EVE Online developer CCP Games has brought on Icelandic economist Stefn rarinsson to serve as its new head of economy.rarinsson will help the studio "refine and legitimize" in-game player economies for its space survival game, EVE Frontier, and ensure the system "operate with the same diligence and analysis applied to real-world economies.""His appointment advances our goal toward building a truly open financial system within a virtual world," wrote CEO Hilmar Veigar Ptursson. "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.""Virtual economies are living, evolving financial systems that demand serious study," wrote rarinsson. "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."EVE Online's economy has been largely player-driven and operates on supply and demand. In 2007, CCP hired economist Eyjlfur Gumundsson to oversee the game's economy, a first-time event for the industry. After his exit in 2014, CCP hopes Frontier and rarinsson can continue the first game's "landmark work" in this regard and help its overall goal of "providing valuable insight into digital finance and decentralized economic systems."In hand with rarinsson's hiring, Frontier is getting a number of economy-related updates, the first of which focuses on monetary inflation, data gathering on players' decision-making and economic adaptation. Later updates will be done through CCP's Founder membership tier, providing a "fully controlled environment to model, predict, and optimize how virtual economies function under different conditions."Those results, said CCP, 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."