Economics of Worlds

In the writings of Castronova, he talks about the business of synthesized worlds has various aspects that companies have to consider for while going live for a game. There is of course, amount of production to be put in designing and creating the game world. There is also the upkeep of the worlds for players to keep on playing. In order to help pay up for that, certain developers make users pay fees in order to play. There are certain strategies that they create to help bring more people into those worlds that still give them profit and funds for upkeep. One of ways is to price discriminate for new players where existing users pay the normal prices while new players pay at either discounted prices or free. This is in order for those new users to create an emotional bond to that environment so they would spend money to stay in that world. Developers can also speed up production just to release the game earlier. The games, themselves, are in beta status but developers have them out early to cash in and fix problems along the way. To keep existing players, developers have to keep on patching and create new content for the worlds so players will want to continue playing.

Castronova writes about the economic theory of clubs. These worlds are essentially clubs. Clubs are more fun with more people not just one member. In these clubs, people socialize and communicate with many different people. Players go to them as they want to be part of that community. Also, the game can pretty much have market power where they do take most of the players.

As I keep on talk about in my blogs, I really like talking about the World of Warcraft. I feel that WoW is another good example of this. Blizzard makes millions of dollars from this game over years with power in the MMORPG realm. One of the reasons why is that their fan base is willing to pay a good amount of money ($15/month) to keep on playing. They do price discriminate for new users with a free month of game play. New content and expansions that they create are to keep fans interested in the game. For certain players, like me, they will back come to the world when there will be major additions to the game. Is there anyone else who experience this in a different game?


-Vircell D.