Economic Indicators

[the_blob23]

Hello, everyone. After reading the recent (and excellent) article in the Tip.it Times about the total amount of gold in RuneScape, I have become more interested in the economy of the game. For one of my projects at university, I have to analyze a 'fake' economy and measure its performance over time. I immediately thought of RuneScape when this project was assigned.

 

 

 

I was wondering if any undergrad or grad students in economics (or even knowledgeable high school students) would be willing to collaborate with me and start up a comprehensive quarterly survey of the RuneScape economy. This would be a massive undertaking, but it would be well worth it in the end. All findings could be published here on the Tip.it forums.

 

 

 

What I would like to do is make periodic evaluations of overall value and key indicators. I would like to try and measure:

 

 

 

Inflation (CPI and PPI)

 

GDP (current and forecast)

 

GDP per capita

 

Money supply

 

Commodity value

 

Income inequality

 

 

 

If anyone would like to help out, that would be great. Maybe Jagex could help us out by providing some of the data? Even if we have no information, we could find it by putting some of the best minds here at Tip.it on the problem.

 

 

 

I'm sorry for the long post, but hopefully there will be a few souls that might want to help.

[bestsob]

*flies over head* wha?

[Verie__Bad]

if u werent english i would have liked to help

[Tenbinza]

I'll help! We can be some of the few RS scientists XD

 

 

 

MSN me or RSPM me:

 

[email protected]

 

mayonaka_cc

[AznElliot518]

Id love to help but I have little to offer. The only thing I can do it turn nothing into something.

[coolx4guy]

*flies over head* wha?

what he said,although i do understand economics i just have never taken a class on it.

[Duke_Freedom]

After reading the recent (and excellent) article in the Tip.it Times about the total amount of gold in RuneScape

 

 

 

I wouldn't call the article recent considering I wrote it on the 15th of september 2005 :P - someone just bumped it recently again, since the total amount of gp ingame is now a hot issue with the introduction of the huge money draining skill construction. Thanks for the compliment though. :)

 

 

 

If you are really serious about your project then I'll be interested to see and interpret the data you get from the surveys you are planning to do.

[Bubsa]

Just what kind of university do you go to? :?

[the_blob23]

The project has to do with a basic conceptual course I'm taking on game theory. I'm not very mathematical, so a lot of the stuff is over my head. We have to analyze decision-making (eg, Prisoner's Dilemma) and other aspects of multiple-player games. By analyzing a 'fake' economy like the one in RS, I'm actually doing a little more work than is required.

 

 

 

Or I may simply be crazy :lol:

[Exarctus]

ill be willing to help, currently studying business studies/economics for A level and i believe i will be of some value :). Secondly i have a detailed knowledge on a few statistical methods that carry a heavy weighting and value to interpretation of corelation/association and difference between two data sets which i believe may be of use :). (mann whitney -U- / Spearmens rank correlation coefficient)

 

 

 

 

 

[email protected]

 

 

 

Do you plan to record every single life cycle of each item or generalise on grouping of items (eg rare inflation or material depreciation)...personally i dont see/think the data as being fully representable as a trend if you decide to analyse trends in groups of items. Meaning that this is going to be [cabbage]loads of work :P

[Adam007]

Pm Duke himself - he loves talking about it (obviously, he wrote the article you read). I'm sure he'd be up for helping you with it.

[Eyrelex]

I may not be the most knowledgeable person when it comes to economics, but I don't see how it could be possible to measure things like GDP, inflation, consumer price index, etc... I'm sure you already know this, but GDP is the market value of all final goods and services produced within a country, or in this case, within the game in a given period of time, I really don't see how it would be possible to measure this considering there really is no practical way of quantifying everything created by players, generated in stores, etc. GDP per capita would require figuring out at least a ballpark estimate of the population of runescape, which in itself would be a huge task on its own, but when you consider ppl that start multiple accounts and ppl that get banned/quit/hacked/etc. it would become nearly impossible. CPI would require a "typical basket of goods and/or services" bought by typical players, which i dont think even exists. Money supply would also be very difficult to measure since with the introduction of construction im sure a large amount of money is being drained out every day with not nearly enough being generated to balance this. And I dont even see how it makes sense to measure commodity value since, unless i was taught the wrong definition, is the value of the land. And of course theres gonna be a huge income inequality since theres tonnes of "newbs" coming into the game every day and when you compare them to the top players of course theres gonna be a huge gap. And of course inflation would require knowledge of GDP or CPI, which as i already stated doesnt seem possible to even get a reasonable estimate.

 

 

 

I don't wanna seem like a doubter, or anything cause this sounds pretty interesting if you could pull it off, but it seems to me at least, not very thought out when you consider the variables involved. I'm just going off my current knowledge of economics, so maybe theres some stuff that you know that I don't, but anyways, I would be very interested to see how this turns out so be sure to post your findings, hopefully you can prove me wrong.

[bookrhino]

Well, I've never taken a class on economics, but I just spent the last half an hour researching some of the details of the terms you had in your first post. Considering the fact that real-life economics and RS economics are so different will make many of these impossible.

 

 

 

Just out of curiosity, what is the huge difference between commodity value and CPI? To me, they sound like the same thing, at least when it comes to Runescape.

 

 

 

Anyways, you could probably do:

 

CPI

 

PPI

 

Money Inequity (Maybe, but I'd think it would require a poll)

 

 

 

I would probably just analyze CPI and PPI, seperating it for each skill. The tip.it market forums would be great for this. Good luck!

 

 

 

EDIT: Of course, you won't be doing CPI or PPI exactly, but Runescape's version of it.

 

 

 

For example, analyze iron, coal, runite, steel plates, iron knives, rune items, barrows items, dragon items, essence (noting before and after update), nature runes, air runes, law runes, seeds, herbs, pots (specifically magic, super restore, range, and prayer pots), abbysal whip, lobbies (raw and cooked), sharks, and other items.

 

 

 

Make sure to keep updates in mind, though.

[the_blob23]

The biggest problem with CPI is not that you have to track thousands of items and their changes in price, but rather that you have to set a base year. For RuneScape a base year where the CPI equals 100 for items will be difficult to establish, especially since some updates changed the economy of the game significantly.

 

 

 

GDP may well be out of reach for mere mortals, unless Jagex themselves can provide some statistical information.

 

 

 

Income inequality will probably have to be analyzed by level/experience groupings, because comparing Lvl. 110s with new players just isn't accurate.

 

 

 

As others have said, this may turn out to be impossible, but if we try and fail, at least we've learned some things.

 

 

 

Would anyone be willing to be the leader of this project? Duke, perhaps? I can start gathering data and working out some basic strategies on how exactly this project could work, and then maybe those of us who are in could set up someplace to meet and collaborate.

[agamemnus]

All you can do is a limited poll, 'cause most Runescapers wouldn't be able to give you even the simplest data, like their weekly income... 'cause it changes depending on time spent and many other variables. A poll is what I did for my paper more than a year ago.

 

 

 

>Inflation (CPI and PPI)

 

 

 

*Can't measure CPI without a basket of essential/average goods.

 

*Can't measure average price because no auction/"goods" market exists.

 

*PPI is also very hard to measure because you would need to determine the best method to produce the basket (assuming you had it) and set a production price on it, in terms of time.

 

 

 

>GDP (current and forecast), GDP per capita

 

 

 

* Don't know how many peeps to count, or whether to count doubles etc. Can't figure out total production..

 

 

 

* Money supply

 

 

 

Again you can't figure this out, and also definition of money supply varies on how the "money" is used... there is no interest "bank" in Runescape, except phats....

 

 

 

* Commodity value

 

 

 

Again ....

 

 

 

* Income inequality

 

 

 

Omfg.

 

 

 

>Maybe Jagex could help us out by providing some of the data?

 

 

 

I give it as much chance as a snowball's chance in hell...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What you could consider is focusing on a limited part of the economy and/or describe the economy in terms of how it works and the relevant units of measure... units more relevant than in the "real products and services economy"... For instance, you could describe how peoples' RS wages come about: skill lvl, craftiness, and trading say runecrafting products for mining products.

[Duke_Freedom]

CPI

 

 

 

Question is how useful this indicator really is. Do rares go in the consumer price index? (I know they wouldn't in real life, but rares play a big role in RuneScape's economy - not putting them in the overall cpi will not reflect the cpi very well imo though).

 

 

 

It is easier, better doable and, I think, more useful to keep partial price index about the several markets in the game (materials, pseudo-rares and rares) and determine the general inflation / deflation rates of those markets.

 

 

 

Nevertheless, as you already said, updates have huge influence in the economy, as the recently introduced construction clearly shows. That does 'ruin' the data and makes it quite hard to interpret the data.

 

 

 

GDP

 

 

 

GDP and GDP per capita are extremely hard to determine if people don't know how long they have played for. Since Jagex doesn't give out playing times anymore, this sounds quite impossible.

 

 

 

Money supply

 

 

 

Basically I wrote about that already.

 

 

 

Income inequality

 

 

 

Possible to do, but requires a large survey to be reliable.

 

 

 

Would anyone be willing to be the leader of this project? Duke, perhaps? I can start gathering data and working out some basic strategies on how exactly this project could work, and then maybe those of us who are in could set up someplace to meet and collaborate.

 

 

 

I'll be willing to help interpret the data, check the reasonability of the data and create useful survey-questions if needed, but I don't got the time to run the surveys themself.

 

 

 

Keep in mind you'll have to keep a lot of surveys for it to give even slightly reliable information (1000+ people). Also keep in mind that only doing such surveys on forums gives less reliable data (as people who visit forums are generally higher leveled, richer, playing longer, etc), but is a lot of easier to do (which is why you'll probably still prefer to do it that way).

 

 

 

Anyway, you may be interested in taking a peak in this article written by Edward Castronova, who basically analysed GDP in the game Everquest 4.5 years ago already.

[bflitny1]

Umm...you all seem to know more than me

 

free bump as I want to see this when it's done, definately going to be extremely hard and yes, I think you are overworking yourself. But I'm not complaining.

 

Keep going :arrow:

[Marco]

I'll try and help although I'm only at AS Level Business Studies, got an A* at GCSE if that's worth anything anymore.. Just need a few things explained to me like these abbreviations here.. :?

 

Was thinking of doing something like this this morning before my Business Stuides exam, you know that small period of Enlightenment you get just before an exam you haven't revised for and at that point where you're waiting for some Divine Intervention to happen.. Just a little moment of clarity =p

[el_richy]

Wow dude I have read some political economics books and marx stuff, but what you are triying to achieve is really something; Ỉ̫m like 17 years old and honestly I have never taken an economics class, I even had to look up the initials of the concepts you what to obtain, but i would really like to help out with data recolpilation.

 

 

 

Regarding some troubles mentioned on this thread I would suggest d following:

 

 

 

GDP

 

 

 

Make a survey or a poll to a really significant part of runescapẻ̫s population (10,000 + say somthing) about the time they play on an average week and the amout of money they spend in traning skills and the income they get from this training and other stuff

 

 

 

GDP per capita.

 

 

 

Cold be solve only by asking jagex how many accounts there are in runescape and how many accs get banned during a period of time (luck with this), and also running some polls about how many ppl quit/get hack/etc. their accs and using this info as a mortality rate (really dont know if this matters when they do it on a real, say US scale but just an idea)

 

 

 

CPI

 

 

 

would be solved by setting a tipical basket of goods, such as high demand ores (irons an coals basically), armors (rune and maybe cheap p2p better than rune armors), fishes (lobbies, swordies and sharks basically) etc. etc.

 

 

 

Money supply

 

 

 

Well, no ideas for solving this lol.

 

 

 

Comodity value.

 

 

 

Well, I also dont have ideas for this since the recent PoH̫̉s are all set on the same places (the portals around RS) and the price is totally set by NPC̫̉s and doesn̫̉t change with time.

 

 

 

income inequality

 

 

 

Sure theres gonna be a huge gap betwen noobs and 80+ lvls pros but as they are causing troubles in this matter, I would suggest to eliminate part of this minoritary population (mmmm maybe they are not that few ppl) by considering only ppl above a minimun SKILL TOTAL of say 60, and below a maximun Skill total of say 1700.

 

 

 

Then again these are just suggestions of a mexican dude at 01:32 am (local time) who thinks he knows a lot of economic stuff, but maybe you could get an idea from the mess above this.

 

 

 

Anyway if you keep on this proyect I would like to help collecting data and stuff, and please if you can achive and interpret results from this, please let me know, it sounds really interesting.

 

 

 

cya!!