EVE Online is a space-based persistent world that was released in 2003, and since then has continued to be updated.  While I played, there were on average 25,000 other players online.  In the game, the player takes the form of a pilot/astronaut that is always in their space ship.  In a map that spans more than 500 million square kilometers, players are free to do as they want.  A few of the careers to which the game introduces players are industry (mining and building ships/parts), trade (profiting off buying and selling), and combat (attacking other players to seize their items).  The game is incredibly expansive and complicated, and even after playing about 10 hours, I have barely scratched the surface of the possibilities of EVE Online.  As I played, I relied on trial and error, outside guides, and other players to navigate the challenges facing a new player.

 

At first glance, EVE Online feels like a multiplayer game that is not actually multiplayer.  Even though the player does see nearby ships, and has access to the local chat, the vastness of space can be overwhelming.  The player is but a speck of the cosmic landscape, separated by others by many kilometers at least.

(My view at the beginning of the game.  Truly puts you in perspective and shows the scope of the game immediately)

 

As I began the game, I felt alone in space, and even when people were around me, there was not any interaction.  But as I played and learned more, the main site of player interaction became obvious: the economy.  In the economy, hundreds of players interact every hour.  Every player in the game relies on in-game currency, ISK, as capital (for example, to have a proper ship), and every career leads to the generation of currency for the player.  This made me wonder: how exactly do prices fit into the player experience of EVE Online, since the player relies on currency (and therefore prices) in any aim of EVE Online.  I shaped this question into a more functional research question: How do prices in EVE Online function, and how do players affect them?  Prices for raw materials, items, ships, and even customizations (like skins) are constantly fluctuating, and I want to know what role players take in guiding the EVE Online economy.

 

There were three major mechanisms I found that affected EVE’s economy.  The first is the most basic: the complete control of the economy by EVE players.  I began understanding the virtual market in EVE more than halfway into my playtime.  The tutorial, which only covers basic mechanics of the game, took up the first 3 hours, followed by 3 hours of the exploration career path, followed by 4-5 hours of the industry career path; I was only introduced to the market in the industry career path.  In the virtual market, I found any item, ship, cosmetic, etc. that I could possibly want.  And there is no AI that prices goods or places goods on the market: all buying and selling that occurs in the game is between players.  When I wanted to sell some ore I mined, I simply put my ore up for sale with a certain price per unit.  On the other hand, when I wanted to buy a good, I simply bought from one of the posted amounts on the market; I could have also placed a “buy order” for a certain amount of a good at a certain price, which a seller can then fulfill and directly sell to me.  But the game does indirectly regulate prices: by showing players the average price of goods in their region.  By showing players the average price of goods, the game is able to indirectly reduce scams, since players can see how a price compares to the average price of a good.  Looking at the market, I saw that some players had priced goods 100% higher than the average price, while mostly were within 10% of the average price.

(Another player’s ship, bottom center, peacefully mining next to me.  Although they are more advanced than me, we are both mining the same materials)

(The market in-game.  Visible are the buy orders and sell orders, each with their asking price and the amount requested)

 

I found that another important mechanism affects prices in EVE: the existence of regional markets.  When a player goes on the market, they can only see buyers and sellers that have posted in their region of space.  This is important, because items have different rarities throughout different regions of EVE.  But during the industry career path, I was confused how to find certain ores; when I searched the areas around my starting region, I could not find many types of asteroids that the mission asked of me.  I searched on the EVE wiki and found that there are four different starter regions that each have different ores based on the safety levels of different zones.  This means that certain ores are more dangerous to find in different regions, therefore increasing their price.

(From the out-of-game wiki “EVE University”, I found that different ores are present based on region and danger (security level))

(Another example of the scope of the game.  The vast distances present between systems makes it difficult to find the best price for a good)

 

I traveled to a dangerous area to mine the expensive ores of the region; another, more advanced player came and peacefully mined the ores next to me.  Just a bit later, in a different and more dangerous zone, another player came and destroyed my ship in just an instant, leaving it wrecked and respawning me at my home base.  When I returned to my ship wreck, only the valuable ores for the region were gone, while the less expensive ores and ship equipment were left behind.  It seems that combat can be profit-driven, trading risk for quick rewards.  Through trade, some people even profit from these regional differences.  One person I talked to had about 1 billion ISK, but had 6 billion ISK worth of trade assets (materials, cosmetics, ships) that they buy at cheap prices across the map and then bring to the main trade hub, Jita, to sell at higher prices.

(The trader’s message to me.  They were very kind to me: they gave me enough ISK to double my balance (5 million), and answered all of my questions.  In another message, they said that they mostly made money from trading and from combat; they had destroyed 2000 other players’ ships in the 10 years they have been playing)

 

A final mechanism is important to prices in EVE: player politics and conflicts.  As I learned, high-level gameplay in EVE mostly revolves around combat and power.  Therefore, changes in combat will drastically affect the prices of goods.  This mechanism is the most complicated, since the conflicts and politics of one of the thousands of player-run corporations can potentially affect the price of items for many regions.  These conflicts can be highly profitable for some.  For example, the trader previously mentioned explained to me that because major player-run corporations were at war, the trader was producing more fighter ships because they were in higher demand.  At the time, they had an impressive 70% of their wealth in ships.  All of these mechanisms combine to create a constantly fluctuating player economy, where player actions across the galaxy can affect others.

 

My participant observation was limited by my low-level status and lack of connections, especially my lack of membership in a player-run corporation.  Firstly, because of my low-level status, I was limited in how far I could travel, and it was too dangerous for me to enter “null sec”, where there are absolutely no rules, but where the rarest raw materials are found.  Secondly, my lack of player-run corporation membership limited me from an essential part of the EVE experience.  Player-run corporations coordinate members’ mining, trading, security, and combat.  EVE begins as a mostly single-player game; but corporations are the true players in high-level EVE.  This became more and more apparent to me as I played more: I continued receiving local and private messages advertising corporations.  These messages showed that corporations are focused on cooperating to ensure economic and military success.

(The head of a corporation messaged me this recruitment ad.  The ad emphasizes the development of combat skills and experience with null sec)

 

The more powerful corporations control swaths of space and limit others’ access to the materials found in them.  As previously mentioned, combat between corporations can create high demand for weapons.  To truly understand how players affect prices, I would have to be part of a corporation and see how corporations control members and others in their territory.  More quantitative approaches may help me as well.  Having access to records of goods’ average prices, and a record of corporation conflict and territory, may help me better understand links between prices and players.  But overall, I learned a significant amount about EVE and its economy, and can confidently say that its economy was more intricate than I have seen in any other game.  I am interested in learning more about how players structure their careers in relation to the economy, and which careers they deem to be most profitable.

 

(Final Note: you may have to download the pictures to get a good look at them, they became too blurry if I increased their size)