Games are cool. Economics is cool. Game Economics is just beginning.

The Economics of Reality TV

In case you haven’t been paying attention, Netflix just re-discovered the reality/reality-doc genre. In 2 weeks: Tiger King To Hot Too Handle (international cast) The Circle (4 international versions already released) Love is Blind I chuckled a bit when when Netflix remarked that they saw Fortnite as their biggest threat, but after 6 weeks in…

1950’s Peruvian Coke and Gacha

In the 1950’s, Peruvian inflation forced Coca-Cola to charge more per bottle of Coke. Unfortunately, their vending machines required physical updating to accept a new and larger domination. Instead, Coke devised a probabilistic system: the machine would charge the same amount as before, but randomly refuse to give a bottle. This raises the expected price…

Re-Rewriting Economic History

Will Luton argues on the dangers and solutions to F2P inflation over at gameindustry.biz. While there are some missteps in the opening of the article, Will makes a powerful and elegant point: …a sale can only be considered profitable if the net revenue from the start of the sale until resource equilibrium, and so demand, is…

How to Measure Whales

You’ve soft launched your game, done a UA push, and a string of hope appears. Against all odds, a dominant cohorted ARPU curve emerges! Is this this an anomaly or have you caught a whale? The first way to examine this is to perform cointegration tests between the cohorted ARPU curves, testing for stastistical significance.…

Optimal Area Currency With Milton

In hindsight, one of Friedman’s great predictions is the Eurozone crisis. Despite being a massive champion for flexible exchange rates, Friedman never advocated for a common European currency. Europe exemplifies a situation unfavourable to a common currency. It is composed of separate nations, speaking different languages, with different customs, and having citizens feeling far greater…