic. Put simply, there needs to be a steady flow of cash profit to keep the player satisfied that they're achieving something while providing that player with enough cash sinks to drain away the excess. Too much cash and not enough sinks causes the game to overflow with cash, devaluing everything. Too little cash and too many sinks makes the game daunting and unfair. The key to a cash sink’s success is that the feature being sold needs to be attractive and long lasting. This is a problem since sensational features don’t exactly grow on trees. Especially when those features are designed around the principle of draining players of their cash. A common futility of cash sinks is that they are all too frequently deployed as appendages to a game. When a cash sink is a late game feature, it’s sheer cost alone makes it entirely optional. Furthermore, you may be immediately siphoning cash from rich players, but you’re also issuing a financial challenge to poorer players who go on to make more cash than they would otherwise have made. This is something of a hydra, because for every 10 rich players you will have sapped you will have created 100 more.

Cash sinks are best deployed as features which are accessible to players at all levels. This makes consumable items a promising solution as a means to offer level-appropriate upgrades for level-appropriate prices. In some games, consumable cash sinks have been deployed to great effect. But it’s all too easily forgotten that cash sinks are one part of a two-part mechanic. If players are able to generate a fortune overnight, no amount of cash sinks will compensate for it.

Solution #2 - Faucets

Another key difference between the real world and virtual economies is that developers often have little-to-no control over how much money is printed. This is because money is printed by players. Cash is only introduced into circulation when a player strikes a profit, claims a reward or is paid a wage. So long as there are players actively playing, money will be continue to be printed. To mitigate this, developers can adjust the rates that players can generate a profit so that making money takes longer, i.e. turning down the ‘faucet’ in the sink and faucet dynamic. This is effectively nerfing, so is therefore by default; very unpopular. Understandably, game developers tend to shy away from this method in favour of installing a new cash sink as they are much easier to sell as a positive change. But the harsh reality is, without regular adjustments to the rate players can generate a profit, the economy can and will stagnate. Players will interrogate a cash faucet more than any other aspect of the game. Once an optimal means of making money is found, players flock to it en masse. Obviously this is bad for the economy, but it can also have a negative impact on many other game aspects. In discovery for example, once a generous cash cow has been identified, it can literally reshape the landscape of the mod. It diverts attention to certain factions, can tip the balance of power and centralise player activity. All of this brought about by an oversight within a field of development which is largely unconcerned with the game’s pretexts. The bottom line is that adjustments to faucets are always rued because of their unpopularity, but are critical in mitigating inflation. Therefore a balance must be struck to keep a handle on what players can earn while limiting the regularity and severity of interventions.

Solution #3 - Redenomination

In laymen’s terms, redenominating a currency means reducing the numerical value of the currency without (supposedly) changing its worth. In a real economy, you’d pull all the hard currency from circulation and redistribute it with a lower value. So in practice, if you have thirty slices of pie, which together, make up a third of the overall pie. Once the currency is redenominated, you now own three larger slices of the pie, which together, still make up a third of the overall pie. This solution strengthens a currency and gives each unit of it a higher worth. The psychological effect this can have on the populace is often beneficial. In virtual economies it offers room to implement cash sinks of an even higher value with an apparently credible price tag. It can also serve to reduce inflation by clearing a bit of cash from circulation through elimination of certain denominations. But if we’re being completely honest, redenominating a game currency does nothing. When the value of currency and the value of assets are correlational, all you’ve done is removed a few zeroes. Whether I have 100 credits or 1 billion credits, I still have enough money to buy a battleship, because the cost of the battleship must also be redenominated.

Solution #4 - Special Currency

Special currencies allow players to exchange large amounts of their common currency for a different currency which is used to buy exclusive features. This method has the potential to be an extremely effective cash sink, but is all too often implemented in such a way that undermines it. Let’s say hypothetically; a player spends some credits to get some golden ingots. Golden ingots are a non-refundable currency used to purchase ship cosmetics. Here, the relationship is linear and the worth of ingots is controlled by the game’s developers. The first mistake to make is to allow for golden ingots to be transferrable between players. This creates a secondary player-controlled market whereby players are exchanging credits for ingots. This is a problem because currency spent on NPC bases is destroyed and is thus removed from circulation. Currency exchanged between players will continue to circulate. Allowing players to trade a special currency also allows wealthy players to amass hoards of gold ingots. This in turn allows them to influence the cost of this special currency within the player market; usually selling lower than the game’s set price. This circumvents the need for players to interact with the game’s dispensary for ingots at all. And if cosmetics are also transferrable, then the player base will get to a point whereby there are enough ingots and cosmetics in circulation for them never to have to pay another dime to the game itself. Ultimately what you get is two very inflated currencies, a devalued feature and a redundant cash sink.

Even in the real world this has never gone down well. In essence, redistributing funds is a 'hard reset' of the economy. Everyone's bank accounts are emptied, the total is averaged and each player gets an even slice of the pie back in return. This is, of course, outrageously unfair to rich players. But let's regard it from an economic perspective.

Resetting an economy this way is a clean slate. The inflation clock is wound back years. Fresh start. Not only that, but it also affords a consequence-free opportunity for developers to intervene in cash faucets and sinks to an almost unlimited degree. Once politics and PR aren't a factor, you can redevelop to your heart's content. One could go as far as to argue if we're taking money from players, we may as well take it all and reset the whole game for a fresh start. There are definitely things to gain from such an approach. There are even ways to sell this to players with things like limited edition rewards or exclusive features. But no development team (that i'm aware of) has ever signed off on such a measure, and for a good reason. It is, by far, the cruelest thing to do to your players.


Some of these methods have been applied to Discovery and have varied success. That being said, it’s time I got down to the reality of Discovery from an economic standpoint.

A game that has worth is not necessarily a fun game. If you’ve ever played Dark Souls, you’ll respect that anyone who has completed it has accomplished something impressive. But that doesn’t mean that the experience was fun. Discovery is so encumbered by instruments designed to make it worth playing, that people have stopped asking whether Discovery is fun to play. There is much to accomplish within the game. But is the experience of playing it entertaining? Do you spend even nearly as much time playing with the rewards that grinding brings you than actually grinding?

In contrast, take a game like Titanfall 2. To those of you unfamiliar with it, Titanfall 2 is an excellent game which owes its success to the simplicity of its design. Everything in Titanfall 2 revolves around its primary activity – jumping around and shooting. It goes without saying that the primary activity of any game should be the crown jewel of the game’s design and, of course, fun to interact with. In Titanfall, players can interact with the game from day one and get a taste of different play styles. At first, players may be keen to unlock advanced weaponry and gear. But acquiring these perks is not necessary for players to enjoy the game’s primary activity. The perks are just a byproduct of what gives players most satisfaction while playing Titanfall: jumping around and shooting. This primary activity is what keeps players online long after they’re fully ranked up and are decked out with gear.

A problem with discovery is that under all of the grinding, the primary activity of the game is lost. The primary activity of vanilla Freelancer was to take missions, kill pirates and explore the universe. Sure you could dabble in a bit of trading if you wanted to branch out. But it was just that: branching out. Vanilla practically funnelled players down the route of taking missions because it was the activity which was designed to be the most fun. The way Discovery differs is that players are actively funnelled down the route that is most lucrative. Put simply, it’s easier to demonstrate to a player that they are making good on their time investment when you can represent it in credits.

Indeed, developers have actually leaned into the player activity migration to trading and mining. Grinders have been given more and more reasons to continue grinding and meanwhile, activities associated with genuine entertainment have been warped by this shift in focus. Players who care more about the promise of a prize than the activity they are engaging in ruin the experience for everyone. But can you blame them when the existing infrastructure cultivates this sort of activity?

I know it’s unfair to seek comparisons, especially with other games that have corporate backing, but there are still things we can learn from them. So just humour me for a sec. Take a game like Elite Dangerous; another prolific and successful space exploration/shooter. The focus of Frontier Development’s numerous updates and tweaks over the years have enhanced aspects of the game that people interact with no matter the role. These could be things like graphics enhancements, tweaking the user interface, adding useful tools to bypass annoying mechanics and finding new roles for existing features. Discovery’s approach is to bait players with something new so that they ignore the everyday problems native to the game’s infrastructure. An appropriate analogy to use would be trying to score a goal in soccer. Frontier’s approach to streamlining gameplay for enjoyment is to make sure the ball is round, that the pitch is well kept and to smooth out any irregularities. The game is unchanged with its winning formula intact and the player feels confident that the game is giving him/her every chance to win and better yet, in a beautiful stadium with a professional looking ball. Discovery’s approach to streamlining gameplay is to simply give the player more footballs and then move the goalposts. Nothing is fixed, and yet everything is changed. This may be enough to wow people for a time, but in reality, it can only have gotten worse because the game has all but lost its formula. All we’re left with is a player running around chasing footballs and trying to get them all in the net. By the time they’re done, they realise what an ordeal it was and wonder what fun, if any, they had. There is no thought for whether players enjoy interacting with Discovery’s user interface, or the means by which players must navigate the Discovery universe. At best these things are written off as minor issue when it couldn’t be more critical to a player’s experience of the game.

At this point, Discovery developers should ask themselves: what is the primary activity of Discovery? The answer to that question could signal a start down a path that will refine the game and make its greater aspects shine.


What's important to understand is that many of discovery's glaring issues have an economic origin. There are plenty of cash sinks, but inflation is out of control. Why is that?

Overinflation is to be expected in an online game with over ten years of active players. But even then, what we're seeing now can be largely credited to inaction over money making along with a little help from some clumsy design choices. These 'holes in the dam' make it impossible to regulate cash flow. Let's explore some of them.

It's easy to rip into POBs. They're a technical and logistical nightmare, so it comes as no surprise that they're also an economic one. From an economic standpoint POBs and all the joys therein were priced to part rich players from their nest eggs. For a time, this worked rather splendidly. Players plugged billions of credits into POBs within the first weeks of their release. But here's where we hit the first snag, because players were also required to grind out days upon weeks of their time. On top of the time investment they made to establish their wealth, players must now invest yet more time to translate that wealth into POB modules. Remember, players measure a game's worth from their return on investment of time. So what we have now is a time defeceit whereby players have invested an enourmous amount of time and are anticipating a proportionate reward. POBs were never going to be able to deliver on that promise. This is why they were never a lasting cash sinks for elite players. Because for those who discovered their true worth, few ever returned to repeat the process.

In a way POBs had the opposite effect of what they were trying to achieve economically. They are without a doubt, an end-game feature. So despite all the good they did siphoning cash from the rich, they set a goal for the poor. Without POBs, aspiring players would have earned enough to afford a few high level ships and left it at that. With POBs, they're now generating billions.

Similarly to POBs, advanced equipment were implemented with the intent to siphon large sums of cash from rich players. We've already been over how the additional cost of time skews that. But what's special about advanced equipment is that it spectacularly undermines itself and the POB cash sink via one simple mechanic - they're transferrable. Once an item becomes transferrable between players, it can accumulate in the market. Advanced equipment has accumulated to a point whereby it is no longer necessary to own or operate a POB to acquire it. Players aren't dumping cash into the POB sink anymore because they're all just paying each other.

And as a sidenote: to add another layer of absurdity, players are now buying POBs from players outright. If that doesn't show you how inflated the economy is, i don't know what will.

The most ineffective cash sink I have ever seen. Another wasted opportunity. Call me callous, but we could charge players so much more to pimp their rides. For two mil a pop not only is it an ineffective cash sink, it's cheap. By that I don't just mean it has a low price tag, but because of it's low price tag there's nothing special about owning it. Players go nuts for cosmetics despite the fact they have no function purely because they are rare. /pimpship is neat feature. But the discovery team got a bit too liberal with it's implementation.

This could easily be made more effective by making the cost of each change a percentage of the cost of the player's vessel. With a line of code this could become quite an effective level-appropriate cash sink.

I don't actually have a problem with these. They're worth mentioning because they set a great example.

Armour upgrades are arguably the most effective cash sink in discovery. Everyone has one. To some they may seem pointless as we can all afford them. But this seemingly trivial expense plays a very important economic role. It's proportionate, level appropriate, the upgrades hold their worth and players are more likely to find a reason to use it than to sell it. This is how you implement a cash sink.




Just like a time share, but without the hassle of paying for it or rarely ever clashing with another user's schedule. Account sharing allows players to use ships they would otherwise have bought. A nice little loop hole which undermines the cap ship cash sink.


I can tell i'm going to get some backlash talking about this, and that's ok. But inactive account clearing was essential to mitigating inflation. I don't know the exact figures but i'd argue that this function alone was responsible for clearing the largest amount of cash from circulation than any other cash sink. The most effective effect it had was that it limited the number of inactive players that bequeath their fortunes to active players.

Seeing players dump their fortunes onto other players is a bitter sweet spectacle for an economy developer. The community spirit is inspiring, but for all the good it does, compounding the wealth of players creates all sorts of problems. These donations offer a number of players a bypass around the infrastructure of game progression. As a result, they shorten the game for these players i.e. players don't play for as long as they would have. Then of course this also keeps billions of credits in circulation, keeping inflation high.

We need this protocol back. For all the sentiment some of our more seasoned veterans have. Once they've left, the most significant thing they're most likely to do with their mountain of credits is gift it to someone else.


So how do we fix it?

There's no easy answer to that, but here's some suggestions.

Start by taking a good hard look at how players are generating money. Mining should be reined in until developers can agree what sort of activity it should be promoting and redesign it around that. Excise the cash sinks that are defective or redundant then re-value the remaining sinks to be more proportionate with the total currency in circulation. Reintroduce the character deletion protocol for inactivity. Completely scrap and re-build the commodity market. And above all else, the Discovery team need to pick an activity that will be this game's most prominent flavor and make it universally accessible. Because the economy is meant to be an accompaniment to that, not a prerequisite.


To those of you who made it through that daunting wall of text i say thank you. This topic area isn't nearly as exciting as new model submissions or the latest balance stats. But it's a fundamental component of our game's design; one you decided to commit the time to read about. I only hope it has been as informative as I intended.

Fly safe

Ash