Balance is one of the most important things in any video game. You have to keep a balance between being difficult enough to be fun but not so difficult as to be frustrating, you have to keep a balance between types of play styles and yet one of the important ways that many games fail this balance is in their virtual currency systems.
There are a few different types of virtual currency systems for video games based mostly on the type of game. There are the single person game currencies. These are generally the easiest to balance correctly, the non-interactive currencies in multiplayer games such as Mafia wars which becomes a bit more important but not all that much more difficult and finally there are the virtual currencies of interactive multiplayer games such as the massively multiplayer online games and games such as Diablo. These are both the most difficult and the most important to get right because people are actually using the currency as currency and often using real money.
The most important of these virtual currency systems are the massively multiplayer online game currencies and the base is World of Warcraft and it costs about 11 real dollars for 2000 gold. This is not that much less than what it would cost to play the game for an entire month. Other MMOLG’s have similar costs though the amount varies considerably based on the ease of gathering currency, the number of people farming and what you can get with it. Of special note is the Diablo 2 system because while it is not a massively multiplayer online game does have interaction and buying of things between games and yet there is far less selling and buying of its currency mostly because it is fun.
The other type that really matters is are the online games that are interactive but not directly so. The classic version of this is Mafia Wars but nearly every game of this type has a currency and in general they are balanced well enough at the early levels but they have something else, instead of being able to buy it from other players those who make the games themselves sell the currency. This could be by having you complete surveys which make them money or by simply charging your credit card. This cuts out the middleman and lets those who do want to do this play less expensively, but it also makes it hard to do well in these games without spending money.
No matter what type of game you make the virtual currency is important and understanding what type of virtual currency can help you to understand the way that the developers see the game which is also important for those who are deciding if they want to play it.
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