Slashdot Mirror
A Real Living With Virtual Goods
RussHart writes "The BBC is reporting on a Julian Dibbell who has quit his day job to sell items from Ultima Online in the real world, hopefully making a living on which to support his wife & daughter."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
If you're not duping items or some such, it's because you're in front of the game for hour after hour after hour hording things to sell on ebay. Bet you anything he works longer hours than he did at his 'real job' to make anywhere near as much money.
...instead of being afraid that officials'll crackdown on this and kill his livelihood?
In a capitalist society, items are worth exactly what the market will bear. Notice that nowhere here is there a distinction about corporial/non-conrporial items.
"To any truly impartial person, it would be obvious that I am right."
I've been following his blog since he wrote "The Unreal Estate Boom" for Wired.
I haven't even played Everquest but it still makes for interesting reading.
"The number of Unix installations has grown to ten, with more expected." (Unix Programmer's Manual, 2nd ed.; june 1972)
Well good luck to him. One problem I've found working at home is a lack of social interaction with friends. Also it can be far to easy to work at any time. Hopefully the online community will at least support him to some respect. However you can't beat a good drink out with the lads (or ladesses)
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
was on K5 a while ago, it's basically a HOWTO.
I played UO back in the day (around 2000) and I managed to sell my account for about $500 (US dollars).
Personally, I can't understand how someone can actually quit their job to sell game items. To me, it's just not enough money for the work that must be done. What if the game goes under? Here's a whatever year old man with no job. Good luck getting a job, considering the market. What's he gunna do, move on to another game?
[sig]www.masterslate.org[/sig]
I mean, what do developers for money each day? - Generally, they create code that has no real substance outside the digital realm. Sure it might be useful to some folks, but game items are equally useful to the players using them.
I know little about these games, but it seems to me there's better money in a hack to produce virtual goods outside the context of the game, and bring them in. Eg, produce compatible objects in code, and insert it into the game. Consider it as an Import business. I'll ignore the economic ramifications for now though...
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Back in the 90's, quite a few people that visit Slashdot made a good living on virtual services. Ahh, venture capital.
Are his wife and daughter in the real world too, or are they virtual items? I have been thinking about purchasing a wife to auger my girl friend.
This makes it sound like Julian Dibbell isn't what he is, a hack writer who mines the online communities he can find for grist. His article on MUDs (which he later expanded into a book was a complete smear job, a non-insightful overview of the MUD world intended to turn a small little molehill into enough of a mountain to get his paycheck. He writes self-indulgent overviews of his online comings and goings, each one crafted as if he has expertly stumbled into a forbidden cave of insight and perspective. No doubt this current project is the most recent seed for whatever next article or tome he will lure a credulous publisher into foisting on us. Take a pass, friends.
You now owe me a new Dr. Pepper, preferrably not dispensed through my nose.
UO now has an official account transfer program whereby the buyer and seller of an account both mail in a signed contract, pay $25, and the account is "cleaned" of any black marks and then given to the buyer. If that's not encouraging the sale of UO accounts (and, as always, finding a way to skim) I don't know what is.
As for ingame trades, they've addressed a lot of the old scams.
Used to be, when you transferred a house, it popped up a little scroll-looking object in the buyer's trade window with coordinates to the house. Plenty of people fell for the scam of dropping a house deed, or even some worthless magic scroll, in the trade window instead of actually transferring the house. Now, when you buy a house, special gumps pop up.
You used to be able to position a black floppy hat on top of a normal (10 gold piece) dye tub in the trade window, making it look like a then-coveted black dye tub. Black dye tubs at the time were labeled "dying tub" just like any other dye tub, so if the buyer checked the tub instead of clicking on the hat, he thought he was getting a black dye tub. They went in and relabeled all black dye tubs to "Black Dye Tub" to address that scam.
There are lots of other examples, but in general, UO does try to crack down on scamming and keep the trading safe.
ex-Frigax
Lake Superior
(heh, feels strange typing that again
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
BIA(Brittanian Industrial Average) plummeted today. Analysts cited over-valuation as a major cause of the sudden drop in virtual commodity prices. "Virtual Futures just aren't performing as well as most E-bay traders had hoped." ........ President Bush's invasion of Brittania for 'virtual weapons of virtual mass destruction' without UVN consent also seems to have contributed to the poor market conditions....... Two virtual traders jumped out their windows in response to the market's downward plunge, but only managed to break their ankles. "He must have thought he was in a skyscraper. Good thing he was only in our living room!"
I guess you could say the same thing about much of commercial law, the stock market,and insurance. And there is more money in all these things than in being a real producer or creator.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
I have two friends who make their living by selling virtual stuff in EverQuest. The one who started it first now makes about $1000 a week... it took him about half a year to build a character sufficient enough though... the other one is just starting to make money but he says he can also make like 200-300 dollars a week.
++K
<[letter kay][at][number seventy seven][dot][finnish TLD]>
So isn't he (amongst others) using child labor? How ingenious to make work look like play.
A joke, of course, but the thought of having UO sweatshops where kids can play UO as long as they give the owner a share of the loot, is not far. :-)
"Real world" money defeats the purpose of the MUD or MMORPG, as this is for myself, and as I understand this to be for many others.
As I have said in the past, the hope in the ideal of the MUD or MMORPG is that who or what we may be in the "real world" does not in any way limit who or what we can be in this alternate reality.
While one individual selling items for "real world" cash may not have significant effect, this behavior, in principle, is unacceptable if the above is the purpose of the MUD or MMORPG.
When my opportunity to behave as I would like and have a legitimate expectation to be able to in this alternate reality is restricted as a result of my subservience in the "real world" to the political and economic power of another, or of the elite, then I have not even in this alternate reality escaped their reach.
While we might certainly pretend that those who are powerful in this alternate reality as a result of their political and economic power in this reality, are not so for this reason, but are instead for some false or fanciful reason put in the context of the alternate reality, I refuse to do this, and I urge other concerned persons to voice this position.
Why would we bring this upon ourselves? Is the political and economic power of the elite of this world not sufficiently overbearing, that we should directly permit behaviors which have the effect of extending their reach into another?
Does the thought entertain you, that your superior who has power over you from Monday to Friday, from 9 to 5, can for a price extend his power over you, his enjoyment at the price of your integrity, and his opportunity at the price of your hope, even when you at home think you have finally escaped?
I will not be the pawn of another's wealth; not in this world, and not in any other.
.sig Realistic fines for copyright in
...that the artical makes out like MONEY is somehow real. C'mon people, money hasn't been real since the Gold Stardard was dropped, and depending who you talk to it wasn't real even then. The value of anything is determined by what people agree it is worth - everything: cars, your house, your labour, big businesses, shares, options, and yes, even imaginary gold.
* Neo pays with plastic
<Morpheus> You think that's money you're spending now?
It's ALL virtual. The sooner you realise that the sooner you can stop being a slave to money.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Game admins in MMOGs like UO and EQ have the power to create items, or edit accounts, or something similar whereby they can arbitrarily collect real-world saleable items. They could hoard a large number of very highly prized items or just a huge amount of gold, and then sell them to real players, creating money out of nothing - no hours spent crawling the landscape and no risk taken with real-world trading. They wouldn't even need to do it with their own account, simply use their higher knowledge of the gamescape to point a pleb account they own to the locations of hidden hoards of items or prizes.
I'm not saying game admins are a dodgy lot, I'm sure most if not all of them are completely honest, but all it would take is one guy with just the right amount of in-game power to crank up quite the profitable R(PG)acket.
When I was still in college, I realized that I didn't have alot of money to play with. I thought about getting a job (I had quit my high school job to go to college), but then I realized that the hours would kill me (commuting to the job, working, then commuting back home, would waste valuable time that could be spent playing games and doing homework). So I just made an MF sorc, and started doing runs. I would play for maybe 3 or 4 hours a day, and in between classes. I never used any bots (out of fear), only maphack. Every day or so, I was able to get myself some Ith equipment, rare runes, and so much more. Then I'd be off to eBay, to make some profit. While this may piss off alot of you, I was able to go drinking several times a week, and take my girlfriend out often enough to keep her with me to this day, and buy myself things to amuse myself with. Much better than flipping burgers at Wendy's, like I used to, although not quite what I am making now :P
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
ok, first bids start at 5$.
excellent karma, maybe ~10 fans, over 1000 posts! also for sale: karmawhoring tips, foolproof karma comments & other items of excellency for the one in need of a karma boost, inquire now!
start bidding!
ok i'm joking. but if you really want to shell out $$$ for slashdot user, let me know, ok ?-D
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
It tends to fluxuate. I can remember several years ago when it was around $30 per million, $35 if you needed it right away or bought smaller amounts.
At that time, being a millionaire in UO wasn't rare, but it wasn't common, either. When I first started the game, it took me several months to earn 100,000 gold pieces to buy a house from someone. Fast-forward a few years. A couple of duping bugs, along with a house deed exploit, brought mass inflation and the price of gold bottomed out around $10 per million. In comparison, the house that cost me 100,000 gold pieces some two years prior was selling for 5-6 million! Around the time I quit playing seriously, the gold price had climbed a bit, back to $15 or so per million. I guess it's risen a bit higher since then.
There are also variations from sale to sale even throughout a single day. There's no standard rate, it's sort of like filling up your gas tank. One gas station might be charging $1.659/gallon, then you drive 3 blocks down the road and another station is selling it for $1.599. Similarly, you might go to Tradespot and find someone selling a million gold for $17.50, and no other sales are open, so you buy it. Ten minutes later someone else posts saying they've got gold for sale at $15 per million; you win some, you lose some.
And, just like any other business, there are always a) suckers and b) desperate customers. If gold is averaging $15.00, there'll be some guy posting 10 eBay auctions with a minimum bid and Buy It Now of $17.50, and probably half of them will sell. Someone who needs a few mil in a hurry - say, to buy a house - might stand at the bank in-game and offer to pay $20 per million; it's faster than going over to one of the trading boards.
This varies wildly. When I was last playing, experienced players who had built up or purchased decent characters (and had time to spare) could make 1 or 2 million a day through honest play, using normal game mechanics as opposed to cheating or exploiting. I didn't find this type of person to be the average profiteer, though. Like the parent mentioned, spending 8 hours "working" only to reap $30 or so is no bargain. I used to enjoy powergaming now and then, where I'd spend a day or two doing nothing but trying to earn as much gold as possible, but it was usually for my own spending in-game. After a day or two it always got very boring.
For awhile, there was a "taming boom" which introduced billions of gold pieces into the UO economy. At some point, people started to figure out that a single tamer towing around several dragons or drakes and a nightmare could literally own just about any dungeon room on the entire map. You could sit in one spot for hours on end, letting your tamed pets kill everything for you. When you wound up with more loot than you could carry, you made a quick round-trip recall to and from a bank to drop off the loot and pick up some bandages for the pets. Meanwhile, your pets gained stats and skills - and thus became stronger - from all the fighting.
And thus the taming boom started. Hunting in dungeons turned into a lame experience, because no matter where you went, you'd find tamers camping the good spawn spots. The tamers shouted "go to Felluca" but it was the same situation there, except that some of the tamers were killing each other. Worse, because taming became known as the way to make gold, and because UO became known as a game where you could make real money by playing, it attracted the worst of the worst. A game set in Victorian times tends to lose its atmosphere where you walk into the dungeon and encounter a group of tamers named PiMPiN HaRd, deeznuttz, KindGreenBud, and TupacLivzOn hogging all of the mons
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
Some years ago, an unauthorized third-party program called UO Extreme (UOX) was released. Among other things, the program allowed you to send unorthodox color combinations when coloring a dye tub. I don't recall the specifics, but essentially, when you colored a dye tub through the normal process, the UO client would send an RGB code to the server indicating which color to make the dye tub. But the sanity check was on the client side. UOX let you put in arbitrary RGB values which were not available from the normal UO client.
And so the black dye tub was born, and people started dying their clothes black. Since black clothing, and black dye tubs themselves, were uncommon (because only those with the UOX program could make them), they fetched a premium price. UOX was deemed an illegal add-on and people who used it were banned from the game, thus locking the supply. For whatever reason, the existing black dye tubs were left alone. The demand continued to rise - this is normal in UO, any sort of "rare" item where there are only a certain number available will attract buyers. "Rares" trading and collecting has become a cottage industry of UO.
All of a sudden there were a limited number of black dye tubs in the world, and since they could no longer be created, they got expensive. That's why they were coveted.
Years later, a black dye tub was added as a legitimate Veteran Reward item.
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
$1000 in 3 weeks, while his wife and kids were away. They're going to be eating a lot of rice and lima beans, and let's hope they don't get ill.
Heck, let's go over the numbers again:
"Mr Big" is one of a handful of Ultima players who make six figure sums annually from their trades.
Assuming "six figure" is $100,000, at an average auction price of $7 (which seems to be the case from the ones I've seen) that's 14285 transactions per trader per year, or 40 competed transactions each and every day of the year for these traders. Cutting that back to an 222 working day year, it's 64 completed transactions per day.
Push the average value up, and it becomes more manageable, but then you have to spend more time on each trade. And remember, you've only got 225,000 rubes to sell to. If the "handful" of six figure traders is three, then that's $1.33 from each and every rube every year, which seems reasonable until you consider the dozens, hundreds, thousands of casual traders scrabbling for their money.
It's easy to say that you're making money at this. It's even possible to fool yourself. But until I see IRS filings, I'm going to take it with a huge pinch of salt.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.