Principal Economy Designer
An Economy Designer in game development is responsible for creating and maintaining balanced, data-informed in-game economies that support engaging progression systems and monetisation mechanics. Their work involves designing currency flows, reward structures, content rollouts, and virtual goods systems that align with the overall gameplay experience. They develop and iterate on economic models and simulations to ensure systems remain fair, scalable, and engaging over time, while continuously refining them through analysis of player behavior, performance metrics, and competitor benchmarks. Economy Designers support configuration pipelines and tools used for balancing gameplay elements, and work closely with game designers, data analysts, product managers, and LiveOps teams to ensure seamless integration of economic systems within broader game features and live content strategies.
- Experience working on games in pre and post-launch development environments.
- Experience modelling/maintaining complex Economies (MMO, Strategy-MMO, RPG).
- Demonstrated experience in defining and maintaining Live Ops strategies to drive sustained engagement and monetisation.
- Ability to model and simulate planned changes, anticipating downstream effects, and making adjustments prior to releasing changes.
- Advanced understanding of Excel, SQL and/or Python.
- Ability to simulate and prototype progression systems in Excel.
- Strong knowledge in macro and behavioural economics (game theory, sociology) to create the in-game economy and its money life cycle (production, sinks, inflation).
Software & Tools
Excel
SQL
Python
Technical Areas
Economy modeling and simulation
UA/retention/monetisation strategy
LiveOps systems
player engagement analytics
A/B testing and player metrics
Interpersonal Skills
Collaboration
Partnership across disciplines
Organisational agility