Welcome again to everybody. Make yourselves at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.
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The psychology of wealth is weird. I’ve never had money in RL in that way, but I’ve had experiences in an online game before where, due to RNG / rare item drop, I came into “wealth” in the game temporarily. Notably, not the capitalist kind of wealth where it is tied up in investments and so on; more akin to winning the lottery. The reason I call it weird is, like, when that kind of thing happens, I start doing this thing that goes something like: I don’t want to spend too much of it because then I will be low on in-game funds again.
But it’s not like the game requires you to have a lot of money on hand. It’s not like in RL where it’s important to save because if you don’t, you could end up without money for essential things. The worst that happens in a game like this is you gotta do some events/activities to gradually get funds back. Yet still, it’s like some part of my mind gets tangled up in this fear of losing the spending power itself? The perceived flexibility that comes with having those funds available that theoretically could be spent if something I really want comes up. But being ruled by this fear actually means I spend less often and therefore get things I want in the game less often because I am afraid to lose it.
As it is just a game, the “just have fun with it, it’s a game” mindset usually wins out eventually. But it feels like such a weird hangup to have at all and it feels like a little window into something a little bit like the way rich people think under capitalism, especially if they weren’t born into wealth; they know the feeling of artificial scarcity and so become all the more afraid of going back to it when they are free of it, and this motivates them to do whatever it takes to never have to go back, no matter how capitalist it is. This is somewhat guesswork/extrapolation as I haven’t exactly interviewed rich people on this, but I find it fascinating when a simulation can spark, perhaps, a kernel of insight into something real.
What game was it? Lots of online games have a black market where game currency/items can be traded for actual currency, which makes me wonder if there’s value in doing a Marxist analysis of game economies (Runescape, Counter-Strike, etc). If a means of transfer exists between in-game and actual currencies it appears somewhat analogous to crypto. Although with crypto there’s not much direct labor-power involved compared to a game like Runescape where you have to manually do in-game actions in order to generate wealth.
Guild Wars 2, so no way to actually turn it into real currency that I’m aware of (unless you sell your account or something); I mean, you can convert “gold” (game currency) to “gems” (game store currency) but gems can’t purchase anything other than GW2 items, which are all virtual and contained within the game and your account.
But that is an interesting thought. I’d be curious to read such an analysis.
Also, it occurs to me, one area of potential interest about GW2 in terms of economic analysis is the internal design of the economy. Though I’m not real familiar with the specifics, there are players in the game who play the trading post like a game of its own, amassing in-game wealth with things like flipping, or (anecdotally I’ve heard) with organized attempts to control the market for specific items in order to make more off of them. Ultimately, GW2 devs can step in and wreck this pretty easy by adjusting how easy it is to obtain items, but a particular one I recall this happening with is the “black lion weapons”, which are uncommon or rare drops from GW2’s lootboxes. GW2 devs solution to this (as I understand it) was to have these items come back every so often on a rotation, so that supply would not become too rare. But nevertheless, you can see how certain items like this end up with fairly consistent, high cost to buy from other players on the trading post, suggesting people are actively manipulating it. As opposed to more random range of listings and availability if they weren’t.
One player on reddit even actively admitted to doing market manipulation with the essence that drops from this item: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mystic_Chest though I don’t know if they are still playing now
And there is potential analysis to be done in how people like this are probably being allowed to exist in a game economy because, in some cases, they actually make it more stable, even though their greed is not good for players; the company itself can benefit from it if it becomes harder to get certain rare items as a result while having consistent supply listed, such that players will be tempted to spend real money on gems, convert it to gold, and then buy the item off the trading post.
I hadn’t considered the relationship between high item prices, item availability and its benefit to the company, but that’s very interesting. Something similar happens in OSRS. There’s a huge price difference between mid-game, late-game and end-game gear, to the point where the average player (most of the playerbase are adults these days) really doesn’t have the time to sink into the exorbitantly long grinds to acquire either the items directly or the in-game currency needed to buy them. Buying in-game currency ends up being a no brainer for them because it’s the path of least resistance. Spend 6 months trying to get one item, or get it immediately and move on to the more interesting content.
In the case of OSRS I think the majority of actual prices aren’t so much due to market manipulation or flipping, although both do occur. There’s been some big scandals in the past involving clans and market manipulation so it’s a bannable offense. Rather, there’s a lot of item sinks that have been implemented to prevent supply getting to the point where it starts crashing the price. Regardless though the company still has the same interest, being keeping in-demand item prices reasonably high to sell in-game currency.