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An Xbox Live-like Service For Open/Indie Gaming?
Byrne Reese writes "Amidst all the crazy ideas in online video entertainment in the past year, there is a small company called Arena Unlimited that is taking an interesting approach to gaming economies. As near as I can tell, they're trying to open up a multitude of online gameplay services (e.g., opponent matching, free market item trading) to the masses (i.e., open source and independent PC game developers). (I shudder to think what would happen if one could actually introduce a legitimate and real free market economy into The Sims.) It's no Xbox Live, and their list of supported games is pretty small, but if they can do all that they say they may one day support, then sign me up."
From all my poking around and googling I can really find little/no actual information on it. Their FAQs are empty (except for "future releases") and I can't even tell what it is. Is it a console game/system? computer game?
In all appearances this looks more like a Phantom Then an actual "gaming news story".
Just as there was never a real implementation of Communism, there is no real "free market capitalism."
There are, on a simple level, two reasons for this. One, no one can really agree what "free market capitalism" or "communism" is. The second one is that there's no way in hell politicians would ever inact something that makes sense without perverting it with "political realities."
Being an economist is definitely a dismal science ;-)
One of the prolems with this idea is that, in a game, it just doesn't matter. Your economic theory will work different in a situation where being broke means that you just can't afford the new cool thing vs. being broke means you will die. And if death were permanent in an MMOG, then people wouldn't play it.
=Brian
There is nothing so good that someone, somewhere, will not hate it.
I really can't see this one working. If developers are cheap enough to use a small, cheap, independent service such as this one - and consumers don't want to pay for it - why the heck does anyone think they're going to buy anything that's advertised?
Boring is relative. I, for one, am intrigued by the emergent economies in MMO games. This should allow us to freely study economic effects is a vacuum environment - and that, for anyone even slightly interested in microeconomics, is fascinating.
...true capitalistic free market anyway.
It's called the "Black Martket".
Drugs, cigarettes, prostitution, software, satellite cards, anything that is regulated and/or taxed to opression or overpriced or has unserved demand due to a monopoly has a black market and as such also has a true free market.
All that participate, do so by choice. They take the risks for the rewards. They pay the costs for the product. All suppliers compete in a totally unregulated fashion and all buyers are free to choose based on price and product.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
For one, there is an external force artificially deflating the number of available sellers and buyers. Sellers further reduce their own availability through rather underhanded behaviors. Buyers rarely have more than one supplier, and actual price competition is equally rare. Product has frequent impurities / misrepresentations. Information is horded by those who have it, lest external forces come down upon them.
True free market economics, where every party knows all of the prices available to them and the actual quality level and statistics of the products offered, is impossible without regulating bodies ensuring that all parties adhere to such high standards of information accuracy.
Just because a market is flying under the radar of the "evil, oppressive, taxing government" doesn't mean it is a free market. Try getting 5 quotes for verifiably 90% pure cocane on a Friday night.
The ______ Agenda
I'll have to assume you aren't trolling, because the first half of your comment was exactly what I was thinking.
The second half, however... Integrated office suites existed before MS Office (ClarisWorks, Symantic Greatworks, etc), integrated media players existed before Media Center, networked mail management programs existed before Mono (see also, nearly all of UNIX), online gaming communities with matching and stats existed before XBox Live (Gamespy, et al).
Open Source developers aren't always the most creative group out there, with a lot of effort reproducing favorite tools that aren't available on their favorite platform, but claiming that they are always copying Microsoft is inaccurate. Why not say that Mozilla is a copy of I.E.? Because I.E. is a copy of Netscape Navigator. The Gimp is not a clone of MS Paint, but Photoshop. Jabber? An altogether superior beast inspired as much by ICQ and AIM as MSN. If Microsoft wasn't this behemoth company that tries to copy everyone else move for move, there wouldn't be this assumption that everyone is attempting to copy Microsoft. Note that you still can't get Clippy in OpenOffice.
The ______ Agenda
I have been playing Basebal Mogul Online for about 3 years now. The price has stayed the same ($5 per month for one team). It only requires a browser to play and there are no updates client side.
You can play it on a 56K connection and don't need the latest graphics card.
There are never any guarantees but I think in a way small gaming comanies are much less likely to screw you over or get closed down by the parent company. The only risk is that they might run out of money but that is the case with any game.
Four online games at a time, eh? Not much of an online gamer, are you? I've got time for ONE online game, the infamous EverCrack. If I didn't have a mortgage (and hence, a job), I might be able to do another similar game. But 4? I would have to have a clone living in a parallel universe to be able to invest that kind of time to 'stick' with 4 online games (as opposed to just trying them out)--and insane to WANT to. Before throwing out numbers, kindly think of something to back them up.
Perhaps its more that PC gamers have longer attention spans when it comes to online games than Console gamers, or maybe just the target audience of XBox Live/PS2 online users. However, Console gamers don't have short attention spans. I know firsthand that there's still strong and growing messageboards for Super Metroid (1994) and Final Fantasy Tactics (1998). Pac Man and Super Mario Bros have their own solid fanbases as well, and I know several console gamers who still play NES games.
Now, console gamers are divided. I've heard from teachers of high-school age students who buy a shiny new game every month. My strong suspicion is that online console gaming is new/expensive enough that this is the primary audience. When it becomes more practical, and when there are games worth going online for, then, perhaps, you'll find online console gamers with quite long attention spans indeed.
Ummm, how is that remotely exclusive to Xbox Live?
What's more, Xbox Live actually solves that problem to some extent. Drop a game because you are losing, and it is attached to your more or less permanent online record. No anonyminity to hide behind...
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
Oh please... If I hear any more "PC gamers are like this, while console gamers are like that" sweeping generalizations I'm gonna barf.
As someone who plays both, I find it funny to be told that when I grab the PS2 controller suddenly my attention span takes a nose dive. Or whatever else.
But let's talk attention span. It's PC games which typically are over in 8 to 10 hours. There's an entire industry churning mindless 8 hour FPS clones for the PC.
Whereas most console games I've played packed 50 hours or more. Even KOTOR which was _huge_ for a PC game, was actually somewhat short for its genre as a console game.
E.g., on the PC you get racing games with maybe 3 to 5 cars to choose from. Most are with cars from only one manufacturer. Some are with only _one_ car total. On the consoles? GT2. 'Nuff said.
Want to talk online games? Good. Phantasy Star Online? Had a lot of people playing it for ages.
So some people are being obsessive about a single game. And in the case of some people I know, they're actually playing the same map again and again, because that's the map on which they can impress their clan.
I've watched someone, day after day and months after months, playing the exact same Counter-Strike map, running to the exact same spot, and jumping up and down in front of the same vent to see if someone's coming. _Hours_ in a row _each_ _day_ spent actually just jumping in place in front of the exact same vent hole. (Virtual aerobic, or what?;)
It's not an issue of "attention span", nor of "PC vs consoles". It's just sad. And they'd do it on consoles just as well, if they had a clan of retards to impress with their l33t score.
MMORPGs as a _game_ (i.e., talking about those who actually _play_ them, and not just use them as a fancy chat room with graphics) catter to a variation of the same obsessive compulsive group. The kind which puts up with 12 hours a day of boring, repetitive, mindless clicking on monsters, and with waiting in line for 5 hours at a monster respawn point... just to get to level 50 and build a castle. And imagines that anyone will actually envy him/her for that achievement.
Again, it's not an issue of "attention span", and I do believe they'd be just as sad on a console.
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