Chapter 24 — Further Reading

Game economy design sits at the intersection of systems design, behavioral economics, and live-service operations. The reading list below reflects that range. Start with one or two; add others as specific questions arise in your practice. Where possible, read the primary sources — many of the ideas in this chapter's framing trace back to Adams and Dormans, and their book is worth your direct engagement.

Books

Ernest Adams and Joris Dormans. Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design. New Riders, 2012.

The canonical text on game mechanics from a systems-design perspective. Chapter 4 ("Internal Economy") introduces the sources-sinks-converters-traders framework that anchors this chapter. Chapter 5 ("Machinations") introduces the visual notation Dormans developed in his PhD work. If you only read one additional book on game economies, make it this one. The writing is accessible, the examples draw from real games, and the Machinations notation is a useful tool you'll return to.

Edward Castronova. Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games. University of Chicago Press, 2005.

The foundational text on virtual economies. Castronova, an economist who studied EverQuest and Ultima Online, was the first academic to treat MMO economies seriously as economies rather than as game systems. He famously calculated that EverQuest's GDP per capita (based on player-hours and real-money trading) would rank it among the world's mid-income countries. The book is dated in its specifics (some games discussed are gone), but the conceptual framework — virtual economies are real economies with design parameters — remains essential.

Vili Lehdonvirta and Edward Castronova. Virtual Economies: Design and Analysis. MIT Press, 2014.

The spiritual sequel to Synthetic Worlds, this one focuses specifically on designing virtual economies. Chapters on currency design, market structure, and economic experiments in games are directly applicable to practitioners. Lehdonvirta, a Finnish academic who has studied game economies for over a decade, brings empirical rigor that most game-design books lack. If Synthetic Worlds is the "why," this is the "how."

Ramin Shokrizade. The Virtual Economics Handbook. Self-published, 2014 (later editions).

Shokrizade worked as an economist for game companies (including Lord of the Rings Online) and is one of the few practitioners writing openly about F2P economy design. His essays on "coercive monetization" and "price experience" articulate critiques of predatory F2P patterns from an insider's perspective. Read this alongside Chapter 33 on ethics.

Jesse Schell. The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses. CRC Press, 3rd edition, 2019.

Schell's "lenses" include several directly applicable to economy design — the Lens of the Player (what do they value?), the Lens of Flow, the Lens of Reward, the Lens of Expected Value. Not primarily an economy book, but the lens framework transfers well. Chapters 15-17 on balance and economy are the most relevant.

Academic and Industry Papers

Eyjólfur Guðmundsson, various years. EVE Online Monthly Economic Reports.

Published by CCP Games since 2007. Available at CCP's website and archived across community fan sites. Each report covers ISK money supply, production, destruction, regional trade, and inflation rates. Browsing a few years of MERs gives you a sense of how EVE's economy actually operates and what managing a live-service economy looks like. Guðmundsson's 2007 talk "Real Economics in Virtual Worlds" (available on YouTube) introduces his role and methodology.

Vili Lehdonvirta. Numerous papers on virtual economies (2007-present).

Lehdonvirta's academic work covers virtual economies empirically — pricing, currency flows, player behavior, ethics of F2P monetization. Google Scholar his name; start with "Virtual Item Sales as a Revenue Model" (2009) and "Algorithms That Divide and Unite" (2018). He writes clearly enough for non-economists and draws on extensive data from real games.

Ramin Shokrizade. "The Top F2P Monetization Tricks" (2013).

A widely-circulated essay, available on gamasutra.com (now gamedeveloper.com) and subsequently republished. Shokrizade lists specific patterns used in predatory F2P design and explains why each works psychologically. Required reading if you're considering F2P work. Complements Chapter 33 on ethics.

GDC Talks

The Game Developers Conference has accumulated dozens of talks on economy design. The ones below are freely available on the GDC Vault (gdcvault.com) or YouTube; many are also indexed on the GDC YouTube channel.

"EVE Online: How a 20-Year-Old Game Endures" and related CCP talks.

Search "EVE Online GDC" on YouTube for a rotating slate of talks by CCP developers and economists. Key topics: the CSM (player-elected advisory council), monthly economic reports, managing inflation, Bloodbath of B-R5RB postmortem. Guðmundsson's early talks are particularly worth the time.

Travis Sweeney. "Virtual Economies, Real Lessons" (various years, multiple talks).

Sweeney, who worked on economy systems for several major MMOs, has given multiple GDC talks on applying real economic analysis to game systems. Accessible to designers without economics backgrounds.

Rich Vogel and Raph Koster, various talks on Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies.

Early-MMO economy lessons from two of the field's founding designers. The failures and successes of late-90s/early-2000s MMOs inform modern economy design more than most practitioners realize. Koster's writing in particular (his book A Theory of Fun and his blog at raphkoster.com) is essential.

"Clash Royale: An Economy Postmortem" (Supercell talks).

Supercell has given multiple GDC and industry talks on their monetization and economy design. Search "Clash Royale economy" or "Supercell economy GDC" — the talks cover progression design, currency tuning, and what works across their portfolio.

Industry Postmortems and Articles

"The Death and Rebirth of the Diablo III Auction House."

Multiple retrospectives exist; the best are on PC Gamer, Polygon, and Kotaku. Rod Fergusson's post-launch interviews about Reaper of Souls are particularly candid about what Blizzard learned. Read alongside this chapter's Case Study 1.

"The Bloodbath of B-R5RB" coverage (2014).

Ars Technica, The Verge, and Polygon all ran in-depth coverage of the 2014 EVE battle. For a designer, the interesting angle is not the battle itself but what the battle reveals about EVE's economic design.

Team Fortress 2 trading economy articles.

TF2's informal hat-and-item trading economy is an underrated case study. The community-driven market for cosmetic items, the emergence of "keys" and "metal" as de facto currencies, and Valve's hands-off approach make for an interesting comparison with more controlled economies. Various fan-written articles on reddit and Steam community forums cover the history.

Path of Exile's currency system.

Grinding Gear Games has published developer diaries and given GDC talks about PoE's unusual currency design (where "currency" items are also consumables used for crafting). Worth studying as an example of deliberately complex economy serving a core-gameplay purpose.

Online Resources and Community Writing

The Machinations tool and tutorials.

Available at machinations.io. The free Community Edition is sufficient for sketching economies. The site includes video tutorials on the notation and multiple worked examples. Useful if you want to experiment with digital simulation rather than paper diagrams.

GameBalanceConcepts.wordpress.com — Ian Schreiber's game balance course.

Schreiber taught an online game balance course in 2010 that's still archived on his blog. Several lessons cover economy balance and progression curves. The course is free and the writing is clear.

The Game Economist (newsletter and writings).

A collective of economists working in games publishing analysis on virtual economies. Subscribe to their newsletter or follow them on Twitter/LinkedIn. Recent posts cover F2P pricing psychology, live-service economy management, and specific game economy postmortems.

Designer Notes podcast (Soren Johnson).

Soren Johnson (lead designer of Civilization IV, Offworld Trading Company, and others) hosts long-form interviews with designers. Several episodes touch on economy design directly — particularly his interviews with Sid Meier, Raph Koster, and designers from Paradox Interactive. Johnson himself writes about economic mechanics in his own games on the Mohawk Games blog.

A Suggested Reading Path

If you're starting from zero and want a focused path:

1. Adams and Dormans, Chapter 4-5 — the framework and notation.
2. This chapter's case studies — Diablo III RMAH and EVE PLEX.
3. One month of CCP Monthly Economic Reports — to see real economic management.
4. Shokrizade's "Top F2P Monetization Tricks" — for the darker side of the craft.
5. One GDC talk of your choice — on an economy you've personally played.

That's about 15-20 hours of focused study and will take you from foundational framework to practitioner-level literacy on current debates in economy design. From there, follow your curiosity — the field is deep and the practitioners are (mostly) generous about sharing their lessons.

The common thread across everything in this reading list is that economies are not incidental to games; they are foundational. Treating them as foundational, as the professionals do, is what separates designers who build economies that last from designers who ship problems that take years to unwind.