Dr. Eyjólfur Guðmundsson, the economist from CCP, HIIT’s partner in virtual economy research, has published one more Quarterly Economic Newsletter (QEN) for EVE Online. The latest issue deals with Q1/2008 and can be found here (the previous ones are Q3/2007 and Q4/2007). The latest issue includes updates to some of the indices that have been published in the past. In addition, there’s some information on one profession that the characters can take in EVE, that is, on manufacturing activity.

The share of characters that were engaged in some manufacturing activities during the Q1 of 2008 was 20 %, but only about 4 % of characters were doing manufacturing jobs on a continuous basis. So, if specialization is defined in this way, only a small portion of characters were actually specialized in this particular profession.

By the way, the QEN actually discusses “production” instead of “manufacturing”. I prefer reserving the former term to refer the activities in which inputs are used to produce outputs in general, and not only the particular game mechanic that uses the metaphor of physical production lines.

In his blog post, Dr. Guðmundsson promises a series of Newsletters during the rest of the year, so that Q4 will be out on January. Follow the EVE Online Dev Blog for news on the matter.