Why MMOs Have to Take Your Power Away | Catalin Alexandru

Catalin Alexandru is a systemic game economist and designer with more than 22 years of experience across game design, platform innovation and business models. Through his independent consultancy, he creates game economies from first principles using business strategy, behavioural psychology and systems design. He also writes the Intrinsic Economies newsletter and is the author of the True Ownership Trilemma.Catalin has worked with more than 50 game companies and global brands, including EA, Sega, Gameloft, FunPlus, MIT and Pearson. His credits span properties such as Star Trek, Command & Conquer: Red Alert, Medal of Honor, BioShock, Mafia, Thomas & Friends and Octonauts. He has also led game design and economy teams, lectured on game economy design in Milan and Bucharest, and appeared on BBC television and radio. His work has been cited by Bloomberg, VentureBeat and Pocket Gamer.Chapters:00:00 Introduction03:20 Why every game has an economy04:34 Designing economies for different players26:14 Power creep and why games reset progress35:15 Classic WoW, Retail WoW and time versus money42:35 Why gold farming cannot simply be banned45:04 Why the WoW Token was the right call51:33 Why Web3 gaming failed52:53 The True Ownership Trilemma01:01:16 Why games are planned economies01:03:10 Why the Ready Player One future is not coming01:16:19 The $10,000 a month MMO01:19:44 Breaking into game economy designhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/catalinmalexandru/https://intrinsiceconomies.substack.com/https://catalinalexandru.com/2023/03/true-ownership-the-game-economy-trilemma/