Great article, thanks!
Unless I missed something, I want to quibble with:
"A by-product of the C.R.E.D.D. system is, of course, that it is a superb money sink to temper rapid inflation in the in-game market."
As someone who does considerable crafting/economy in MMOs, this is a somewhat common issue on forum comments. Things like CREDD that don't affect currency don't affect or effect inflation. If you get 1000 credits for doing a quest, that increases the money supply. If you spend 100 credits to repair gear, that decreases the money supply.
If I go buy a thousand CREDD, and sell one to you, that does not change the money supply. If I sell you a CREDD for a million credits, it does not change the amount of credits in the game. it just transfers them from you to me (tbh where they belong.)
WildStar: Business Model Revealed
ZAM talks with Jeremy Gaffney on the payment options for WildStar
I asked Gaffney why C.R.E.D.D., when it represents 30 days of game time when used in-game, actually costs more than a month’s subscription when bought in RMT. Gaffney explained that the team does not expect people to buy C.R.E.D.D for the purpose of paying for monthly play time.
“The whole point of the C.R.E.D.D. is to trade it back and forth between players. If you want to pay for a month straight up, the simpler way to do it is through a subscription. And we tier the subscription; if you want to go for a month it’s one price, if you go for six months it’s another price, if you go for 12 months, it’s really cheap, because we’re incentivizing people to commit for a long time.
I think C.R.E.D.D.s fit into that system fairly naturally as you want a little bit of overhead on it, you don’t want it to be egregious, but you want it to be one tier up.”
So why go with C.R.E.D.D. instead of other options, such as a cash shop or other method? Gaffney envisions players purchasing the game and then playing enough to actually pay for their subscription each month with in-game gold. This creates a two-stream option for playing the game long term: pay cash for a subscription, or play-to-pay.
In my eyes it’s also another level of incentive to be engaged with the game regularly. If you are the kind of player who likes to play solo, you have, hopefully, the game’s systems to draw you in as well as the opportunity to get the game for free due to your constant engagement. This will also generate more consistently participating gamers to make Nexus feel more alive.
The C.R.E.D.D. system will also set up massive opportunity cost choices for players; if you want to buy a new bed for your house, how much value do you hold for sleeping in luxury when that gold cost will take away from this month’s C.R.E.D.D. savings?
A by-product of the C.R.E.D.D. system is, of course, that it is a superb money sink to temper rapid inflation in the in-game market. However, unlike EVE Online, WildStar doesn’t feature the same sandbox, player driven economy and so the dev team will undoubtedly be working hard to make a huge array of items that are desirable enough so players will consider purchasing C.R.E.D.D as a means of making piles of quick gold to spend themselves.
C.R.E.D.D. hoarders, on the other hand, will be able to function as one would expect: players can stockpile the currency to use or sell at a later time—i.e. when the current value on the CX makes it irresistible.
Maintaining that cyclical economic relationship between buyers and sellers of C.R.E.D.D. will take a lot of work—the dev team does include an economics major—and it will be fascinating to see how the market breathes when the game is live.
Gaffney spoke of the “faucets and sinks” that will balance the flow of gold and cited the upkeep of Warplots and personal Housing as two of the game elements that will help generate the desire to buy C.R.E.D.D. and create avenues through which the acquired gold will exit the economy.
“It’s not quite as simple as many games where it’s buy a mount and then what else is there to spend gold on? Or buy loot for power, which gets really creepy, really fast from a feel of the game standpoint. Because of that we’re pretty comfortable with the faucets and sinks we have going in. We think that means that gold is pretty valuable and if gold is valuable that means there are lots of reasons why people might buy themselves C.R.E.D.D.s.”
I put it to Jeremy that the system is attempting to assert equity between real world money and time, often the deciding factor to determine the fairness of such RMT systems in MMOs. Gaffney said that it was a good way to look at the system and that its main boons are it provides power and flexibility to players—and it also really pisses off gold farmers.
It’s true that games like Guild Wars 2 and EVE Online do have a noticeably smaller problem with external gold sellers in comparison to other MMOs. Hopefully WildStar’s C.R.E.D.D. will ensure that gold spam is not a huge problem for inhabitants of Nexus’ general chat.