Developing a game economy is a complex matter, with a multitude of considerations. Where do we start? How much do we price our items? How can we balance the game? How can we make it enjoyable and fair for all our users?
One of the most crucial concepts to understand and one of the best tools to use is a global System Value, hooked on a logical Perceived Value. Being owners of their product, game developers can put any desired value on any in-game item. But what should be that price? How can we make sure it seems fair for users and make it appealing for them. For that, we need to understand what influences our perception of value.
On the perception of value
Value is a subjective concept, built on a number of criterias.
- How rare it is?
- How scarce/exclusive is it?
- How much effort do I need to earn it?
- How useful the element is in its context and compared to other relevant elements?
- How does that element’s power/versatility compare to others?
- How often can that element be used?
- How good is that element in the current meta?
- How much exposition do I get with it (vanity potential)?
How does that translate in a game environment?
While it is possible to play on these different factors independently to affect the perceived value of elements (for example, selling an item at an outrageously exaggerated standard price, just to cut its price by 80% on sales), it is important to understand that in the end, every factor is combined to create our own perception of value. A very hard-to-get element might seem at first glance valuable, but if its utility or vanity potential is low, only the most avid collectors will try to earn it. On the flipside, a very powerful item that is easy to get will reduce the perceived value of every other comparable item in the game. Imbalance between systems can make or break economies, making core loops irrelevant and monetization unappealing. This is where having a globalized System Value becomes useful.
What is System Value and how can it be used?
A global System Value is a unit in $ (real money value) or Game Play Time that serves to standardize the value of each in-game collectible, resource, and goal. It is a reflection of the 2 principal pillars of perceived value, Scarcity and Utility.
- It uniformizes how much effort (or money spent) needs to be invested to acquire different elements or reach different goals.
- It allows, with the previous point, to translate time/$ spent into utility with a specific ratio.
- For example, how much stats/combat power you can earn on a character with 50$ spent or 45 minutes of play.
- Rating the utility (through appeal or desirability) of aesthetic items is slightly more complicated. While the individual’s skin or vanity item appeal can be affected by a lot of criterias like cultural impact/collaborations, personal tastes, “badass/sexiness” and overall fit in the game, it is still possible to extract a few rules to guide the base expected appeal. How big is its impact on the character? How noticeable is it? How detailed is the resulting model?
Note that this standardization do not need to be linear – a player might get more combat power per time or money spent later in the game for example, or might get more levels up by money spent earlier. Neither does this mean that every system needs to be perfectly balanced (and risks become very predictable, which can be boring). On the contrary, offering more value for effort in one, or adding some planned imbalance can be good for a competitive metagame, as explained HERE) are perfectly good strategies. The System Value serves to create the overall guideline that drives the rest – while keeping some flexibility.
What are the advantages of using System Value as a balancing tool?
- It creates a safe, “comforting” economy for players to learn. Items prices do not seem random, and every progression element offers (relatively) the same impact for the same amount of effort. Savvy players can extrapolate the formula on how items are priced, and how long they need to grind to earn different collectibles. The rules are clear and not easily broken, creating confidence.
- It creates the guidelines for pricing and balancing of existing and new in-game assets. How much effort is required to earn it should always be related to its impact, and to its sale value. There is a definitive answer, that comes from all the other comparing games that leave away the guesswork.
- It simplifies building and pricing bundles and offers. Each resource is evaluated on the same $ currency value, simplifying calculations.
- It facilitates projection of a player’s progression through time. Knowing how much value we expect to give per user per day, and how progression milestones are in the game, we can extrapolate the progression of users through time, for free players and for different spending patterns on a high-level, even if the economy details/number of resources, sinks, and modes are still not completely determined.
- Through the previous point, it facilitates the inclusion of new events, sources and sinks within the economy by easily simulating its impact at a high-level, more abstract point of view.
- It also helps calculate a more precise “functional” depth of spent early on. As each in-game resource and assets are calculated with the same “currency” value, and each in-game goal is a combination of multiple smaller goals, we can come with a more realistic value for them, up until the completion or top-level competition levels. For example, if a capped character is worth 500$ in value, part of that coming from experience points, part on gacha drops and another part on gear, and you are expected to need 8 of these to beat the final challenge, it is easily to calculate the value that is “needed” to complete the game, and we can extrapolate the value of each smaller milestones in the meantime.
Overall, there are a lot of advantages of using System Value as a tool to balance your game economy. The level of understanding (both for you and your players) and control over the progression and economy in the game is critical to maintain a liveops product. Furthermore, it helps dramatically to create a good first draft balancing of the game, as it creates targets for each resources sinks and faucets at any given time in the player’s experience.
For more information on this topic, refer to this post about the Top-Down/Bottoms-Up modeling strategy HERE.
