The game you love is just a business in the eyes of others
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account“Financial Economics” (ID: caijwj), the author has no rust.
The long-awaited World of Warcraft nostalgia for countless players has finally ushered in this morning.
6 o’clock in the morning, accompanied by the influx of early national costume players, Blizzard’s new 6 groups of servers also rushed, each district reproduces the glory of Warcraft’s peak period, the most loaded area, queuing time once More than 10 hours.
In this carnival after the 70s and 80s, old players from China once again let the world witness the blue ocean of this huge market.
In the past 10 years, the number of game users has increased from 67 million in 2008 to 626 million in 2018; the actual sales revenue of the Chinese game market has increased from less than 20 billion in 2008 to 2018. The year was 214.44 billion yuan.
In contrast, a more interesting economic figure happens in the game.
Because of the game’s official regulations, nostalgic clothes and formal clothes can share the game month card, and World of Warcraft’s monthly card can be purchased directly with the in-game gold coins. Therefore, with the approach of nostalgic clothes, a large number of players have started crazy. The monthly card exchange, the price of gold coins in the official service also jumped wildly.
From 7:15 am, the exchange rate of World of Warcraft gold coins to RMB has dropped from 3.75 (W) a month ago to 3.06 (W), a drop of more than 30%, and this figure has been in the past year. In time, it only dropped by 13%.
In other words, all World of Warcraft players who remain in formal wear have lost 30% of their game assets in a month, and this shrinking continues as the nostalgic service heats up.
To some extent, as the Icelandic economist Eyolfo Gudmenson stated, “In all respects, the economic activities in the game and the economy of a small country in real life. Nothing in action.
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Unlike the “game drug theory” that has always been popular in the real world, economist Eyolfo Gudmensson is a staunch game supporter.
In his world, the game is not only the culprits that destroy the world, but the helper in the pursuit of truth. For the large amount of economic research he is doing, if there is no game, everything will fall into an unsustainable situation. .
The same statement was confirmed in the elaboration of another economist, Varoufakis. In his eyes, econometrics in the real world is essentially a far-fetched attachment, based on computer technology. Under the astrology, “No one can go back to the United States in 1932 to abolish the New Deal to see if the economy can rebound and test its theory.”
This also exposes a pain point in modern economics research. For many economists, their theory is based on a logical level of derivation, lacking or even being unable to be practiced. test.
With the prosperous game, this phenomenon has been somewhat relieved. For a person who has the power to change the rules of the virtual world, a large multiplayer online interactive game is tantamount to An experimental micro-society, economists only need to gently mobilize the price index of a certain link, you can get a steady stream of behavioral samples.
It is this intoxication. Varoufakis was invited to join the famous game brand V in the game seven years ago, responsible for the trading of virtual goods in the game.
Also responsible for this work is the Eyolfo Gudmensson mentioned in the previous article. He works for a game company called CCP in Iceland. Working with him is a economy of eight. The analytical team formed by the experts, who work in an office in the capital Reykjavik, is responsible for supervising the virtual economy system of the company’s massively multiplayer video game “Eve of Star Wars”.
As one of the best open world sandbox games in the world, more than 400,000 players are active in this galaxy built by 7,500 stars, even this numberMore than the population of the entire country of Iceland.
Along with the increase of players and the freedom of rules, trade and speculation came into being. Players also spontaneously formed a trade alliance, and even elected a group of reputable companions to jointly create the property. And the bank that exchanges the game currency.
Although players have been working hard for this open world order, but due to lack of economic knowledge, inflation and deflation in the game are still frequent, and even a cyclical economic crisis is brewing.
Under the last resort, CCP hired Gudmensong and his financial team as the “star federation chairman” to maintain the fragile economic order of the universe.
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The financial crisis seems to be unavoidable, both in terms of games and reality.
On this basis, the management in the game world is the same as the economic organization in the human society. Their significance is not to completely prevent the advent of the economic crisis, but to fully utilize various economic laws to delay and reduce the economic crisis. The damage caused by the player.
As Robert Bloomfield, an economist at Cornell University’s virtual economy, explains: “If a game has 100,000 users and players can buy and sell virtual items, then this one The company needs an economist to check the game system to prevent the virtual economy from getting out of control.”
Different from the complex economic rules of the real world, the collapse of the financial chain of the game world is often a ridiculous reason: economic growth.
With the advancement of the game process, the initial and final versions of the same version, the equipment level of the large force players often have a different cloud, and the difficulty of obtaining materials based on this will inevitably become more and more simple. When the speed of material acquisition in the game far exceeds the recovery speed of the system, the market that is oversupply for a long time will inevitably experience large price fluctuations (often falling).
On this basis, the economics theory of American economist Veblen pointed out that the existence of squandering and conspicuous consumption value often leads to the birth of an anti-market law: in this law The higher the value of the commodity, the stronger the willingness of people to buy.
In the game, Veblen The existence of the effect is tantamount to an uncompromising disaster. It shows that the “common wealth” established under the simpler item acquisition mechanism not only fails to achieve market prosperity, but completely destroys the fragile price system in the game. /span>
The specific link is that gamers have more money and virtual items, but the real money value corresponding to these virtual assets has been greatly reduced, and all players are changing. Got “more and more poor.”
In order to prevent players from losing a lot of time and cost, the major game companies at home and abroad can be said to be eight cents across the sea, each with its own magical powers, and its core logic is often only one, in order to maintain the players’ satisfaction with the growth of the role. Next, through the in-game aids, a large number of returned materials to increase production, so as to maintain the current price level.
In “Eve of Star Wars”, Gudemensson chose the simplest and most rude method. They made a whole new batch of NPCs. Whenever the goods in the market flooded, they launched some stronger and more mad. The wild equipment (plus a few digits), along with the purchases of the players, the extra supplies were quickly concentrated in the hands of the official – no difference from being destroyed.
This method can solve the urgent need. However, for the phenomenon of “overproduction” that frequently occurs in the game, the infinite improvement of the equipment level will only cause the panel data of all players to swell rapidly, and because the role of the player changes. It is even stronger, so the speed of material mining is still being further enhanced.
“Strong equipment – faster resource extraction speed – more materials to be recycled – stronger equipment”, this is a vicious circle of countless games in the past.
On the other side, if there is no need to affect the balance of the game, the props and equipment are used as recycling conditions, but the appearance of props such as fashion is used as a temptation. The recycling efficiency of materials is mostly difficult to guarantee.
On this basis, Netease, which skillfully solved the inflation problem in the game, relied on an incredible financial means to set up the stock market.
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Time goes back to 2009, because of the long-term currency spamming, “Fantasy Westward Journey” once had extremely serious inflation.
More serious than the previous games, in “Fantasy Westward Journey”, the game currency is softly linked to the real RMB, players can use the in-game currency to directly purchase the game time.