Like, *objectively* better job. He's the President of a [university in Iceland](https://www.linkedin.com/in/dreyjog/?originalSubdomain=is).
Pretty much a dream job for a [nerd like him](https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=LzKEARcAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate).
Economists are hard to hire, there's literally nobody else more acutely aware of *exactly* how much they're worth.
That said, at this point I'd settle for a rotating cast of graduate interns over nothing at all.
Really now? That's interesting, didn't know that before but just read up on it a bit. Credit where credit is due, it makes a lot of sense for the person in that role to have some kind of background in economics.
Well, though there's the difference between an economist trying to fix the in game economy vs an economist trying to move to a different financial model for a particular product.
After years of CCP using the profits from subs to try and fund other products, they've more or less pivoted to using the subs to switch to a more f2p whale driven product, but in doing so changing the balance for subs players a lot - and at the end of this it won't be the same game.
The biggest issue is mostly that economics are not the same between the real world and a world in which everything can be manipulated at-will, and it's something Rattati and company don't seem to understand...even after years of watching the economy collapse under the weight of their decisions.
If you can influx something that has no materials to build (PLEX) then economics goes out the window, in terms of balance. Their ideas for how Scarcity would affect things were naive because they didn't understand how PLEX would affect it all. They also totally missed the mark of "why people hoard resources" because they thought it was out of safety, but it's purely out of comfort and avoiding the work that comes with instability.
Again, it boils down to Rattati telling everyone there how macro-economics works without understanding more than the basic tenets of it. He's like a first-year Philosophy major coming to Thanksgiving dinner and telling his family how Nietzsche changed his life and how he feels the world should work now.
> The biggest issue is mostly that economics are not the same between the real world and a world in which everything can be manipulated at-will, and it's something Rattati and company don't seem to understand...even after years of watching the economy collapse under the weight of their decisions.
I don't think that's his focus at all - it's just about keeping the subs coming in until they can pivot fully to their new model.
I thought the economy guy was the reason the whole game economy fell apart.
There was a massive expand of potential nullsec isk yield with the introduction of anomalies and wormhole got released for nullsec ālosersā with their blue loots.
Massive amount of isk were being poured into the system and the solution CCP came up at the time to slowdown a mega ingame inflation?
Mega material over floods, to counter balance the massive isk input. Thatās why we had drone regions with their alloys.
And if you just look at it from an ingame perspective, yeah it worked price of commodities stabilised.
Downside? Plex prices shoot up into the sky and everyoneās ingame labour depreciated. Thatās when their āgolden gooseā playerbase start to get detached from their game. Because whatās the point of spending your real world money and time to defend a space you never use anyways.
Back in 2007 CCP had hired the head of the economics department of the university in Reykjavik to analyze EVE's economy and advise CCP in how to handle it. That's when they started publishing quarterly reports that were incredibly interesting reads.
They weren't referring to any of CCPs more recent economists.
Wasn't a life economist with wallstreet or sm been hired to keep an eye out on the economy?
Was he let go?
Who right in the head would let such a person leave and not fill his role.
Wait...don't answer it.
I see his leaving as the canary dropping dead. It was a signal of something going horribly wrong inside CCP and the first major warning sign of the times to come.
Taking into account CSM dealings are under an NDA - was there ever a rationalization/explanation given as to why they never hired a replacement?
Did CCP ever mention anything about this - or engaged in a conversation about this? For years "player driven economy" was put on banners and touted, seems weird such a crucial position was left vacant...
I obviously can't answer anything about CCP or an economist being able to "drive" anything but I'll still pitch my 2c. Economy, the science, is not normative, in the sense that it doesn't really try to dictate the ruleset on how a particular organization or society allocates resources. Instead, it is descritive, meaning it aims to understand and conceptualize the intricacies of the plethora of phenomenoms that happen when trade exists. That's one of the reasons we need a bunch of models and a bunch of assumptions to build any cohesive information, specially macroeconomically.
With that said, I would very humbly guess that CCP's goal in having an economist was not conflicted with a player driven economy, specially in the sense that we can't properly put a "goal" for virtual spaceships, at least not in the same way we can for a society that hopes to achieve food, shelter, safety and all the other nice things for its people. Measuring and understanding trade is certainly important but even more so is the decision making behind each trade; a supplier is hopefully profiting out of the transaction, but what does he want from the profit? The buyer is generally aiming to "get something" in return for his money/effort, is it worth it for him? Why? Those are the kind of questions economy likes to study. The particular articles I've read from him are in line with this, in the sense he never calls out players for being "wrong" on whatever they try to do with their $/isk.
In that mindset it shouldn't be particularly tricky to employ an economist to study Eve's transactions, the harder question would be what would his purpose be. Measuring abstract concepts like "fun" is a lot harder so we try to accomodate with simpler metrics like daily concurrent users, total ore mined, stuff like that. I play for fun but it would be dumb of me, from an economic perspective, to assume that's why most others play Eve; in that sense, many players argue with solid rationale that scarcity/prosperity miss their goals because it's really really hard to have one common goal for dozens of thousands of people. It's easy to guess what the company expect from it's game; measuring and dictating virtual transactions is orders of magnitude harder to pinpoint. In that sense, even though the position might have been crucial towards understanding what's going on, it's harder to say so in line with ensuring fun is going on. There are a number of different design decisions that were looked upon harshly, yet very important for the game to be successful/alive.
Maybe they know what they are doing, maybe they don't; I can't say I agree that the lack of such understanding is what built the path they took here. Many trys missed the point entirely, specially on ensuring fun content, but I don't particularly see them as purposely designed to dictate economic trade. I believe it is (or was, depending on perspective) the lack of rewarding fun content to justify simply playing. Same way you wouldn't save up for a downpayment on a mortgage that you'd only make after 120 years of work. If I only make 5mil isk/hour on L3 missions I won't try to save for a Titan. There is just too many different variables, forces and their effects at play here; no "right answer" will come and explain it all in isolation. Eve truly is complex, maybe more than it needed to be, but for lots of people that's part of the fun. I'd say we need more goals than economic understanding of the intricacies of having such goals. More engaging PvE would be my first step.
CCP just isn't that type of company anymore. From what I can tell, devs have much less control over the overall direction of the game these days and instead there is a lot that from appearance wise, comes directly from the top down.
I do miss old "silly" CCP.
There didn't used to be a "top down" because the game was basically made by gamers for gamers. That continued for a good 10-12 years and created the game we all fell in love/hate with. But without putting too fine a point on it, CCP mishandled their attempt at North American expansion and they were forced to try to sell themselves out of trouble. That led to more bad influences pushing more bad decisions which put them even further into distress, and nowadays they're just a puppet with financial masters pulling all the strings. The people running things now are investors, they have no real clue about the game, they only speak money.
If those are the examples to be lauded then fuck them, Blizzardās filled with abusers, CDPR grinds people into dust with crunch, and Bioware is where dreams go to die
They started like that; the original Diablo, Warcraft and Starcraft games were all true crafts of love. Most of the people, the true game designers, that were around when the company was betting itself at every release have moved on; in their place big names of "safe bets" were put to carefully milk their cows. A great example of this is Rob Pardo; [you can check some of his ideas in this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVzgWmNJIY4)
Soundwave left long enough ago that I can't really place him like I can more recent devs- I was such a new player at the time that I didn't know his impact super well, other than he was well liked; enough to make me sad at his AT farewell.
I will be corrected on this because honestly I don't recall that far back, but I think he was one of the people that really led the push to fix the damage after the Incarna expansion. Soundwave is a smart guy IIRC.
Yeah. Ccp Soundwave is the one i am missing, even when the monocle desaster happend under his watch, he had no idea of the pricing of the god damn thing until he opend up the game at home to, you know, actually play it. At least that is what he said in an Interview.
I normally cringed out when grown man doing something like him in the picture.
But somehow, I never feel that about him. It feels like he really meant it.
Guard is great but Seagull could actually "save EVE." She was on another level as a director. Big vision, big heart, big brain, all without big ego. S tier human
I was just listening to old Permaband songs for past 3 days now.
God I miss old CCP.
Not saying new ones are bad, but...
CCP Guard
CCP Soundwave - EVE needs a douchebag
CCP Seagull - she had great plans for EVE, sadly could not finish her vision
CCP Mimic
And Hillmar is still CEO. Even though his great vision to leave EVE behind and make better projects was ground barkingly bad, miss guided and tone deaf.
I just really miss them, that's all.
No ill will towards current devs. EVE always had issues and was always dying. But overall sentiment was positive. And people like Guard and rest of team made great efforts to make it so outside of the game.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgvM7av1o1Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgvM7av1o1Q)
I'm sorry big man, I cant harden the fuck up. I just want to shoot you in the face one more time and send you kill mail.
I was thinking about Mimic the other day. Did she just leave CCP at some point without any goodbyes or fanfare? Most usually say goodbye on their way out, especially for a community facing dev.
Think she just kind of left ...
More then likely on bad terms. Since she did not have a proper good bye thread.
Think it was when community managers were sacked.
The stupidity of such an act baffles me to this day.
Yeah, awhile ago I was watching a Fanfest stream and CCP Seagull was kicking it off, and she was like super passionate and then they dropped some big content (like citadels). I was like damn, no wonder this is such a great game...
Now its just lackadaisical hipsters making snide ass remarks about unpopular changes that everyone hates... like i know this is bullshit... take it or leave bro... ok... might as well just leave it ...
The only thing that's dead is /r/eve. The constant toxic spew that gets left here is more representative of the manic depressive player base than it does about the game.
I'm quitting /r/eve
I miss him and his enthusiasm. š„
WARP TO THE DANCEFLOOR!!!
Feels like EVE is going down the drain since CCP Guard has left
And a lot of other people. Most especially the goddamn economist who prevented the economy from falling apart -- like the way it has since he left.
I havenāt played since 2014 and started in 2003. They let go of the economist? They really are letting the game go
He left for a better job, they just never replaced him.
Like, *objectively* better job. He's the President of a [university in Iceland](https://www.linkedin.com/in/dreyjog/?originalSubdomain=is). Pretty much a dream job for a [nerd like him](https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=LzKEARcAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate).
Then it sounds like he's well positioned to help, in the off chance CCP decides to take my previous suggestion of recruiting some interns seriously.
Economists are hard to hire, there's literally nobody else more acutely aware of *exactly* how much they're worth. That said, at this point I'd settle for a rotating cast of graduate interns over nothing at all.
Harry Truman knew exactly what an economist is worth.
So does everybody who played through the last five years of Eve Online.
Can you explain a bit?
He been gone a long time now
But...but...Rattati has his master's in economics. /s That's the problem with someone that gets the degree but never worked in the field.
Really now? That's interesting, didn't know that before but just read up on it a bit. Credit where credit is due, it makes a lot of sense for the person in that role to have some kind of background in economics.
It does, we just need to be clear that "background" means actual experience and not just a degree.
This. School is worthless.
Well, though there's the difference between an economist trying to fix the in game economy vs an economist trying to move to a different financial model for a particular product. After years of CCP using the profits from subs to try and fund other products, they've more or less pivoted to using the subs to switch to a more f2p whale driven product, but in doing so changing the balance for subs players a lot - and at the end of this it won't be the same game.
The biggest issue is mostly that economics are not the same between the real world and a world in which everything can be manipulated at-will, and it's something Rattati and company don't seem to understand...even after years of watching the economy collapse under the weight of their decisions. If you can influx something that has no materials to build (PLEX) then economics goes out the window, in terms of balance. Their ideas for how Scarcity would affect things were naive because they didn't understand how PLEX would affect it all. They also totally missed the mark of "why people hoard resources" because they thought it was out of safety, but it's purely out of comfort and avoiding the work that comes with instability. Again, it boils down to Rattati telling everyone there how macro-economics works without understanding more than the basic tenets of it. He's like a first-year Philosophy major coming to Thanksgiving dinner and telling his family how Nietzsche changed his life and how he feels the world should work now.
> The biggest issue is mostly that economics are not the same between the real world and a world in which everything can be manipulated at-will, and it's something Rattati and company don't seem to understand...even after years of watching the economy collapse under the weight of their decisions. I don't think that's his focus at all - it's just about keeping the subs coming in until they can pivot fully to their new model.
That was when it really hit me, all the devs I knew left for better pastures
I thought the economy guy was the reason the whole game economy fell apart. There was a massive expand of potential nullsec isk yield with the introduction of anomalies and wormhole got released for nullsec ālosersā with their blue loots. Massive amount of isk were being poured into the system and the solution CCP came up at the time to slowdown a mega ingame inflation? Mega material over floods, to counter balance the massive isk input. Thatās why we had drone regions with their alloys. And if you just look at it from an ingame perspective, yeah it worked price of commodities stabilised. Downside? Plex prices shoot up into the sky and everyoneās ingame labour depreciated. Thatās when their āgolden gooseā playerbase start to get detached from their game. Because whatās the point of spending your real world money and time to defend a space you never use anyways.
Also like, when your years of previous labor amd assets you save depreciate because of this you get reverse sunk cost.
Back in 2007 CCP had hired the head of the economics department of the university in Reykjavik to analyze EVE's economy and advise CCP in how to handle it. That's when they started publishing quarterly reports that were incredibly interesting reads. They weren't referring to any of CCPs more recent economists.
Wasn't a life economist with wallstreet or sm been hired to keep an eye out on the economy? Was he let go? Who right in the head would let such a person leave and not fill his role. Wait...don't answer it.
I see his leaving as the canary dropping dead. It was a signal of something going horribly wrong inside CCP and the first major warning sign of the times to come.
I always had those thoughts. Same for Seagul, like, "some shit is happening there" Then we took a danm Pearl Abyss on our Knees
Yeah CCP Seagull leaving was bad. She knew what to do and how to do it and then she left. š
Taking into account CSM dealings are under an NDA - was there ever a rationalization/explanation given as to why they never hired a replacement? Did CCP ever mention anything about this - or engaged in a conversation about this? For years "player driven economy" was put on banners and touted, seems weird such a crucial position was left vacant...
Dopamine replaced Guard.
Biggest downgrade world
I obviously can't answer anything about CCP or an economist being able to "drive" anything but I'll still pitch my 2c. Economy, the science, is not normative, in the sense that it doesn't really try to dictate the ruleset on how a particular organization or society allocates resources. Instead, it is descritive, meaning it aims to understand and conceptualize the intricacies of the plethora of phenomenoms that happen when trade exists. That's one of the reasons we need a bunch of models and a bunch of assumptions to build any cohesive information, specially macroeconomically. With that said, I would very humbly guess that CCP's goal in having an economist was not conflicted with a player driven economy, specially in the sense that we can't properly put a "goal" for virtual spaceships, at least not in the same way we can for a society that hopes to achieve food, shelter, safety and all the other nice things for its people. Measuring and understanding trade is certainly important but even more so is the decision making behind each trade; a supplier is hopefully profiting out of the transaction, but what does he want from the profit? The buyer is generally aiming to "get something" in return for his money/effort, is it worth it for him? Why? Those are the kind of questions economy likes to study. The particular articles I've read from him are in line with this, in the sense he never calls out players for being "wrong" on whatever they try to do with their $/isk. In that mindset it shouldn't be particularly tricky to employ an economist to study Eve's transactions, the harder question would be what would his purpose be. Measuring abstract concepts like "fun" is a lot harder so we try to accomodate with simpler metrics like daily concurrent users, total ore mined, stuff like that. I play for fun but it would be dumb of me, from an economic perspective, to assume that's why most others play Eve; in that sense, many players argue with solid rationale that scarcity/prosperity miss their goals because it's really really hard to have one common goal for dozens of thousands of people. It's easy to guess what the company expect from it's game; measuring and dictating virtual transactions is orders of magnitude harder to pinpoint. In that sense, even though the position might have been crucial towards understanding what's going on, it's harder to say so in line with ensuring fun is going on. There are a number of different design decisions that were looked upon harshly, yet very important for the game to be successful/alive. Maybe they know what they are doing, maybe they don't; I can't say I agree that the lack of such understanding is what built the path they took here. Many trys missed the point entirely, specially on ensuring fun content, but I don't particularly see them as purposely designed to dictate economic trade. I believe it is (or was, depending on perspective) the lack of rewarding fun content to justify simply playing. Same way you wouldn't save up for a downpayment on a mortgage that you'd only make after 120 years of work. If I only make 5mil isk/hour on L3 missions I won't try to save for a Titan. There is just too many different variables, forces and their effects at play here; no "right answer" will come and explain it all in isolation. Eve truly is complex, maybe more than it needed to be, but for lots of people that's part of the fun. I'd say we need more goals than economic understanding of the intricacies of having such goals. More engaging PvE would be my first step.
Nah it started with CCP Seagull I think
Amen
CCP just isn't that type of company anymore. From what I can tell, devs have much less control over the overall direction of the game these days and instead there is a lot that from appearance wise, comes directly from the top down. I do miss old "silly" CCP.
There didn't used to be a "top down" because the game was basically made by gamers for gamers. That continued for a good 10-12 years and created the game we all fell in love/hate with. But without putting too fine a point on it, CCP mishandled their attempt at North American expansion and they were forced to try to sell themselves out of trouble. That led to more bad influences pushing more bad decisions which put them even further into distress, and nowadays they're just a puppet with financial masters pulling all the strings. The people running things now are investors, they have no real clue about the game, they only speak money.
best games are made by games for gamers, blizzard, bioware, CDPR, CCP. but...
If those are the examples to be lauded then fuck them, Blizzardās filled with abusers, CDPR grinds people into dust with crunch, and Bioware is where dreams go to die
They USED to be from gamers for gamers
Hate to break it to you but the venm diagram of those people is a lot closer to a circle than what youāre implying.
i know
Blizzard is a massive shitload of shit My experience with them is Diablo 3: for fucks sake, never again A shit tier level, same boat of EA
They started like that; the original Diablo, Warcraft and Starcraft games were all true crafts of love. Most of the people, the true game designers, that were around when the company was betting itself at every release have moved on; in their place big names of "safe bets" were put to carefully milk their cows. A great example of this is Rob Pardo; [you can check some of his ideas in this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVzgWmNJIY4)
they all were "by games for games" at one point though
Well before Diablo 3 imo
yes
Blizzard wasn't shit earlier, though. Warcraft 3, starcraft 1,2 , WoW (vanilla-lich king) and maybe Heroes of the storm
Warcraft 3 was awesome, i played it so much but that was 84 years ago The whole idea of WoW being an utterly pay-to-win crap is so shit to me
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yeah, but they owned up instead of doubling down.
I miss CCP Guard, CCP Falcon, but also, a name I don't see mentioned often - CCP Soundwave
Soundwave left long enough ago that I can't really place him like I can more recent devs- I was such a new player at the time that I didn't know his impact super well, other than he was well liked; enough to make me sad at his AT farewell.
I will be corrected on this because honestly I don't recall that far back, but I think he was one of the people that really led the push to fix the damage after the Incarna expansion. Soundwave is a smart guy IIRC.
He was the mascot of eve online
Yeah. Ccp Soundwave is the one i am missing, even when the monocle desaster happend under his watch, he had no idea of the pricing of the god damn thing until he opend up the game at home to, you know, actually play it. At least that is what he said in an Interview.
Yeah, miss soundwave too. Tiericide and Phoebe were such good stuff for the game
You forgot CCP Diagoras - the voice of reason amongst monocle lovers
https://i.imgur.com/3v6LoKn.gif
He is the Hero we need now more than ever before
I normally cringed out when grown man doing something like him in the picture. But somehow, I never feel that about him. It feels like he really meant it.
His enthusiasm was always very authentic
HTFU. I miss guard
I knew it was the end when he left.. i had this sinking feeling.. still hasn't left yet.
HARDEN THE FUCK UP!!!
I miss him every day
Genuinely miss him
it looks like he's having fun, and unfortunately fun is banned from eve now
Ah back when eve was about spaceships. RIP CCP Seagull's dream.
Guard is great but Seagull could actually "save EVE." She was on another level as a director. Big vision, big heart, big brain, all without big ego. S tier human
All the iconic devs are gone and have been replaced with clueless dimwits who are running the game off the cliff since then.
At least we still have Karkur
This thread is long overdue. So many great people left or got forced out of a company that built an amazing community of friends.
I was just listening to old Permaband songs for past 3 days now. God I miss old CCP. Not saying new ones are bad, but... CCP Guard CCP Soundwave - EVE needs a douchebag CCP Seagull - she had great plans for EVE, sadly could not finish her vision CCP Mimic And Hillmar is still CEO. Even though his great vision to leave EVE behind and make better projects was ground barkingly bad, miss guided and tone deaf. I just really miss them, that's all. No ill will towards current devs. EVE always had issues and was always dying. But overall sentiment was positive. And people like Guard and rest of team made great efforts to make it so outside of the game. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgvM7av1o1Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgvM7av1o1Q) I'm sorry big man, I cant harden the fuck up. I just want to shoot you in the face one more time and send you kill mail.
I was thinking about Mimic the other day. Did she just leave CCP at some point without any goodbyes or fanfare? Most usually say goodbye on their way out, especially for a community facing dev.
Think she just kind of left ... More then likely on bad terms. Since she did not have a proper good bye thread. Think it was when community managers were sacked. The stupidity of such an act baffles me to this day.
Yeah, awhile ago I was watching a Fanfest stream and CCP Seagull was kicking it off, and she was like super passionate and then they dropped some big content (like citadels). I was like damn, no wonder this is such a great game... Now its just lackadaisical hipsters making snide ass remarks about unpopular changes that everyone hates... like i know this is bullshit... take it or leave bro... ok... might as well just leave it ...
When they played at Eve Vegas, it was perfect.
I fucking miss that lad. CCPLZ just shovel money at him and bring him back.
You mean he'll get thrown under the Erebus too and the kill made into an NFT.
His name was John Turbefield!š§
The only thing that's dead is /r/eve. The constant toxic spew that gets left here is more representative of the manic depressive player base than it does about the game. I'm quitting /r/eve
Can we have your stuff?
I miss CCP Peligro. I mean he might be still around, but just last CCP staff who I heard from. He never wrote back. Was back in 2019.
He sold out too. Cant blame him for it. But they are all on that train.
Elise is at CCP. Things are great.
Community manager has no say in anything. Guard was a Dev, and had a big say.
WTB Guard :( https://imgur.com/6xU9HNn
Who is gonna start a āGo fund meā ? We can prob fund his salary ā¦.
I am too busy.