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Castronova's Notes on Hacker Court
scubacuda writes "Cal State Fullerton's Edward Castronova (who recently wrote an excellent analysis of gender inequality between male and female Everquest avatars) has just updated his notes on 'Hacker Court', a mock trial held at Vegas' Black Hat Conference on whether virtual items destroyed during the hack of an online video game constituted real loss. 'No verdict was reached, but the jury and audience agreed that the damages were real,' says Castronova."
While I understand the issue, if I spent hours of time leveling up, gsearch for secret items and rare bonuses I'd be pissed too, if someone hacked it and all my hard work was for nothing. But what about the devlopers who design the game constantly changing it, giving some really kewl items, then for no reason they nerf it out of existance, so it becomes worthless. I feel the next big jump in mmorpg's will be when the users have more control over what happens in the realm of the game, then things will become "interesting" to say the least.
Somebody with bad intentions hacks into the server and destroys your virtual items. Later, the hack is revealed. The sysadmin either goes to the backup or resets a few counters. Virtual items are returned to you.
I suspect that's the crux of the problem--whether or not the sysadmin would actually return the items/counters or just say "tough luck". As an off-and-on FFXI player, I've had to deal with Square taking the latter position (albeit on bugs rather than cracks) far too often. If it took you X number of days to acquire an item or the like, and through no fault of your own that item suddenly disappeared, then yes, the real time you spent acquiring that item is a real loss.
You have to look at the buyers of EQ accounts to get the reasons behind the price differences.
A buyer of a high level EQ account is most likely to be a person that wants a position of power and respect in the game. They want the to be the 'best'. Or near the top anyway.
So much so, that they are willing to pay hundreds of real US dollars for it. This type of player is most likely a male player in real life. Power and sense of being respected (looked up to) is more important to male online gamers. A high percentage of male players (over 80%) play male avatars online. So there is going to be a higher demand for high level male avatars for EQ.
In general, women play EQ for more of a sense of community and social interaction. These goals do not require a female player to purchase a high level EQ account. Also, there are only about 15-20% real life female players in EQ. So even if they were looking to buy an account there would be far fewer female buyers compared to male.
Another interesting demographic is that only 1-2% of female EQ players play as males.
Good source of info on this subject can be found here: http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/
Chew: You Nexus, huh? I design your eyes.
Roy: Chew, if only you could see what I've seen with your eyes.
No, it would be akin to paying someone $50 for a stack of Magic cards. If you had 10 mint Beta Black Lotuses (approx total value: $7000) and someone stole them, would you say "Oh well, it was just a game."? I sure hope not. Now say you have 20 foil Birds of Paradise in Magic:Online (total approx value: $1000) and someone hacks WotC's server and steals them all. Would you say it was just a game then? The line gets blurry, especially when you consider that you have to pay for packs of online cards just like you pay for packs for real cardboard.
Paper money has essentially the same properties. (I think there's probably an argument that the value of all real world items depends on who your are, but paper money is obvious.)
and fwiw, the "labor theory", aka just price, has failed in practice (in the real world). When replaced with supply and demand driven price, that succeeded. So there's a reason everyone is "enamoured" with it.
"excellent analysis of gender inequality between male and female Everquest avatars." I can't think of a more pointless thing to study. Is this guy pursuing a doctorate in Rabid Liberalism? Pfffffft!