Some highlights from the econometric side of the game(I am talking about v.2 - the
first version hardly has any resource management due to the time needed for implementing it)
Gold is a pseudomonetary-prestige-dividend-paying resource.
Millies(m) is 1/1000 of XMR
1 Gold ~ 50m in the example.
If the game catapults to world-fame due to its ease of use, we can estimate 100k players who are in resource-management levels of 3-11, playing 20 hours/month, and 200k players in levels 1-2, playing 10 hours/month. I have converted all figures to XMR for ease of use, and "millies" (small "m" - capital "M" is a million, and Mm is thus 1,000 XMR, a lot of money ingame) is the ingame currency that you can buy with XMR. Although the game does not buy it back, you may find a way if you have too much of it.
Everybody gets 1 gold per 2 hours of real-life time online. This works out to 25m/hour. The ones in level 1-2 who don't have other income, may spend in in whereever they like, providing incentive for ingame businessmen. In total, the gold just comes from heaven and boosts the game by 25m/hour * 4M hours/month = 100Mm. Thus, in a real-month, about 1km real value per active player is created. They get it in the form of gold, however, and the value of gold may fluctuate against XMR. What stays constant is the fiat value of gold awarded per hour of time online.
New millies come to the game if people load their accounts with XMR. Since millies is the most divisible and practical unit of currency, and prices are expressed in millies, it is expected to be regarded as "money" by the players, but it is interesting to see whether "hard-currency" markets develop with pricing tied to gold or USD.
The game progresses 24 times faster than real life, so a character who enters play at the age of 20, will get weak and die somewhere past-40 (or much later if he's had access to fine wine, fresh air and doctors - all luxuries in the game). This works out about 1 year real-life time for a character.
From level 3 onwards, the character needs to eat, drink, clothe himself, and live in a rental unit or his own house. Optionally he can use a driver to visit the distant areas of the city, or the countryside. He can buy medicines and treatments from doctors for the sickness that often hits. He can build and adorn houses. He can start ingame "game-mechanist" businesses such as a distillery, and last but most important of them all - participate in the user-generated content that will often have fees for the reason that one attraction has a limited size in terms of number of simultaneous users.
The minimum one can live with without reducing to pauper level is about 200 millies per game-month, which works out to 4.8 XMR per real month(!). My estimation for the modest Noble is 2000 millies per game-month (48 XMR per real month). Now this can be compared to the cost of playing similar games like EVE Online for about 15 XMR per month.
Playing in different levels is of course not only paying, sometimes you are able to earn income. In good times the income well covers the costs, in bad times you may be reduced to drink that darn Mead again. Typically entering Level 3 should be an easy step, then it would get progressively more difficult if you had not built the earnings capacity. Skilful playing with a high-level character that is self-sufficient is certainly fun - more likely though is the pauper noble-case, with family lands yielding very little in monetary terms, and city palace falling into disrepair as well...
The game has an open resource-based economy with the following resources:
- food (different types)
- drink (different types)
- wool (for making clothes)
- garments (different types)
- stone (for building)
- wood (for building)
- gold (for lasting glory, which in turn pays dividends)
- XMR (for payments).
Food, some drinks, wool, stone and wood (so almost everything!) is produced in the estates outside the town. Some estates are so far away, there is no road and terrain is so bad that they practically cannot sell stuff to the town, and only some of the resources are non-perishable. The market is self-calibrating so that when town is consuming more of a certain item, it becomes profitable to send more of it despite the high cost of transport. If the situation persists that previously marginal farms are now profitable, their owners want to build the road also to increase profits. Thus the estates (about 100,000 sq.km of them, starting in 1 sq.km family farms) come to play gradually even though they exist in the game since the beginning. Marginal estates are self-sufficient, they may occasionally send you a shipment of foie gras but that's about all that makes sense to transport from afar.
Some other items are imported. Practically the money goes to the Town Council.
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Created (to players in relation to online time): Gold
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Produced (in estates, with transport cost vs. demand profitability mechanism): Stone, Wood, Wool, food, drinks
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Imported (buyable in council shops): food, drinks, specialty non-standalone items such as windows
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Made (in tailorshops): garments
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Exchanged (official deposit points emit millies if you pay XMR): millies
Now if the city has those 100,000 active players and the rest duly squander their free money, the GDP works out to about the following (numbers are per real-month = 2 years of ingame time:
200,000 players * 250m = 50 Mm (occasional players)
50,000 players * 7,700m = 385 Mm (lower middle class)
45,000 players * 19,700m = 887 Mm (middle class)
4,900 players * 72,500m = 355 Mm (barons, earls)
100 players * 240,500m = 24 Mm (dukes)
The total GDP is a whopping 1,700,000,000m (in 2 years, which happens to coincide with one month of our time).
I have an updating list about the inputs and outputs of the GDP, the whole value-creation process, self-balancing loops of numerous small industries and professions etc. For example, the Mead is sold in Tavern for 2m. You can drink a lot (for $0.002 a shot) without ever realizing that the price consists of the following:
0.0m raw materials
0.6m distillery value-added
0.5m drinks tax
0.2m transport
0.7m tavern margin.
Since 100,000*720*80% = 57.6 million shots of Mead are consumed in a real-month, the small number add up and the tax income alone is 28.8 Mm per real-month. The town council is able to tax the economy 1.7% by putting a 0.5 milley tax on the cheapest drink!
This serves as an example that for a shrewd businessman, there are fortunes to be made once the game grows bigger. And the easiest way to get there is to start when the game is small
Oh, one more thing before it gets too long. Property values. Since the buildings ingame are made of stone, the buildings are very durable and fall into disrepair only after 25 gameyears on average. This makes construction of even a small building a 10,000m+ undertaking. A townhouse would be 40km or more, with the grandest palaces in hundreds. It is difficult or impossible to earn such sums ingame (same as you can very seldom earn your way to buy a house without mortgage in any western country). On the other hand, renting a room can be done via an automatic subsystem where the owners just list rooms that are available and tenants can start to pay 20m per month or whatever is needed (in the game, the rent is only about 10% of typical expenditure).
Comments appreciated!
Poll
