Eveconomics

Who knew, I couldn’t write a few large blog-posts without wanting to write more on the subject. So here we go, a post which takes a different approach to the subject at hand. I realize that I promised to talk about how a rigid CSM might benefit EVE Online on a large scale.

I might do a few more posts like this, which will pull out arguments from the man posts and try and put more emphasize on the main arguments.

However, I want to present a slightly different take on this whole thing. And really, the whole thing comes down to this very simple question: Do you want to be a part of the conversation about your product/company?

But let me expand on it a bit, without writing another wall of text:

As established already in an earlier post, communication is what makes or breaks a company like CCP. The simple reason is that people want to have a sense of control. Leaving customers in a state of feeling out of control is not desirable. It creates a lot of rabble on the forum, leaves people with a bad experience of your game and it doesn’t make for bad press.

Let me make it clear that communication isn’t a replacement for traditional marketing measures; both should be put to well-balanced use.

Like already discussed in the case of Jeff Javis and his adventure with Dell, who tried to control communication and only have it take place on their premise, this doesn’t work very well.

And I’m going to keep this short and tidy, and emphasize a very important point:

Discussion is going to take place, whether you like it or not. You can decide to take part in it if you want, or you can ignore it and tell yourself that it doesn’t take place.

So to return back to the original question: Do you want to be a part of the conversation about your product/company?

And the answer is Yes! Taking part in the conversation is going to give customers a better experience of using your product

Right, I think that summed up the point. I’m going to be posting my planned post about the CSM on Monday. So stay tuned for that.

First of all, I want to thank everybody for the nice comments. I really appreciate it. Also a huge shout-out to everybody who met up at Gankaton in Copenhagen on Saturday. It was a blast!

Last time I discussed the different approaches to interaction with a customer base. The tl;dr is that given how large networks everybody have, every single customer matters and interacting with them is important.

This time, I want to discuss the problem extremely predictable communication patterns brings with it.

But before I get into the bit where I disagree loudly with the status quo, let me explain why the current situation makes sense, but is undesirable.

The nature of software development.

CCP is eventually a software company (We shall from now on refer to it as a "Service provider"). Unlike most providers, CCP has a large user-base whom a %( I have heard the number 10-15%, but I’m not sure) try to communicate directly them on a regular basis. While writing code for hundreds of thousands of users isn’t an uncommon thing, service providers usually deal with its end-users by proxy through the IT-Personal/The lawyers (When the service provider screws up).

CCP has a unique situation where customers’ presence is focused on a very small part of the internet, in terms of communication. The nature of their software relies heavily on their servers. When there’s a problem with the servers, it affects everybody. Where do they complain? The forums!

The discussion taken place is often very harsh and there’s a whole lot of it. Hence, communication is inherently hard when you have such a large amount of direct communication and there’s an attitude.

Users usually wants information on when CCP are going to do x and y, and when they will implement feature z and c. This as well goes through a single point of communication to the service provider (Like CCP). However, because of the sheer volume of players who takes part in the communication (Usually in the form of shouting at CCP), there’s large pressure on keeping to communicate about what the people want.

One of the areas of communication where people are extremely vocal is in regards to expansions. Expansions are very large bundles of new features, which are rolled out every 4-6 months. As everybody who has wrote code will know, unpredictable things can happen. And if it can happen, it WILL happen. And as the code-base expands, this is more likely to happen if people aren’t extremely careful.

Due to this, a software provider tends to keep silent about what they are working on to a large degree. This makes them kind of a black-box operation. In the short term, this provides them a bit of privacy to change their plan on the fly. Another argument for running things mostly as a black-box operation is the very harsh tone which exists towards game companies like CCP on the forum, by the vocal minority.

Understanding versus anxiety

Summing up this far: CCP, as a service provider, have short-term benefits from not being open to its users about the direction of the game. However as human beings, this is a very uncomfortable position to be put in as a customer.

Like I discussed in part 1, the new generation of users is used to being able to exercise control over their surroundings. When you take control away from people, you find that they get anxious. And everybody has tried this. You find yourself in a situation where you are unable to either act in a situation or are not able to get information about a situation. This is a very undesirable thing to put people through.

The rationalization which I think that CCP tends to use is something along these lines:

"We do not wish to give people an idea that we are doing X, if we end up not doing it"

And this is a very reasonable argument, if you accept the underlying principle that people get upset and are going to quit the game over it. This is where understanding comes into the picture.

At the risk of getting into a deeply philosophical discussion, I’m now going to make a very bad assumption: Human is inherently reasonable and understanding.

When discussing a scenario like this, the question comes down to: Can we give the users information and control, without unreasonable flaming when we pull the plug on a feature? And I’m of the firm belief that it’s certainly possible to the extent there the initial dissatisfaction that a feature didn’t make it into an expansion, makes up for the benefits which it yields.

Setting reasonable expectations

And at the risk at risk of insulting people here, I’m going to make this statement: A marketing department ought to only deal with building a platform for spreading the word of EVE, not controlling communication.

I really have a sense that marketing departments are possibly one of the worst things that was ever invented. While uniformity, which a marketing department which oversees communication can provide, is a decent thing, I do not believe that it’s the optimal solution.

With the recent adoption of scrum at CCP, I was pleasantly surprised that CCP took a small step in the direction of being more open about communication, by having each team write their own dev-blogs. However these sorts of things have the exact same pitfalls as everything else thus far: It easily becomes a marketing piece to create buzz.

By changing the tone of communication to a less "authoritarian" one however more "We are your best friends", where CCP provides a platform for communication and discussion of the future, it’s possible to extend the level of communication about things which would earlier have considered strictly NDA-covered information.

And with that argument we eventually return to the initial argument: Communication isn’t a biyearly thing that takes place around the time of deployment of an expansion.

By giving the users a window into CCP and what they are working on, people will have a better attitude towards CCP. If the "social contract" explicitly states that the nature of communication is informal and seeks to allow for CCP t o gather opinions and feedback from its users on features they are planning, it’s possible to reach a sweet-spot where they gain the benefits of increased communication, but aren’t eaten alive by the crowd, due to a lack of a social contract.

Social contracts are eventually implicitly controlled by the people involved in the discussion. Forum users aren’t afraid of calling somebody out on being unreasonable. If CCP can create a situation where majority understands that the dev-blogs are what they are, but not solid plans, I’m sure that the forums can regulate themselves. Again: Human is inherently reasonable.

Users are stakeholders, not your enemy

Agile methodologies are heavy on involving the user. This is expressed as "stakeholders". It’s important to include the users and have continual communication with the users. I’m sure we can all agree to that.

How can users get more involved, you ask? It’s simple: Rip the whole facade off CCP. Expose the immediate plans (6 months into the future or so). Release work in progress documents about what CCP wishes to do. Release sketches of how new UI pieces are going to look. By throwing a fat "This is just an idea"-mark onto things and explicitly asking people for ideas is a way to create reasonable expectations. Create 2-way communication about it. Throwing something out there and leaving it alone is a sure way to upset the stakeholders. And sadly this isn’t an uncommon sighting in regards to the developer-blogs

It’s not to say that people are so reasonable that you won’t have the occasional bitter internet spaceship player who will voice their harsh opinion against CCP. However, the forums are extremely good at regulating themselves when people are being unreasonable.

A dev-blog is something you create to communicate and gather feedback. I think where things go wrong is when people perceive dev-blogs as marketing. It’s not going to get you more subscribers. Communication is going to get you more subscribers, however.

Wrapping it up

This is the second and for now, last part of this piece about communication. I’m going to sum up my arguments and my ideas this far:

Part 1:

1. 1. Affiliate marketing and buddy programs are not going to carry you into the future market. Communication is.
2. 2. Incentivizing communication through contests using social networks are immensely effective tools and are by all means cheap

Part 2:

1. 1. CCP is a software company(Surprise?)
2. 2. They run scared of their users because of the broken social contract they have created by not communicating
3. 3. They are running on a 6-month schedule, where the communication only takes places in the last 2-3 months, with most it going on very late in the process. This create anxiety on the part of the stakeholders
4. 4. Human is inherently reasonable and understanding
5. 5. By ripping out the marketing department’s influence on communication, it’s possible to create a new social contract that allows for 2-way communication which will benefit both CCP and it’s users in shaping a good future for the game

That sums up my current thoughts on this subject. I have left out a crucial part where I include the CSM into the grand scheme of things. Stay tuned on Friday, where I will discuss the benefits which making a rigid structure of the CSM can provide value and give stakeholders a better sense of control.

One of the things which can make or break a company is communication. Back in 2005, industry analyst Onalytica claimed that Jeff Javis, famous blogger and author of "What would google do?", had more influence over people’s perception than Dell had. Why, you might ask? The answer might seem obvious. Yet people do not seem to realize the implications that it has.

Influence is power

Jeff Javis had bought a laptop from Dell. Mr. Javis was not very happy with his new laptop. He went as far as calling it a lemon! (I had no idea that was an insult), which should underline how serious this was. But at any rate, Mr. Javis went ahead and voiced his opinion on his blog. Mind you this is 4 years ago, and blogging seems to be something that people take for granted.

Very quickly a movement of people started to rally against Dell. The stories goes that as a result of the the blog-post being indexed very highly by google, people quickly started reading about Mr. Javis bad experience with Dell. And supposedly even the customer satisfaction overall dropped, as a result of this. This left Dell’s stock in ruins (Oh well, the economic crisis was going to cut into their stock price anyways).

That’s the tale of Jeff Javis, and how he exercised influence over people’s perception by using tools, which people take for granted, now 4 years later.

Your worst customer is now your best customer

The morale of the story isn’t really that with great "powers" comes great responsibility. My outlook on that is that people will screw up this "power" either way, be it through misconception, misunderstanding or just plain being ********. However, treating customers with respect is the best tool in the new paradigm, which everything online ought to take seriously.

Under the old paradigm, your best way was to use affiliation programs, referral bonuses, getting people to tell all their friends about your product. And that certainly has its place. But with the increased usage of social media like facebook and twitter, people create relationships where these sorts of tools aren’t suitable anymore.

What is for certain with these kinds of things is that people will kick, whine and scream if they have a problem with your product. This became apparent to Dell. They will also tell all their friends, which given the new cultural norm in regards to people friends networks, is a large number of people. In this way, pissing off one customer can propagate itself throughout the customers’ large network.

Dell changed its way and has now communicates to a large degree over things like twitter, facebook, blogs and the like. Their customer satisfaction is now extremely high, and they were no. 1 in customer satisfaction in 2009 Q1, according to Technology business research surveys.

When people experience a problem and finds that it’s easy to interact and solve a problem with the producer, while it might create bad press at first, positive PR it creates when the customer then solves it’s problems is of greater value than just having a dissatisfied customer in the long term.

And this has started to become standard practices in the IT industry. The list over companies that uses just twitter is gigantic. The key to success is to communicate to a large degree, but also giving power to the user

With power comes responsibility

As the generation who was brought up with free access to the internet on their own computer grows up, it becomes more apparent how there’s a need to putting power in the hands of the consumer. The new generation is used to being able to control everything on their computers. But as it turns out, some things aren’t directly controllable. When people try to come to grips with this, you’ll find that they are more likely to give a company grief very easily. When you can’t blame yourself, it’s easy to blame somebody else.

Giving users control is extremely hard. And in most cases, it’s simply not viable in a direct way. The Council Of Stellar Management is in a way an attempt at this. And I think it works well for the minority. The CSM has yet to perfect the creation of a sense of democracy which we see in the real world, where people really care for elections and law-making for the most part.

However when reaching out to a larger audience, you need to make people feel like they matter. You can do buddy programs and offer free fanfest tickets all you want. But under the current paradigm, that makes very little sense.

Enter the new reality

Reaching out to customers is hard. Having given a lot of thought about how to reach out to a large audience with the CSM, I realize that it’s probably never possible. However engaging the people in activities which reaches out on a larger scale is where you reach the sweet spot for interaction with your crowd.

One such activity might be blogging. Like Jeff Javis, a blog-post can really take off big-time and get indexed well in google. It might get thrown around a lot between friends. It might even cause dialogue between people who never heard about each other, broadening people’s horizons.

Blogging contests are not really widely used yet, but give a good bang for the buck. Crazy Kinux has had a fair shot at this. However, it needs to be done on a much larger scale.

The idea is simple. Offer some nice prices in exchange for well-written blog posts about a certain topic. They might be:

· How would you change sov. Mechanics?

· What was the worst and best thing about fanfest?

· What was your worst experience with EVE?

What all these have in common is that they engage people in discussing something that eventually has an emotional aspect to it: Their experience with things surrounding EVE. At the same time, you get useful feedback.

Using twitter, it’s not unheard of that customer representatives actively engage in using it to reach out to people who have problems with the product they bought. I’m not sure about the viability of this for EVE Online. But it’s certainly an interesting idea.

On the other hand it’s entirely reasonable to do a twitter-drawing. Simple have people use the #EVEOnline hash tag and draw a random person for a prize. The idea is that people who watch the players’ stream of messages will see the #EVEOnline hash tag and wonder what it’s all about. Or you could do what CCP Nozh does on the forum once in a while, with creating a monster thread asking what people want changed. Using twitter and the hash tag, you limit how much people can rant and only get the essence. And it’s easily index able. Run that for a week as a competition and draw 3 winners for some mugs and the like and you are golden.

Overall, engaging in the new media is crucial when meeting the new generation of customers. Engaging in things like buddy programs and affiliate programs is by no means dead. But it’s a small market compared to that of the social media.

Stay tuned for next week. I’m currently drafting part 2, entitled “How communication isn’t a biyearly thing, unlike your showering”. Ok, I’m not sure if I’m going with that title yet. We shall see.

At EBANK, we have had a lot of issue with people impersonating us. CCP, the janitor of New Eden, are usually really nice about making sure this doesn’t take place, when made aware about any attempt at such.

On the eve-online forums this morning a post was made, stating that CCP had removed the clause which prohibited impersonation.

As far as I’m aware, that is really scary scenario. I realize that the nature of the internet allows for complete anonymity, and that impersonation is an inherent pitfall of a medium like the internet. But in a virtual world, surely there should be the opportunity to create a name for yourself, without fearing that somebody will be able to impersonate you to the degree that it can cause irreversible damage, without any chance of being able to counter nor prevent.

Impersonation 101

Impersonation comes in different flavors. There’s the indirect approach, which relies on people searching for a name, but not knowing the exact spelling. So say that one wanted to find “Chribba”. Often, people only know a person like Chribba, by reference of their friend over some sort of voice communication(Ventrilo, teamspeak). That means that people might not hear “Chribba”, but “Chrippa” or even “Kribba”. This allows for confusion on the part of an user. If a person registers these misspellings, then they might be contacted, and can lure somebody into losing their assets.

This happens to EBANK quite regularly. We used to allow people to deposit ISK into the bank by donating money to the character “EBANK Ricdic”. If people created a character called “EBANK Rikdic”, it might confuse a person enough to cause them to deposit to the wrong character.

The second approach that relies on the fact that people in most online games are allowed to have several identities inside the game. Using a bit of social engineering, it’s possible to trick someone into thinking that you are an alternative character of somebody else.

So while it is still illegal to impersonate other players, it raises some interesting points in my mind.

The case bridging the gap

I think there is a reasonable argument for creating a system where individuals can become “Confirmed” members. A system like this is commonly seen implemented by social networking sites. While it’s not limited to social sites, more extreme kinds of identity confirmation are things like “Extended Validation Certificates”, which are glorified SSL certificates, which certifies that a legal entity are whom they claim they are, as well as the validation technique which Paypal uses.

I have yet to see this being tried in a virtual world. However, I think for a complex game like EVE Online, there’s certainly a player-base which would benefit from this.  Especially the people who operates in the player-driven market, could benefit from being able to identify the identify of a person. While it does not stop scams, it will increase the barrier to entry considerably.

While it’s a good thing to establish a sense of persona in game, it will break the immersion of the game. And I’m sure that this is an undesirable effect of taking EVE from being a recreational environment. But there’s another option.

I give to you, trademarks!

The ability for a person or corporation to create a trademark which is easily identifiable is an interesting concept. Having a Trademark owner, who can grant and revoke a persons “usage” of this trademark, which would show up in their character sheet, it’s possible to create something that’s not easily fake-able. Unlike corporation name, a trademark would have to be unique beyond the spelling. It would have to be confirmed to be unique by a human.

I realize, having been on the Council Of Stellar Management for a year, that the resources inside a company are pretty sparse, that this is probably a long shot.

Brand recognition is a fundamental concept in economics and is a corner stone of culture. It would be an interesting feature, yet simple addition to the vibrant community. We have already seen how players have gone with a feature and used it for things which it wasn’t necessarily intended for. Who knows where the players would take it.

Just because something is simple, doesn’t mean that it’s useless. A trademark feature is a natural progression towards an environment where characters are truly valuable and there’s a way to establish a name for yourself.

Not to screw in a light-bulb. Honestly, I couldn’t care about that. And I doubt CCP would either, seeing as it’s light 24/7 in Reykjavik at present.

But it has been about a year since the first CSM was sweating their asses off in the meeting room, known as Exodus, at CCP HQ, due to the lack of air-conditioning. A small ½x½ meter window was our savior that weekend.

One of the topics for discussion that weekend, was shares in EVE Online. Mainly the fact that they can’t be traded. But a very important thing which was also discussed, was the problems with share dividends. The dividends system is really old by comparison to things like the alliance system. However, it suffers from a “large” problem: It’s impossible to pay out a large sum of ISK at once.

The technical aspect

It turns out that the dividend system can only pay out the value of 2,147,483,64 ISK at a time. Anybody who has taken a computer science will, will immediately identify this value to be the size of a signed 32-bit integer. I.e an integer value with sign, that fits into 32 bits. The value of 32 bits is equal to 2^32, which comes to 4.3 * 10^9. That means the unsigned value of a 32-bit integer is 4.3 * 10^9 big.

To make it signed, you divide the value by 2, and put both + and – signs in front of that. That makes the 32-bit signed integer have a value from −2,147,483,648 to +2,147,483,647.

Based on this information, it’s fair to assume that the dividend system validates it’s values against the capacity of a 32-bit signed integer.

CCP could make it a 32-bit unsigned integer. But then again, that would only double the capacity. While it might be a temporary fix, in the long run we will face the exact same problem.

Bring out the 64 bits!

The obvious solution to this problem is to allow the dividend system to pay out the value of a 64 bit integer. The capacity of 64 bit is equal to 2^64, which is equal to 1.84 * 10^19. That’s a lot!

Even by making said value signed, it will still be more than enough.

“But we don’t have time”

Because the dividends system simply creates a transaction in the EVE database, it’s fairly reasonable to assume that the problem lies client-side. As such, it must be a value check on the client, which keeps you from paying out a large value. Because the value of transactions are virtually unlimited at this point(Probably a 64-bit signed integer) in terms of EVE Online, it should be possible to change the dividend system to allow such high payouts.

How long might it take? Well, assuming that the value validation on the client side wasn’t coded by a monkey, it might be a single method which needs to have it’s value, which it checks against, to be a 64-bit variable. Hard? If it is, then I’d like to point out that maybe there’s a larger issue at play: That the code-base was coded by monkeys.

CCP is known for it’s yearly fanfest, which in and by itself is not that uncommon, even if CCP has a quite different way of doing it than, say, Blizzard.

Every year, CCP invites players to join them in Reykjavik, Iceland, for 3 days of talks about EVE, roundtables and general fun, with the giant party being on the very last day of fanfest. CCP obvious has costs involved with having to pay for the venue, food staff, crew, etc. In the past they have merely sold passes for about 75ish USD per person. Given the fact that it’s not uncommon for conferences to run close to break-even in terms of actual cost, I think it’s fair to say that 75USD is a very fair price.

To my utter surprise, some clever guy at CCP(Possibly while drunk) figured out that they could sell the fanfest tickets for the in-game timecards, known as “PLEX”es(Pilot License Extensions). For a mere 5 of these, you get a ticket to fanfest. The interesting thing is that these PLEXes are sold by CCP for real money, like normal game-time cards. I have discussed PLEXes before on this bug. But what makes PLEXes very different from “normal” game-time cards, is that they can be sold for in-game currency.

The cost of 5 of these is in the order of about 85 USD. They are sold in bundles of 2 for around 35 USD. They have the value of 30 days each.

The smart part is that in order for 1 fanfest ticket to be bought, a person would have to buy 6 of these PLEXes. That means that unless he is buying for a friend too, he will end up with 1 extra PLEX. That can either be used for more game-time OR be sold on the market for in-game currency. That means for every fanfest ticket sold, there should actually be 1 extra PLEX in the system, or 1 month of extra game-time.

That’s a very smart way of promoting the “legal” way of buying ISK. And it creates an increased supply through the 1 extra PLEX, as just described. And using basic economics theory, extra supply leads to extra demand, or a lower price.

In addition to that, CCP offers “Sisters Of Eve” tickets. These are tickets which are intended for family members of EVE Players, who wants to go to Iceland, but don’t want to be together with all the nerds. This year, they are taking the attendees to a gletscher(I’d like to go there, to be honest) on the first day, and for some kind of spa on the second.

Personally, I think this is cool. From a market perspective, it increases supply and demand for PLEXes, which has several uses, and strengthens the market.

However as I have discussed briefly before, I’m paranoid about when governments and other interest groups are going to get the smell of it, and pursue it and try to regulate it. The scenario isn’t unlikely. It’s just a matter of time, and the current rate of growth in the MMO market.

At this point, it’s now possible to buy in-game items for real-life money, and then buy something out of the game, for that, i.e the fanfest ticket. That completes the full circle between the game and real-life. You can buy in-game values with real-life money, and vice versa. When the governments all over the world gets the hint of this, is probably just a matter of time. Eventually they will try, and things like these makes that day move closer.

Recently in the world of New Eden, there’s been discussion about botting and what action CCP should take.

Botting has been the white elephant in the room for some time now. Everybody knows that there is “macroers” out there. Or at least extremely predictable people. But quite recently, our dear Chribba did something extremely interesting.

EVE allows you to keep log-files of all in-game communication. Extremely handy feature, which very few has actually data-mined, even if there’s some very interesting applications for it.

Chribba went ahead and put a character in the main trade-hub in New Eden, Jita. It’s generally known that Jita “local” channel is mostly pure spam. In addition to that, it’s also fairly widely known that Jita local tends to be filled with scam.

However quite recently, some smart guys figured out how to abuse inconsistencies in the way numbers are written. Let me give you an example.

On the normal market, all numbers are written like 999,999,999.00. On the other hand, in a contract, the very same number would look like 999,999,999. As you will notice, if there’s no cents cost, said cents will not be showed. While this is a serious game-design problem in my opinion, that not the point.

What Chribba recently proved, is that there’s a considerable amount of “shady” behavior when it comes to the “chatting”(Or lack there of), in Jita local.

From following data, we can see that a minority of the people in the channel, are responsible for the most of the chat. Right, no big deal you might say. But one will also find that the “chat” is extremely repetitive. In fact, most of it is simple spam of contract scams, abusing the cents-issue.

There’s some clear patterns to be observed in the logs, if you look into those.

Ricdic, amongst others, suggested on the Market Discussion forum that CCP should start “to track repetition in key presses in order to determine if someone is a bot”. Being fairly concerned about privacy, even if all my RL-information is out there as a result of my CSM-candidacy etc, I entirely disagree with the suggesting put forward by these people.

What is suggested is indisputably a key-logger. While the intention is of course not malicious, it’s important to notice that there’s some people out there who’s QUITE serious about their privacy.

One of those is EFF, who had some serious concerns about Blizzard’s Warden software.

I think it’s extremely important that while it would be nice with a game without any botting/macroing, that we do not compromise the privacy of the individual, as we are seeing in our current society(USA and others are great example of governments who want’s to spy on people, and get away with it).

I’m not suggesting that CCP should ignore it. However, I think it’s important to look at the situation from a more practical aspect rather than idealistic. If a macro/bot is causing serious grief on players(Or CCP), then we should deal with THAT individual. It’s impossible to stop it all entirely.

People like Bjørn Lomborg, who see things in a larger perspective, have some very interesting views, which I find relevant to this discussion. Eventually CCP only has so many resources. By focusing it on the things which bugs the players the MOST, rather than trying to break up with certain issues which can’t be avoided anyways, we are all better off.

This weekend the second meeting during this Council Of Stellar Management was held. We spend about 3 hours discussing a number of issues, most being related to the recent expansion to EVE Online, “Apocrypha”, which introduced a number of really exciting things, but also a few problems which we tried to cover to the best of our ability.

At the meeting the topic of 0.0 mechanics came up. A few members of the CSM have a large interest in 0.0, so it was only natural that we eventually addressed that topic. A few questions were bounced around, to which I thought I’d collect my thoughts and throw them out there. So here you go!

This is NOT the mechanic you are looking for

I think that people have become obsessed with solving solutions with mechanics rather than taking alternatives solutions which will give the players a greater degree of power. It’s my understanding the sovereignty was originally implemented in order to prevent “station-bouncing”, where people would take turn at claiming a station. So while it helps with solving that problem, it’s one of the few desirable things which the mechanic brings with it. The other thing, which is also most important, is the e-peen-factor.

Once we start discussing e-peen, it’s a largely ideological discussion between the idea that EVE is either a game or a virtual society. The former condones and appreciates the fact that people compete(That’s the whole idea from their point of view, because that’s fun). From the point of view of a person who likes to think of EVE as a virtual society, it’s not a desirable thing, because e-peen doesn’t foster a good attitude of the community, because it’s elitist.

The question really is, do we NEED a sovereignty mechanic? If were players shape how 0.0 looks rather than a crude mathematical way of determining who owns what, wouldn’t everybody be better off? What benefits does it bring to the player, to have it?

While there’s a case to be made for controlling the deployment of things like Jump Bridges and Cyno Jammers, then I suggest that maybe there’s a system which could allow for this kind of granular control without bringing with it undesirable ramifications?

Something about lipstick on a pig

A saying goes along the lines that even if you put lipstick on a pig, it’s still just a pig. While it might seem convent to just add a few bells and things to the current system, it won’t really address the core issues. Hence why rather than just beating the current system to the point where it reanimates itself, starting on a blank slate might be a consideration which has to be made.

Shape the world, not people

We have seen time and time again how people with power have tried to shape people’s behavior to fit into the world, rather than shaping the world for people to fit in.

And here is the first mention of what really is the crux of this whole post. Government! 0.0 is all about political conflicts. 0.0 is the playing-field and sovereignty is the rules to which the game is played. While this is the opposite to using the fort metaphor(HI GREYSCALE), I think both makes sense in it’s own context. Maybe that’s just to show the weaknesses both of these metaphors have. However when discussing the political and territorial(macro-level) aspect, rather than micro aspect(Individual systems as the playing-field), it makes a bit more sense, meaning that they can co-exists without causing any headaches.

So in order to not shape people, we need to figure out what kinds of people are out there exactly. What types of social structures, and their ideology and way of playing, is out there. It was apparent from the discussion, which the CSM had, that there were strong ideological differences between different types of players. So I came up with following:

Player-types

Embrace diversity and foster it

The idea is that there’s a range of different social structures and ideas about what 0.0 should be like. That is why I think the initial focus of a new 0.0 should be to figure out how to best shape the world and the tools to suit all these kinds of structures. A feature is all about giving players tools to shape the world and not tell them how the play the game. If they want to blow a hole in the fort’s walls, rather than use the entrance, then they damned better be allowed! Want to catapult yourself into the fort? Go right ahead. Right now we have a sovereignty system which tells you to use the front-entrance and that you have to have your army walk in a straight line. That’s the wrong way of looking at things, and I think any eventual new incarnation of the system should take a the approach of giving players tools, rather than drawing up a clear playing field. The players should draw the playing-field themselves trough their actions.

Corporate and governmental tools

I’d personally love to see EVE to be the first game to create so extensive tools for it’s players, that true government-style things emerge. While we already have entities which mimics politics, we don’t have any real tools for it. At present it’s all kinda “fuzzy”. Promoting the idea that alliances should be a government-like entity, is something that I think is an awesome idea. Once we start creating a society where people really “belongs” to a society, we can create really  interesting situations.

Well. This is just my thoughts on the approach which I’d like EVE to take. This is not an execution plan or anything useful to hash out concrete features. That will have to wait till later

You haven’t derailed yet? What’s going on?

Oh! I did a lecture at EVE University this friday. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out, even if I was pretty tired(Should be pretty easy to notice from how easy I was to distract al the time). I will try to find a recording and share it with you guys. I discussed my experience with the CSM, having been a part of it for almost a year straight now. Any new candidate should have a listen. There’s some gems in there, if I may say so myself.

As I’m writing this, my dear love Tranquility is being patched with Apocrypha, one of the coolest expansions I have ever seen to a game. I have obviously prepared myself for this big event by stocking up in advance of the large gold-rush. But I thought I might create a blog post about the economics of expansions, which I briefly discussed in my EON article in EON #13.

ISK sink with a touch of inflation

To an expansion, there’s several parts. Usually, there’s new gadgets and ships for people to fly. As we saw with the Orca when it was released with Quantum Rise last year, that creates a major ISK sink(Currency is removed from the game) in the short-term. When we talk about real-life economics, it’s not uncommon that people see the decrease in money-supply as deflation. While that’s right, this is not the case in EVE. Neither is inflation the same as economic growth. The terms are merely defined by price-indices.

But when new ships are released, we do see a very large spike in demand. It’s conventional wisdom, that if you buy up minerals before an expansion, chances are you will make a nifty profit. This is due to the price-inflation which an increase in demand/speculation brings with it. In this case we see that the increase in the price-index and *NOT* the economic growth is what causes inflation. This is unlike real-life where people tend to use inflation interchangeably between those 2 concepts.

AI is the root of all evil

On the other hand, a very interesting new feature, the new NPC artificial intelligence, might turn out to be the root of all economic-growth-evil. Insurance in EVE is known to be a fairly decent source of economics growth. I can obviously only speculate about the impact that rapid economics growth might cause, but lets leave that till another post.

But the idea is that because of this new and improved AI, we might see more ships blown up, resulting in an increase in the rate of the economic growth. This is just speculation, but having tried this new AI on the test-server, I wouldn’t be one bit surprised if this turned out to be the case.

If people lose ships, they will want new ships to replace them. Again, an increase in demand which goes to amplify the above-mentioned inflation in prices due to the demand.

We are being invaded!

With CCP going to great lengths to acquire new subscribers, I think it’s reasonable to assume a spike in players in the world, which could have a large effect on the market once again. As if more demand of materials trough lost ships and new shiny gadgets isn’t enough, I think that we will see that the new players which will flock to the game, will require a decent amount of ships. However there’s a case to be made against the idea that it will be a very sudden spike. Due to the vertical learning-curve in EVE, I think we will see a wave-like increase in demand. When it’s on deep water the wave is very high until it reaches land, where the amplitude(and thus frequency) decreases. We will see an initial spike in the frigate and cruiser market. 1-2 months down the line it’s also quite probable that we will start to see an increased demand in battle-cruisers and battleships. What effect will that have? Well, given normal supply and demand theory, we can assume that as demand increases, price will increase too. That gives a net inflation.

Fear not, our markets shall save thee!

It is however important to realize that EVE is an extremely effective economy. It’s extremely rapid to respond to changes in supply and demand, thanks to a stock-market-like behavior.

So while it’s certain that we will see an inflation spike in the short-term(We are talking 1-48 hours), after that we will have a period of deflation relative to the spike, until it reaches a level which is likely to be above the current average.

Recently EVE-Bank reached a major milestone. EBANK was launched about August 2007 and was soon to become really big. At this point, we have over 5000 users, which is a lot.

A couple of days ago, we managed to reach 2 Trillion ISK, even if we now are just a tad below due to a large withdrawal. Never the less, we managed it and we have shattered the record for public investment in a single entity.

However, EBANK has to control it’s growth. If we take on too many customers, then we will break our neck. Thus, we have to limit the amount of new accounts at that point. It’s obviously something we hate doing, but it’s needed. That’s why competition in this field is good for the publics interest.

But I have been reflecting about what it took to create EBANK and how it has come together with the community to create something truly great.

The history of EBANK

Back when I was a complete stranger on the “Market Discussion” forum, where all of the secondary market takes place, I launched my first IPO. Obviously even back then people were somewhat paranoid. So in order to increase people’s confidence in it, Ricdic offered me to lock down all blueprints in his corporation in exchange for a favor. At the time I thought that was fine. Well, a few months later I read a thread by Ricdic, suggesting he wanted to start a bank. I thought that he was bonkers. But never the less he approached me and wanted a favor of mine. The EVE Online API had just been launched, and he wanted that to be a core part of his new bank. Given my programming experience, he wanted me to create him a simple bank. No big deal.

I went ahead and created a library for pulling the XML from the API and parse it into a database. At that point it was still proof of concept however. But we had a number of people who helped testing the concept version which worked very well despite it’s simplicity.

After showing Hexxx the concept I made, we got him onboard the project for what is now EBANK. Along the line we got a board of directors and a number of staff members. Eventually we launched EBANK and it has been growing ever since from our efforts. And it has grown beyond our wildest dreams

It doesn’t take a lot

The moral of the story is really simple. Even with my self-taught skills(Which can be attributed to my shelf worth of books on programming) it was possible to make a difference. Granted I by no mean did the EBANK software alone. Most of the work is to be attributed to Hexxx and Mr. Horizontal. But if you have an idea, hook up with people, make a proof of concept version. Version 1 is never perfect, so you want to take the things you learn from the concept and make them solid. Otherwise, you will find that you have baked concept and a piece of software where there’s some fundamental issues. By writing the 20% of the code which does 80% of the job, you learn what works and what doesn’t. Once you have learned the lessons and faced the problems which will arise, you can boil it down and write the 80% of code which is trivial to write but takes time.

Innovation and thinking out of the box is what makes our synthetics worlds’ financial systems such a wonderful thing. As we are given more tools by the gaming companies, just like CCP does, we can build a solid foundation of social and financial structures which will create the basis for our further experience of the game and evolve virtual worlds into something truly bigger than that if it’s parts.