Why the economy doesn't work - a layman's analysis.

Day 1,914, 02:24 Published in Denmark Denmark by pho3nix
Denmark's - and in fact, the whole world's - economy is broken, through and through. We, as players, could attempt to repair it - however it would only be a matter of time before we'd be back where we started at best, and even worse off than before in the worst case.

For those of us that have been around long enough to remember the Beta-days (quite a while back), we remember quite a different economic module as compared with today. When I started, the dream of one day owning a Q5 company seemed a dream to distant to even attempt. The food market could fluctuate quite highly - and especially when wars came about. Then came Work as Manager, and the economy went ballistic almost overnight. This "upgrade" meant that the players who were already established on the market had an even worse chance to get into it - since your production increased with the amount of companies you owned.

We can divide the economic module into three separate parts: goods market, labor market and capital market. All three are separate but interact with each other.

The goods market, or simply the market, is where goods are sold in exchange for country currency. The prices on the market are, in a perfect economy, supposed to reflect the price of manufacturing the goods. For example, the price of Food raw material in order to create a batch of food is it's production price - that is;

(cost of raw materials + cost of labour) / number of products

Any other cost beyond that, after being taxed, is what the company makes for profit. Historically, manufactured goods have always been the main vein of the economy. In fact, for a long period of time manufactured goods where the only products available on the market at all. It took the developers quite some time to come up with the concept of raw materials, which they made even more complicated by sepparating the making of raw materials into sepparate industries - construction materials for houses, hospitals and defensive structures, oil for moving tickets and foodstuffs for the food industry. Part of this still remains, as the different pictures and descriptions of them when you choose which type of Raw Materials building you are going to choose.

Those pictures are in fact the only difference between them, except the mathematics which run underneath them.

Grain, fruit, fish, beef and venison all make up the "foodpaste" that the different companies operate on. Food Raw Materials (FRM) are the same for any type of company - however by each step of quality you increase your company, you also increase the rate of consumption in terms of FRM. This makes for a very basic economic structure: create enough FRM in order to operate your company, then sell the produce on the market. Here's where the economic module double round-house kicks itself in the face however.

Players with enough gold, even modestly wealthy such as myself, can eaisly create the means to become self-sufficient in any department of my liking. That means that as players increase in wealth, they become more and more unlikely to use the market as a way of aquiring goods - and more likely to in fact flood the market with whatever surplus they're packing. This might sound harmless, but the problem grows exponentially: you have to be a real bad player in order to become poorer. In effect, the market and it's underlying structures are reducing the use of the market by each day. This means prices only go one way: down. On all fronts, in all nations - but even faster as the contries have higher production bonuses.

This effect continues to spread, as player start to behave outside the market: If you yourself can produce more than you use, what's the use of employing people? Sure you produce more, but that becomes an ever growing bad investment: prices are falling. This in turn lowers the wages globally, making those who cannot afford to be self sufficient less able to participate in the game. The game's rigged - and there are few alternatives to it.

What's really needed is a drastic change in production, and that can only come from one place: the creators.

First off; production rates are set WAY too high. This is no news for any seasoned veteran, rather it's been what's been happening the last 3-4 years: ever increasing production rates. Setting the rate at half would in the long term fix the problems. Some players however have amassed such wealth that it would still take years for them to participate in the changes. Also, the ability to "pay-to-win" riggs the problem even further. Personally I can understand the need to pay the bills. The bonuses, and opportunities that come with a purchase are so unbalanced it seems that the money are going straight into the champagne account of the developers. In some cases, players more or less have to pay in order to achieve their goals. The 890 Gold for a Q7 company would take years for an individual player to save up. With a Master Card/Visa it takes 24 hours - at max.

Fragmenteing the economy into either more different kinds of goods (anyone remember happiness?), or making the different Q's run on different kinds of materials - with an increasingly higher cost and lower production rate for the materials that the highest Q-companies run on - would spark competition among the elite of players.

This isn't new however - such changes have been suggested countless time. My own resolution to keep playing is this: it can't get any worse...

...right?