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When Play Money Becomes Real
Thanks to Wired News for its article analyzing the commercial potential of the trade in MMO virtual items, focusing on Internet Gaming Entertainment (IGE), of which CEO Brock Pierce claims "has more than 100 full-time employees in Hong Kong and the United States... [and] is hiring about five new people a week." Pierce also makes claims that: "In this industry, it's eBay and us... we're the major players", and elsewhere, a Sony Online spokesperson "is aware of IGE and has spoken with the company" with regard to their EverQuest item sales, concluding: "At this point, we're still sort of trying to decide what direction the company's going to move in on this topic." We've previously covered the financial dealings of IGE.
Yeah I heard that. It was on yesterday afternoon. Really interesting to hear people talk about the games they play, they had some President from the Sims Online as well as some people who called in who played DaOC and stuff. Nice to see there is at least a little media attention being paid to it.
I think it's an acceptable practice to sell the items you work for. You do work for them, even if you don't realize it. There is a lot of time spent gathering items in a virtual world, and while it may be entertainment, there's nothing that says you can't enjoy being paid for those hundreds of hours you spent playing EQ or whatnot.
One thing NPR brought up, and it's a good point, is about how this will all play out, the buying and selling of virtual items, and how it has an effect on content control. They talked about media censorship in a game environment such as the Sims Online, so you've not only got economies being created virtually, you've got the idea of control developing. Who controls the items you obtain online? Who controls what you can say online? My guess would be that a self-regulated body controlled by a corporation has the right to censor any material, but who owns game-earned content?
Also, does this currency truly require its own place among currency tables? Probably not, because the games don't last long enough, they aren't stable currency. And it's doubtful there will ever be a currency transferrable between other economies. Maybe two companies could collaborate and use the same currency and have methods to transfer that currency. When we start seeing environments like this, that's when it'll really start to get interesting.
I played FFXI for just the free trial month, and given the level limits etc. I guess I tend to agree that there isn't much value in auctioned money etc.
In EverQuest however most of the "old world" items have no level limits, so you can give your level 1 character what was, in the old days, the absolute best gear. Thus buying plat online is of great value. HOWEVER, you never get THE BEST. The BEST items currently are in the "Plane of Time" (ignoring recent expansion which I don't understand), and you have to play seriously just to get in there, or eBay a character that can.
Buying plat has ups and downs. The upside is that if you are a working stiff with a wife and kids, you can get your character decent enough equipment such that you can be useful to other people playing the game. Without such equipment many people will snob you out of their groups/raids/guilds/etc. I see it happen every day " can't tank for shit, her AC is 1000 and she can't hold agro", so they find someone else or make do with other strategies.
The downside is that buying plat makes this elitism problem WORSE because in some peoples minds there is no excuse for not having 1400 AC by level 52. Sucky equipment? Give yantis some money, he'll give you some plat. Secondly, the flood of plat coming in to the game drives prices sky high. Decent items right now sell for 100ks worth of platinum (100k plat is about $70 US). If you play legit, and do not buy plat online, that amount of money is essentially unattainable without spending a lot of time doing very boring things. Finally, I'm not sure how IGE gets the plat, but I can't help but shake the belief that Sony isn't getting a peice of the action, and that makes me mad.
This is the online equivalent of the mary sue problem, except that since EQ is largely a strategy/combat based game, if you're NOT a mary sue you are at a disadvantage.
Online trading/selling of items predates Ultima Online by quite a bit.
I remember playing a MUD around 1994-ish.
The administrators would sell "uber" items (you'd just send them a check) and when players got tired of their characters they would try to auction them off to others.
I'm sure this sort of thing was done on BBS door games and the like as well, so finding the "first" would probably take a while.
This was brought up on a K5 article by Rusty at some point, think about it:
The only problem is that your ''dirty'' money has to be in a bank account to start with. Normally it's in cash, unless you have a serious sum that needs washing, in which case you'd risk distorting the online markets you washed your money through.
<disclaimer>I haven't tried this myself, and I don't suggest other people do either. But if anyone does, let me know how it goes :-)</disclaimer>