IBM Tries Middleware For MMO Economies

Thanks to Wired News for its article discussing IBM's new Business Integration for Games (BIG) middleware for online gaming, technology which "lets game publishers install billing software to keep track of transactions in their online worlds", and IBM claim might "make it easier for the publishers to charge players to gain access to new content or new areas to explore -- something that currently has to be done with expansion packs and incremental product releases." According to the IBM project manager, the BIG project could "allow users to unlock new weapons or powers by paying for them within the context of the game", and it's also suggested that the tech, though just a sophisticated in-game billing system, might mean "hard-core fans could develop their own content, insert it into the game and make money from other fans."

Comments

what I see from this

[Anonymous Coward]

BigBadMonster is DEAD!

You gain 150000000 experience points.

$15 has been billed to your account.

A pyramid scheme?

[MMaestro]

"hard-core fans could develop their own content, insert it into the game and make money from other fans."

So hardcore fans makes and sell content to non-hardcore fans, while the developing team makes and sells more content to the hardcore fans, while the producers makes and sells bandwidth and servers to the developing team?

Unless they charge a low price for this type of game, it won't have mass appeal. (Pay a front-end fee, a subscription fee, AND a fee for extra content? Uh, not exactly budget minded.)

Re:A pyramid scheme?

[*weasel]

The Sims Online had that essential scheme in their design doc - though i don't know how the player-content wound up (it wasn't there at release, and i wasn't there after beta).

Second Life also operates on a similar concept.

Both are certainly more 'niche' than the big games (EQ, UO, AO, DAoC, etc) - but there is a dedicated playerbase who are willing to pay the going rate (~$13/mo) for such gameplay.

The only difference is that IBM is proposing that their middleware facilitate such transactions for actual money and not in-game currency.

The gameplay is fairly proven, though the low frequency of games that embrace this model, and the (comparatively) low financial success they have certainly casts doubt on the feasibility of a middleware solution.

Keep in mind, IBM also wants to facilitate the secure trade of goods for actual money between players in other games as well (Eg. the transfer of accounts, sale of a found item, etc). But the publishers of those games certainly have the expertise and equipment necessary for such sales - and yet they are all quite resistant to 'legalize' inter-player transactions for real currency.

(common mud-wisdom shows legalizing interplayer transactions draws in corporate interests whose agents would push out the average player in their attempts to harvest and control market value of items and characters.)

Second Life is already doing this

[Critter92]

Second Life already has a vibrant economy driven by user-created content and some users are choosing to convert their in-world earnings back in US$ via Gaming Open Market. Terra Nova has extensive discussions of the strength of the SL economy, as well as some of the problems that can arise from using real-world currency in virtual worlds -- including resident alienation, loss of suspension of disbelief, and interesting legal implications. It is also somewhat specious to suggest that pulling real-world currency into a virtual world somehow enables user-created content. The billing system, whether in US$ or SL's L$, was certainly a complicated component of the overall product, but it was dwarfed by the complexities of 3D streaming, collaborative creation, and distributed physical simulation.