Gold sink
Encyclopedia
Gold sink is an economic process by which a video game's ingame currency ('gold'), or any item that can be valued against it, is removed. Most commonly the genres are role-playing game
or massively multiplayer online game
. The term is comparable to timesink
, but usually used in reference to game design and balance, commonly to reduce inflation
when commodities and wealth are continually fed to players through sources such as quests, looting monsters, or minigames.
. For example, in Ultima Online
, items that were placed on the ground would be gathered by the server
. This form is referred to as decay or garbage collection. Server collection can be a true drain or a partial drain, explained below (see true vs. partial).
Unlike real life, virtual worlds have to be fun. Without easy advancement through the storyline or higher character levels, a video game just wouldn't be appealing. Economies in virtual worlds operate very differently from those in the real world. Passive gold sinks may be in operation at all times to slowly extract value from the game. Players are usually more willing to accept this method of sinking. Passive sinks would be item degradation, consistent taxes, or decay. Active sinks are aggressive actions by the programmers to remove excessive value. These can be changes in the severity of the passive sinks, such as higher taxes or faster decay. But more effectively, an active sink can be the selling of unique items whose intrinsic values are much lower than the selling price sold by NPC
vendors. Zack Booth Simpson cites one example in Ultima Online when the NPC vendors carried blue tinted armor that couldn't be made by players. Blue armor prices could be much higher, but decayed and degraded just like any other piece of armor.
Another improvement to active sinking is to couple it to a feedback control system. Such systems can be designed to maintain a set of prices or asset ratios, and if properly set up can add a great deal of price stability to a virtual economy
; one example of this can be found in the MMO MUD Alter Aeon
. The feedback control system used in Alter Aeon works by tracking the total amount of money in the game in order to dynamically adjust drop rates and shop prices. Players with more than 1 million in currency are taxed for 2% of the money they own over that limit. This keeps the economy permanently stable. The peaks in the total amount of in-game currency do not vary more than 10% in a time period of 2 years.
flow means that the head is connected to the tail. All things have a resource intrinsic value. A deer
may be worth three pieces of meat and two yards of leather. A sword
can be worth three units of iron
. When a resource such as a sword is destroyed through garbage collection, those three units of iron will go back into the mines
of the virtual world for extraction. This is essentially no different from melting the sword down for the raw metal. A few steps of procurement are skipped, but essentially the same.
A strong linked system would have a governing equation for NPC vendors to follow. NPCs would be restricted to craft
with the resources they have in stock. Player character
Jake could sell the town
vendor a sword for 10 gold. If Jake wanted to purchase gauntlets (let us assume gauntlets have a resource value of two units of iron), he could for 12 gold. The town vendor has made a 2 gold and 1 unit of iron profit off the transaction. Should another player character want to purchase something, the new character could only buy items that have a 1 unit of iron resource value or he could sell an item, let us say 1 leather and 1 iron, to now be able to purchase items that have a resource value equal to or less than 2 units of iron and 1 unit of leather.
To be a total linked system, NPCs would be programmed to break even or make small profits. Some virtual worlds may opt to leave NPCs unrestricted as to how much money they give out.
Greater methods of currency spending can be implemented when players accumulate more wealth than intended. One example is Ultima Online
; after the Renaissance expansion, players could earn money without fear of loss, due to the implementation of non-player versus player
areas. As currency entered the economy at a greater pace, new "luxury" items were sold at high prices for the purpose of reducing large sums of money.
In Kingdom of Loathing
, the massive acquisition of "meat" (the currency of the game) through exploitation of bugs led to the implementation of new high priced items that gave no in-game benefits (simply rare collectibles) to the player to eliminate excess currency.
In RuneScape
, the Construction skill can be seen as a gold sink. This skill allows players to spend money on building a house. This way, money is taken out of the game, without players obtaining any tradeable items.
Other forms of gold sinks include:
Role-playing game
A role-playing game is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting, or through a process of structured decision-making or character development...
or massively multiplayer online game
Massively multiplayer online game
A massively multiplayer online game is a multiplayer video game which is capable of supporting hundreds or thousands of players simultaneously. By necessity, they are played on the Internet, and usually feature at least one persistent world. They are, however, not necessarily games played on...
. The term is comparable to timesink
Timesink
A time sink is an activity that consumes significant time. A variant of this term is "time drain." Although it is unknown when the term was coined, it makes an analogy with heat sink....
, but usually used in reference to game design and balance, commonly to reduce inflation
Inflation
In economics, inflation is a rise in the general level of prices of goods and services in an economy over a period of time.When the general price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services. Consequently, inflation also reflects an erosion in the purchasing power of money – a...
when commodities and wealth are continually fed to players through sources such as quests, looting monsters, or minigames.
Overview
Gold sinks are commonly called drains or gold drains. They can also be associated with item drains. The intent of a sink is to remove added value from the overall economyEconomic system
An economic system is the combination of the various agencies, entities that provide the economic structure that defines the social community. These agencies are joined by lines of trade and exchange along which goods, money etc. are continuously flowing. An example of such a system for a closed...
. For example, in Ultima Online
Ultima Online
Ultima Online is a graphical massively multiplayer online role-playing game , released on September 24, 1997, by Origin Systems. It was instrumental to the development of the genre, and is still running today...
, items that were placed on the ground would be gathered by the server
Server (computing)
In the context of client-server architecture, a server is a computer program running to serve the requests of other programs, the "clients". Thus, the "server" performs some computational task on behalf of "clients"...
. This form is referred to as decay or garbage collection. Server collection can be a true drain or a partial drain, explained below (see true vs. partial).
Unlike real life, virtual worlds have to be fun. Without easy advancement through the storyline or higher character levels, a video game just wouldn't be appealing. Economies in virtual worlds operate very differently from those in the real world. Passive gold sinks may be in operation at all times to slowly extract value from the game. Players are usually more willing to accept this method of sinking. Passive sinks would be item degradation, consistent taxes, or decay. Active sinks are aggressive actions by the programmers to remove excessive value. These can be changes in the severity of the passive sinks, such as higher taxes or faster decay. But more effectively, an active sink can be the selling of unique items whose intrinsic values are much lower than the selling price sold by NPC
Non-player character
A non-player character , sometimes known as a non-person character or non-playable character, in a game is any fictional character not controlled by a player. In electronic games, this usually means a character controlled by the computer through artificial intelligence...
vendors. Zack Booth Simpson cites one example in Ultima Online when the NPC vendors carried blue tinted armor that couldn't be made by players. Blue armor prices could be much higher, but decayed and degraded just like any other piece of armor.
Another improvement to active sinking is to couple it to a feedback control system. Such systems can be designed to maintain a set of prices or asset ratios, and if properly set up can add a great deal of price stability to a virtual economy
Virtual economy
A virtual economy is an emergent economy existing in a virtual persistent world, usually exchanging virtual goods in the context of an Internet game...
; one example of this can be found in the MMO MUD Alter Aeon
Alter Aeon
Alter Aeon is a MUD, a text-based online role-playing game, which has been running since 1995. Alter Aeon has support for the blind and visually impaired...
. The feedback control system used in Alter Aeon works by tracking the total amount of money in the game in order to dynamically adjust drop rates and shop prices. Players with more than 1 million in currency are taxed for 2% of the money they own over that limit. This keeps the economy permanently stable. The peaks in the total amount of in-game currency do not vary more than 10% in a time period of 2 years.
Resource flow
Depending on how resources are created and where resources go once destroyed, gold sinks are classified differently. There are two major types of resource management: linked and unlinked. Several aspects can be linked while others can be unlinked.Linked
Linked resourceNatural resource
Natural resources occur naturally within environments that exist relatively undisturbed by mankind, in a natural form. A natural resource is often characterized by amounts of biodiversity and geodiversity existent in various ecosystems....
flow means that the head is connected to the tail. All things have a resource intrinsic value. A deer
Deer
Deer are the ruminant mammals forming the family Cervidae. Species in the Cervidae family include white-tailed deer, elk, moose, red deer, reindeer, fallow deer, roe deer and chital. Male deer of all species and female reindeer grow and shed new antlers each year...
may be worth three pieces of meat and two yards of leather. A sword
Sword
A sword is a bladed weapon used primarily for cutting or thrusting. The precise definition of the term varies with the historical epoch or the geographical region under consideration...
can be worth three units of iron
Iron
Iron is a chemical element with the symbol Fe and atomic number 26. It is a metal in the first transition series. It is the most common element forming the planet Earth as a whole, forming much of Earth's outer and inner core. It is the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust...
. When a resource such as a sword is destroyed through garbage collection, those three units of iron will go back into the mines
Mining
Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, from an ore body, vein or seam. The term also includes the removal of soil. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock...
of the virtual world for extraction. This is essentially no different from melting the sword down for the raw metal. A few steps of procurement are skipped, but essentially the same.
A strong linked system would have a governing equation for NPC vendors to follow. NPCs would be restricted to craft
Craft
A craft is a branch of a profession that requires some particular kind of skilled work. In historical sense, particularly as pertinent to the Medieval history and earlier, the term is usually applied towards people occupied in small-scale production of goods.-Development from the past until...
with the resources they have in stock. Player character
Player character
A player character or playable character is a character in a video game or role playing game who is controlled or controllable by a player, and is typically a protagonist of the story told in the course of the game. A player character is a persona of the player who controls it. Player characters...
Jake could sell the town
Town
A town is a human settlement larger than a village but smaller than a city. The size a settlement must be in order to be called a "town" varies considerably in different parts of the world, so that, for example, many American "small towns" seem to British people to be no more than villages, while...
vendor a sword for 10 gold. If Jake wanted to purchase gauntlets (let us assume gauntlets have a resource value of two units of iron), he could for 12 gold. The town vendor has made a 2 gold and 1 unit of iron profit off the transaction. Should another player character want to purchase something, the new character could only buy items that have a 1 unit of iron resource value or he could sell an item, let us say 1 leather and 1 iron, to now be able to purchase items that have a resource value equal to or less than 2 units of iron and 1 unit of leather.
To be a total linked system, NPCs would be programmed to break even or make small profits. Some virtual worlds may opt to leave NPCs unrestricted as to how much money they give out.
Examples
The intended purpose of gold sinks is to remove currency from the game, as excess currency leads to inflation of player driven prices. Game designers must balance between scarcity of currency and ease of acquiring currency.Greater methods of currency spending can be implemented when players accumulate more wealth than intended. One example is Ultima Online
Ultima Online
Ultima Online is a graphical massively multiplayer online role-playing game , released on September 24, 1997, by Origin Systems. It was instrumental to the development of the genre, and is still running today...
; after the Renaissance expansion, players could earn money without fear of loss, due to the implementation of non-player versus player
Player versus player
Player versus player, or PvP, is a type of multiplayer interactive conflict within a game between two or more live participants. This is in contrast to games where players compete against computer controlled opponents, which is correspondingly referred to as player versus environment...
areas. As currency entered the economy at a greater pace, new "luxury" items were sold at high prices for the purpose of reducing large sums of money.
In Kingdom of Loathing
Kingdom of Loathing
Kingdom of Loathing is a browser-based, multiplayer role-playing game designed and operated by Asymmetric Publications, including creator Zack "Jick" Johnson and writer Josh "Mr. Skullhead" Nite. The game was released in 2003...
, the massive acquisition of "meat" (the currency of the game) through exploitation of bugs led to the implementation of new high priced items that gave no in-game benefits (simply rare collectibles) to the player to eliminate excess currency.
In RuneScape
RuneScape
RuneScape is a fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game released in January 2001 by Andrew and Paul Gower, and developed and published by Jagex Games Studio. It is a graphical browser game implemented on the client-side in Java, and incorporates 3D rendering...
, the Construction skill can be seen as a gold sink. This skill allows players to spend money on building a house. This way, money is taken out of the game, without players obtaining any tradeable items.
Other forms of gold sinks include:
- Quests requiring a certain amount to continue with the task at hand. This is offset by quest rewards and items that may be resold.
- Fees associated with NPCNon-player characterA non-player character , sometimes known as a non-person character or non-playable character, in a game is any fictional character not controlled by a player. In electronic games, this usually means a character controlled by the computer through artificial intelligence...
services and tasks. - Fees associated with travel and convenience.
- Crafting, often requiring an initial investment and a continued chance of failure. Items may be crafted at a loss to increase crafting skill.
- Auction House Taxes