Game Economies Versus Real Life

I've been reading about Economics, and it's fun and all, but I keep trying to bring up examples in MapleStory... and failing.
I can't think of any business, Gov't, employment, or even specialiation.
You can find a noncrappy scroll at a lot, if not most, trainable places... where as RL wouldn't lend you the chance to get rich quickly just by doing your day job... :x

How do game economies, or more specifically MapleStory, compare to Real Life Economies?
Just how does NX, and -nearly- limitless supplies of things like potions and 100% scrolls sold at shops affect stuff?
Since there aren't people running around taking mass surveys about EVERYTHING, like RL, are prices less stable as the only way to know what to set yours as *in an NX shop...* is by checking the competition or trial and error?
In RL, more spending -> more tax revenue -> more Gov't action -> potentially MORE spending, but in game more spending/inflation just means more money is taken from taxes and lost to the economy for ever. Certainly not encouraging Nexon to do more.
What about "employment" rates? Is there anything comparable in Maple?
How does the population size affect it? Millions in America... how many thousand in Maple?

It doesn't. This game doesn't follow the rule of 'Supply and Demand', you may think it does, but at times, the economy just makes no sense to me. Some things goes as some people expected, while other things won't. Remember, the majority of the people that merchants these days are probably a bunch of pre-teens or 10 year olds that inflates the market with their "1234567890" crap.

MapleStory's economy is a joke.

MapleStory and real life have hardly anything in common. This game consists of a lot of 14 year-olds who took one semester of economics in school and think they can apply the same logic to an online game.



All of MapleStory's economy is based on a self-fulfilling prophecy.

People think an item is going to be expensive for one reason or another, therefore, it is; or perhaps they hoard an item because they think it'll have more value in the future and in actuality the reason the item becomes more expensive is due to their hoarding in the first place.

MapleStory's economy is a joke.

MapleStory and real life have hardly anything in common. This game consists of a lot of 14 year-olds who took one semester of economics in school and think they can apply the same logic to an online game.

Late Wall Street Journal editor "Robert L. Bartley said "In general, 'the market' is smarter than the smartest of it's individual participants."
If the market is smarter than the people in said market, why would the game consisting of 14 year olds make a difference?

All of MapleStory's economy is based on a self-fulfilling prophecy.

People think an item is going to be expensive for one reason or another, therefore, it is; or perhaps they hoard an item because they think it'll have more value in the future and in actuality the reason the item becomes more expensive is due to their hoarding in the first place.

Nothing like that happens in RL... ever?

Late Wall Street Journal editor "Robert L. Bartley said "In general, 'the market' is smarter than the smartest of it's individual participants."
If the market is smarter than the people in said market, why would the game consisting of 14 year olds make a difference?

You're trying to compare real life to a video game, they just don't work exactly the same. Honestly, supply and demand shouldn't exist in MapleStory there's a unlimited amount of meso and items available to everyone. In real life there's only so many resources available on the planet that can be produced, shipped, and consumed in a set amount of time. In MapleStory you can make items appear out thin air using very little effort. When a market is controlled solely by FM Guilds, which is what is the deciding factor the market in MapleStory, it's all based on greedy people hoarding.

Nothing like that happens in RL... ever?

Yes it does, not as much as it does in MapleStory though. In real life there are groups who regulate items/services and their values. In MapleStory, there is no regulations on prices. The only regulations I'd say this game has is drop rates, and even that can be manipulated in your favor using a drop coupon. Anyone can find an item off of a monster or get it from a gachapon and then price them item at whatever they see fit because it's their item and there's always someone crazy enough out there to purchase the item for the whatever ridiculous price the person set it at because "OMFG IT'S A NEW/RARE ITEM, I MUST HAVE IT".

In my opinion, you're better off going and watching Spice and Wolf (and the second season) and applying what you've learned from that.

Since the internet hides sarcasm, is that a serious suggestion, or saying there's no hope in applying text book econ to Maple?

One thing that can hold true for Maple is hyper inflation/deflation... depending on sources and sinks of cash (irl, the government of a country generally handles creation and destruction of money) if someone pulls a scam like printing money the value of money drops rapidly and everything "costs more" (really it costs ~the same, but money is worth less)

In maple a lot of the sources/sinks are in the players hands, eg. hunting monsters and selling items to NPCs adds mesos, trading (tax), buying from NPCs, and various other things decrease mesos.

Since the internet hides sarcasm, is that a serious suggestion, or saying there's no hope in applying text book econ to Maple?

Well, a book is long, hard, complicated, and wordy. Spice and Wolf has this:

 Spoiler

I'm not saying there's no hope in applying textbook economics to MapleStory. You could if you did it properly. But is it worth your time and effort to learn and apply such methods?

To apply real-world economics to MapleStory, you should understand that the constraints on the system are not the same. Supply and demand is a very broad and general concept. In real life, the application of this concept involves calculations that determine the supply and the demand, considering the resources, the current economic status, and actual success of businesses.

For example, you can say the concept of Supply and Demand applies towards Gasoline; Supply is constantly diminishing in the world. It's a fossil fuel, and cannot be so quickly replenished at the rate we use it; however, how is it that the prices can fluctuate so much, and even go down? In Hurricane season, as another example (not necessarily true, I just remember this from somewhere), gas prices in the United States should increase due to the Hurricanes disrupting the process of off-shore oil rigs.


How this applies to MapleStory is simple. There is such a thing as supply and demand; however, in recent cases such as that of Diamonds, everyone believed that there was going to be a demand so explosively large, that no supply could ever meet it. Thus, everyone decided to horde Diamonds, but not sell. As a supply of an item increases, its price will eventually go down. Likewise, as the demand increases the price will go up. But what happens when only one changes? You can have a dramatic change in the prices. Diamonds are the pyrite (if you've been watching S&W II). No one wants them now because there's such a huge supply but low demand; they are not as seemingly useful as everyone had hoped they would be, nor are they as expensive. The market so called crashed. When some large supply begins selling the Diamonds for a low price, everyone else will follow suit because its price has effectively lowered, and they will fear that they will begin to lose even more money if they haven't already.



As Herbert said, there is no real regulation of prices in MapleStory. New things are constantly coming into the market at any given time, unlike in real-life. If some new-fangled invention that was omgwtpbbq awesome appeared, you could be sure that whoever had it and was selling it would make a lot of money. Of course, what would happen is that they're the only ones who have it, they would make a contract with some business conglomerate to sell it for them, and so-on, regulating the price from one monopolised source. In MapleStory, anyone and their mothers can get their hands on something like a Miwok Artifact. They can then price it for whatever they feel like and when someone purchases it that's the price they go for, unlike in real life where there is a much stricter range for values. That's not to say that there are no regulations on prices.

What happens now is that the market has prices set for it by the demand of the players; money speaks. If someone wants an item and they have the money, they'll try to buy it. For example, Glove ATT 60% is 10m. Some shop decides to set it at 12m. Someone decides to buy some at 12m. Now, depending on how many were bought, where this shop was, who bought it, etc. the market's actual price can change; if the person bought a lot, the Shop Keeper can start to believe more people are willing to buy for said price, and price them higher. If the shop was at a more prominent position, like FM7, where lots of people pass through, they will get the idea of pricing at such a range; however, people can also set competitive prices to sell more quickly, or to sell more than others, which will also affect market prices.

tl;dr
Horo is my waifu. To have successful business, you need a harvest goddess following you.

I think it's pretty similar in a few ways. For one, it's all about Supply and Demand which is the most basic of economics. If everyone wants Glove Att 60% scrolls, and supply is low, then prices will be high. If no one wants the +2 stat rings, then prices drop. But there's greedy people in MapleStory which makes price gouging an everyday thing. The other was is when something new comes out. When the iPhone came out, everyone wanted one. They were sold out, and whoever sold them (eBay), they sold for a high price. Same applies to Maple, everyone wanted Spectrum goggles when the came out, so the price was high.

Aside from that, I do not like Maple Story's economy one bit. I try to avoid buying certain items, for fear that I'll get fucked over for it. I do on the other hand buy underpriced things then sell them for the normal price. Also, getting rare items like iTCG are always nice to have.

It's absurd to say that supply and demand do not exist in Maplestory. S&D easily applies to any capitalistic society, and Maplestory is highly capitalistic (but not purely so).

Sure, there might be an infinite number of items that can be gained from the wild, but there is always a limited amount of manpower (people to get those items). It's this limitation that affects supply. Also, not everyone and their mother can get every item in the game. Try to tell a 5x dexless sin that he can get a ZHelm without any outside help. The services provided to get other players a ZHelm is (or rather, was) a lucrative market. At the beginning when Khaini first came out, the high level guild charged 250m. Why? Because no one else was offering it. It was only when the supply increased (another guild competed) that the price dropped drastically.

I'm going to apply S&D to one other thing, diamonds:

There was a massive supply before the Maker patch. Everyone still wanted to hoarde up on diamonds because they believed it would sell huge after the patch. Since I knew the S&D of the item, I knew that the only demand came from such people. Therefore, it was better to sell early, bottom out the market, and get all the immediate profit I could. Now that the supply is rather extreme (and not many are buying), it's better to hold the diamonds while the supply decreases. I'm hoping that some day Nexon Korea will create level 130 weapons. That is when I'll make my meso.

How does the population size affect it? Millions in America... how many thousand in Maple?

The population size does have a large impact on the market. Try looking at someone from Demethos and expect them to have fair prices without much of a market. Maplestory needs a large market in order for the game to run properly and for each and every player to get the power they desire. Trade is always good for Maplers.

One thing that makes Maplestory different...

There are thousands upon thousands of people selling the same product. When you go shopping for an item, do you care that the item was sold by character X of Khaini or charactery Y from Scania? Not really. Each and every 60% Glove ATK scroll has the same success rates and outcomes as any other 60% Glove ATK scroll. This is somewhat like perfect competition:

Many buyers/sellers - Check
Low Entry/Exit - Check
Perfect Information (price is known to all sellers and buyers) - False (Forex is closer)
Transactions are costless - False (taxes, Forex is closer to perfect competition here)
Firms aim for maximum profit - False, some firms undersell for a fast sale
Homogeneous products - Check

People think an item is going to be expensive for one reason or another, therefore, it is; or perhaps they hoard an item because they think it'll have more value in the future and in actuality the reason the item becomes more expensive is due to their hoarding in the first place.

Remember the Cabbage Patch craze of the 80's? Or how about Tickle Me Elmos? Same principle applies from Maplestory to the real world.

So principles of economics can apply to Maplestory.

One thing that we do see in Maple Story is alot of Oligopolies.
Which is similar to a monopoly, but instead is a select group.
You see it for Merchanting guilds HT runners and Zak Runners.
Other groups can exist but rarely are trusted as well or advertised as well since most things are word of mouth in MS.

Awkward-nomics.

Remember the Cabbage Patch craze of the 80's? Or how about Tickle Me Elmos? Same principle applies from Maplestory to the real world.

[COLOR="Red"]This helps explain why things like Newspaper Hats are 10mil or something like that for a level 0 hat that does nothing at all.

You could apply things like inflation, or rising and lowering of prices due to competition to Maple, and you could study them as well. But, stupid things like Nexon's golden box event rarely happen irl.

Edit: Fags who buy all of one item in FM then inflate the price are people manipulating S&D.[/COLOR]

Edit: papayas who buy all of one item in FM then inflate the price are people manipulating S&D.[/I][/B]

OPEC. There will always be real world examples.

OPEC. There will always be real world examples.

Right those examples are the Oligarchies I was referring too.
and the fact that there are ALOT is what is unusual about MS

Not necessarily.

In normal life, there are a select few locations where commodities can be mass produced. Such as oil, coal, etc. Thus giving the powers that control them the ability to change supply and fluctuate prices. Inside of Maplestory, no one rightfully owns any of the Gachapons. So people are free to buy and sell as they wish. Thus setting up multiple monopolies on people that want to waste money on tickets.

Not necessarily.

In normal life, there are a select few locations where commodities can be mass produced. Such as oil, coal, etc. Thus giving the powers that control them the ability to change supply and fluctuate prices. Inside of Maplestory, no one rightfully owns any of the Gachapons. So people are free to buy and sell as they wish. Thus setting up multiple monopolies on people that want to waste money on tickets.

That is not a monopoly.
The only ACTUAL monopoly situation that COULD be maintained would be altar holding.
That is it.
If you have the ONLY pair of goggles or only purple surfboard etc.. that is not actually a monopoly.