I woke up to the news this morning that CCP Games hired an economist to oversee the economy of its new blockchain based game currently in alpha, EVE Frontier. I had to visit the EVE Frontier Discord server to get clarification that CCP's latest employee, Stefán "CCP Kalirha" Þórarinsson, does indeed only work on Frontier and not EVE Online. I feel the press release was a bit unclear. I'll paste the press release below.
REYKJAVÍK, Iceland – March 6, 2025 – CCP Games welcomes the appointment of Stefán Þórarinsson as its new Head of Economy. Formerly an economist at the Central Bank of Iceland, Stefán brings extensive expertise in macroeconomic analysis, monetary policy, and market dynamics. His joining marks the next step in CCP Games’ commitment to deepening the legitimacy of virtual economies and pioneering research in the games industry.
For over two decades, EVE Online has established the benchmark for in-game economies, becoming the definitive example of a player-driven financial system. With EVE Frontier, CCP Games is taking an unprecedented approach to refining and legitimizing the concept, ensuring that in-game financial systems operate with the same diligence and analysis applied to real-world economies. Under Stefán’s leadership, EVE Frontier will continue the work of Dr. Eyjólfur Guðmundsson, whose appointment as the Lead Economist for EVE Online was a landmark first for massively multiplayer virtual worlds. Dr. Guðmundsson’s foundational contributions to in-depth economic models and monetary policies will now continue with EVE Frontier and its ability to model advanced economic theories within an open environment. Through this, the company aims to provide valuable insight into digital finance and decentralized economic systems.
“Virtual economies are no longer just systems of play; they are living, evolving financial systems that demand serious study,” said Stefán Þórarinsson, Head of Economy. “CCP Games is leading the charge in bridging the gap between in-game economies and real-world financial principles, and I am excited to contribute to this body of innovative work. We aim not just to simulate a wide variety of economic activity but to study, refine, and validate how virtual economies function at scale; EVE Frontier will set the standard for how these systems can be structured, regulated, and understood.”
As part of this commitment, CCP Games is launching a series of comprehensive economic updates within EVE Frontier, starting today. This initiative will analyze fundamental aspects of the economy, with the first update to the Frontier Economic Policy (Update I) including:
- Monetary Policy & Inflation: Understanding how economic levers influence pricing, currency stability, and market behavior in a fully player-driven world.
- Market Equilibrium & Trade Dynamics: Exploring how supply and demand fluctuate based on player and NPC interactions.
- Assets & Currency Flows: Assessing the integration of digital assets and their impact on in-game economic activity.
- Behavioral Economics in Virtual Worlds: Gathering data on player decision-making, financial speculation, and economic adaptation.
“Stefán Þórarinsson’s appointment advances our goal toward building a truly open financial system within a virtual world,” said Hilmar Veigar Pétursson, CEO of CCP Games. “Since our inception, we have strived to create worlds where players transcend the constraints of our own design — a story that has played out within EVE Online as it enters its third decade of operation. With EVE Frontier, we want to be bolder: Stefán’s experience from the Central Bank of Iceland adds vital rigor as we continue to design our economy and open it up to players. By removing currency controls and fostering emergent value systems, EVE Frontier will redefine virtual nation-building, offering insights into both digital and real-world economies.”
To ensure meaningful insight, the updates will be conducted in a fully controlled environment through Founder Access, allowing CCP Games to model, predict, and optimize how virtual economies function under different conditions, using academic and institutional methodologies. A key step in the company’s ongoing mission to push the boundaries of virtual worlds, the results will inform both the development of EVE Frontier and the broader conversation about how digital economies can be examined, structured and sustained in the future.
As a personal aside, given the political and economic inclinations of those who advocate for the use of crypto-currencies, I find that an economist who worked for a country's central bank to oversee development of Frontier's economy hilarious. I think I chuckled for 10 minutes in real life.
Anyway, the Frontier team wasted no time in putting Stefán on a stream explaining the vision for the game's economy. For those interested I've embedded the video below.
CCP Kalirha also did an interview with Decrypt in which he spelled out his initial plans. Frontier's new house economist may have let some NDA'd information slip about the planned development cycle for the game. In the initial cycle that began today the former member of Iceland's central bank plans to establish a baseline in a closed economy.
“We want to do mappings of the pricing system, so when there are changes, we know what’s going to happen.” Þórarinsson told Decrypt, “We need to get data on how monetary policy impacts the Frontier economy and, in the best case scenario, we would get the demand curves and supply curves. We need a lot of data.”
“The next experiments are contingent on the results from this experiment,” he explained. “But the goal is just to get a better understanding of the closed economy before we decide sometime in the cycle that we will open it—and then we get more information.”
By a closed economy, Þórarinsson is referring to the game not yet having a token that can be exchanged for real-world currencies. Once the economy opens up to this possibility, the stakes get much higher. Given that, he wants the financial system to be as perfect as possible before then.
Of course, another culprit for revealing the Frontier team plans to operate 60-day development cycles is CCP Games' CEO Hilmar Pétursson.
After this initial experiment, the game will enter a series of 60-day cycles in which new gameplay and economic features will be added to the game to further the “grand experiment,” as CCP Games CEO Hilmar Pétursson put it.
Given people working at central banks tend not to blab a lot (a requirement for an economist in the EVE universe), the culprit probably was Hilmar. I really feel so after reading this interesting tidbit.
Pétursson told Decrypt that he expects the economy to be opened up within the next couple of quarters, meaning a token launch would likely happen during this period. But he admits it will be years until CCP Games is “fully hands-off,” leaving Eve Frontier with a fully self-sustaining economy underpinned by autonomous smart contracts.
Did Hilmar just announce a release date of Q4 2025 for EVE Frontier? I would imagine any opening up of the economy such that the game's crypto-currency is exchangeable for a currency like ethereum would mark the game as open for business. I seriously hope not because I think Þórarinsson should have as much time as he needs to get everything ready. Unless, of course, our overlords in Anyang are getting impatient.
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