Inflation - The Quest to Manage The Sims FreePlay's economy
summary
Seven years of live ops for The Sims FreePlay expose early hyperinflation and later creeping wallet growth; the team measures earnings vs spend by player level and median/mean, then acts. They scale item prices by number of houses (not player level) to avoid shifting price tags, boost store conversion rates as levels rise, add repeatable sinks and timed events, avoid a hard wallet cap, monitor samolians flow, and prototype balancing in Excel.
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chapters (15)
- 0:00Intro
- 1:07Game Product Management
- 6:501 Manage Progression for Longevity
- 9:233 Monetisation
- 10:36Economies are the Engines of any F2P game
- 19:16Quest Choice: What should we do?
- 21:21Scaling
- 24:27Quest 2: Manage creeping Simoleon Inflation
- 26:05Quest Goal 2B: Understand what manages inflation
- 32:40Quest 2: Takeaways
- 33:51Economy Health Metrics
- 34:28Strategies and Tactics Toolbox
- 36:27What to Avoid?
- 38:20Final Takeaways
- 39:49Helpful References
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