Overview
Game economies fail when sinks don't match sources. The player earns 1000 Gold per hour from quest rewards and monster drops (sources), but spends only 200 Gold per hour on repairs and consumables (sinks). The surplus 800 Gold per hour accumulates in the player's inventory, increasing the money supply. Over 100 hours of gameplay, the player has 80,000 surplus Gold. Items priced at 500 Gold when the game launched are now worth 5,000 Gold because every player has surplus Gold and bids up prices. The economy has inflated — the currency is worthless relative to the goods it can buy, and new players who don't have accumulated wealth cannot afford anything.
The Economy Sink-Source Design prompt builds currency systems with three properties: (1) source-sink equilibrium — the total currency entering the economy per hour (across all sources) is balanced against the total currency leaving the economy per hour (across all sinks), with a target surplus rate that accounts for desired savings without producing inflation, (2) inflation detection — specific metrics (currency supply growth rate, price index of key goods, wealth distribution Gini coefficient) are tracked and compared against thresholds that indicate inflation, deflation, or healthy equilibrium, and (3) emergency mechanisms — when inflation is detected, the system has pre-designed sink mechanisms that can be activated without patching the game (e.g., limited-time luxury vendor, tax event, currency conversion opportunity).
What you get: - Source catalog with per-hour generation rates - Sink catalog with per-hour consumption rates and elasticity - Source-sink equilibrium model with target surplus rate - Inflation detection metrics with threshold values - Emergency deflation mechanisms - New player economy onboarding specification
Built for: systems designers, economy designers, and live ops teams who need economies that stay stable across years of operation — not economies that inflate within months.