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Real Money Inside in MMORPGs?
Cranial writes "Sony Interactive expressly forbids the selling of Everqest or Everquest II ingame items or characters for money, but why? Imagine Massively Multiplayer Games where you can actually cash out your loot in the real world.
What if that jewel in the dragon hoard was actually a digital title for the Hope Diamond or a real ancient artifact?
This article on Programmers Heaven proposes a new economic model for MM games allowing free exchange of game money and items in the real world. Essentially it is a hybridization between online gaming (casino) and MM roleplaying games. Fascinating concept."
There (www.there.com) is already kinda doing this. You can use your credit card to buy ThereBucks at like $1.00 == ~$T1030.00. In addition to this you can create products - clothing, cars ect that you can sell and make more ThereBucks.
With ThereBucks you can buy transportation things (buggys, hoverboards) and all sorts of clothing - Some of which is created by There and a lot is created by There users. Theres even an auction system.
Its pretty sweet.
/* Lobster Stick To Magnet!*/
Project Entropia already do this.
This is a great idea but it brings up a host of new problems. Who owns online items? What legal recourse is there if someone cheats? Who is liable for your money. etc.
People spend so much time and effort on MMORPGs that they should allow people to actually make a little money.
Anyone ever had the misfortune to actually run any sort of online gaming environment?
Ever had to deal with the piles of complaints from 12 year olds upset that they lost something of no real-life value?
And you want now give them things WITH real life value they can complain about losing?
Gee, I wonder why the gaming companies aren't signing up for that.
paintball
If you make income from it and you report it, you will be taxed. Casual players probably won't report the sell but if your making a living doing it and you dont want to feel the wrath of the tax Gestapo then you will report it just like 1000s do selling on Ebay.
Deja Vu. Back in the May 1985 issue of Dragon Magazine, I published a story Catacomb where the main character was trying to raise cash by playing a mulit-user dungeon crawling game. I often wondered why on-line gambling went with casino games instead of following the D&D model.
Actually, "crouching away at their computer, beating wombat after wombat to get the extra gold and items" is the fun of this type of game. In Diablo II groups of people routinely get together and repeatedly go and kill certain boss monsters over and over and over again, either because those monsters drop the phat loot or are good for leveling your characters. They create a new game, go in, kill the baddies, collect the loot, then leave the game and start another. Typical cycle time is less than 5 minutes.
They'll do this for hours on end. They aren't doing it to get items to sell on eBay (some do, but most don't). They are doing it because by doing so they are working towards a goal -- finding just the right magic item for their particular character, or leveling a character up.
You see the same thing in Ultima Online, EverQuest, and all the other MMORPGs. There's even a term for it: Camping. Like, guilds of players get together and decide what to camp during the night's play session.
These games are creating real economics. It takes time to level up characters and collect sets of powerful magic items. Time = money. There is actual supply and demand at play here. Some people have extra stuff they don't want. Many trade or sell them for other items in the game. Some take it to eBay and take advantage of market demand to sell their items. There are plenty of players who want the uber loot and don't want to invest hundreds of hours in getting it. It is worth it to them to shell out a few greenbacks to save themselves that time.
The unfortunate side-effect of these in-game items having real-world value is that people do find ways to cheat or automate obtaining them. There are always stories floating around about people with "bot" game clients automating the monster camping process. This is a problem the game developers and publishers have to deal with.
There are at least two ways of looking at the sale of in-game items. On the one side, the game publisher claims that the in-game items have no cash value, much like a sweepstakes ticket. On the other side, people who trade in-game items for real-world money argue that they're not selling goods -- they're selling services. Specifically, they are selling you the time it took them to obtain the item. They spend the time, you get the benefit.
IANAL, but these games don't qualify as gambling, even though often a random number generator controls when you get loot and what it is. You pay a flat subscription rate for the MMORPGs, and Diablo II gives you unlimited free play with purchase of the game software. You aren't betting real money -- at best, you are betting some of your time spent camping for the chance to win something that alters your gameplay experience.
As far as "role play" goes -- people do actually role play in these games. The actual definition varies. For many, role playing is the point of the game instead of building the perfect character. More power to them. In this case, the ones we are actually talking about are the ones who want to "win" the game, not the ones who just want to hang out with like-minded friends in collective make-believe.
Fun with Anagarams! LADS HOST, SHALT DOS. HAS DOLTS. AD SLOTHS, HATS SOLD. ASS HO, LTD.
isn't that how the US economy works?
dollars used to be backed by gold, which were basically titles to some of the gold stored at fort knox or whereever else they had it.
now the us only keeps a certain percentage of gold for every dollar in circulation and i think it keeps decreasing.
Even with duping most online economies are very stable (although I haven't seen many duping problems in EQ).
The real problem is the law. If The EQ pp is given a dollar value, then "real-world" legal issues come into play. I could definitly imagine a case where an expensive item drops (EQ fungi tunic sells for about $195) and there is a law suit because someone unfairly looted the item.
There is also gambling in EQ. If I can go buy pp, gamble, and cash in my winnings (presuming I win), then EQ becomes a casino.
These are all legal issues that sony can avoid by making sales of items illegal.
Check out www.there.com. It's not so much a game but a place to 'meet' people online and chat, play little games, buy things, etc. But they have a real economic system going on inside.
I was going to join their beta (there beta?) but I decided I didn't have the time or inclination.
This has been the concept behind Project Entropia which has been in development for some time. I suggest you check it out, as it is a very interesting idea.
Wired magazine did a whole article about this a few months ago. But I don't recall what month. A google search turned up this article, but it's not quite what I remember.
The gist of it was, even though the Everquest license argreement prohibits selling virtual goods for real dollars, people do it anyway. And you can figure out what the exchange rates are. Turns out that the total "economy" of the Everquest world exceeds that of some third-world economies. You even get weird situations where people are clicking their people around very boring jobs, "because their clan needs the money."
Where is the line between game and work?
All in all, a fascinating analysis of the issue. I agree with the author -- someday we will have money-based games, but they will generate a lot of unhappiness.
Singles of the virtual Magic cards are traded and sold right alongside the real cards at websites like CardShark and those of individual card and comic shops. However, I haven't come upon a deal that sells both the virtual card and its real counterpart in the same deal.
Doing it is equivalent to online gaming (casino).
Sony aren't in the casino game, they don't want to be in the casino game, and they don't want the legal hassles of the casino game.
That's why.
www.projectentropia.com They already use this model, they take 5% exchange rate each way, and they decay all of their weapons. Now if their gameplay didn't suck so bad (tons of lag etc.) it would be really fun, as it is, well..
Within the arms of tragedy, there is little comfort in being right.