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Economics of Online Gaming
PGillingwater writes "The Walrus has a nice article up about the economics of on-line gaming communities. Starting with the original 2001 paper which shows that Everquest has a GNP greater than India, Bulgaria and China, and going on to the billionaires of Ultima Online and the Mafia takeover of The Sims.
"He began calculating frantically. He gathered data on 616 auctions, observing how much each item sold for in U.S. dollars. When he averaged the results, he was stunned to discover that the EverQuest platinum piece was worth about one cent U.S. -- higher than the Japanese yen or the Italian lira. With that information, he could figure out how fast the EverQuest economy was growing. Since players were killing monsters or skinning bunnies every day, they were, in effect, creating wealth. Crunching more numbers, Castronova found that the average player was generating 319 platinum pieces each hour he or she was in the game -- the equivalent of $3.42 (U.S.) per hour. "That's higher than the minimum wage in most countries," he marvelled.""
Think you could cut me a check?
But it doesn't affect my economic situation at all. Should I use more lotion?
Has there been any outsourcing to Everquest yet?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
If each platinum piece on Everquest == 1 cent real life, then the programmers should create 1,000,000,000,000 platinum pieces in the game and give it to themselves. Then they would be rich!!!
Come play Heroes of Might and Magic Mini online.
this assumes all money in the game is converted to real world dollars, yen, etc.
This is a dupe.. a year old or so.
Besides I never did any 300+ plat an hour, more like 5.
Just what the EverCrackHeads need, another reason to stay glued to the computer. While I have never played the game myself, other then for a few minutes just to see what it was all about, I have had friends literally stay in the house for weeks so they could play the game. It is amazing what a hold it can have over some people. My friend honestly did not want to stop playing because he feared he would miss out on something going on within his "clan". How ironic that he missed out on so much that happened in the real world with his "friends" and "family".
Please do not let scientific accuracy interfere with the intended humourous/interesting/insightful value of this comment
The article fails to take into account that those EQ platinums aren't conversible. Meaning, you can auction them off in eBay, but only a minority will ever be. If they were a real currency, not necessarily the US dollar, then they would be convertible and these measurements and comparisions would make sense.
In that case, the value of the EQ platinum as a commodity would be much, much lower.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
I played EQ for a year and a half, averging 20 hours a week. (Quite a bit as I look back) When I "got out" I sold my character on a auction site and got 800 dollars for it! I couldn't believe it I thought that it was awesome money. Then I realized if I averaged out my time and what I got for my character, it was only like 50 cents an hour. That being said, my average was more like a "minimum" every week with some weeks being > 35 hours of game play. The other thing this study doesn't take in account for is that Sony ACTIVELY (when I played, things may have changed) fights out of game transactions, and selling in game money and items for real money. So your "PLAT" may be worth a cent each, but good luck cashing in!
1) Start playing these games when they first come out.
2) Build up a bunch up high level characters and items.
3) Sell them on ebay, or other RPG auction sites.
4) Profit!!!
If online gaming become more popular and people regularly pay money for ficticious items, what will the long term effects on the economy, and currency exchange rates be.
Are we on the road to net.currency
But we need to tell the Everquest geeks that it's still no substitute for a real job...
like valuing every ticket in a theatre based on the price the touts are charging outside the event?
Not bad, however... You do need to pay for a constant internet connection, ( EQ here, so some light form of broadband ) a PC, electricity and one EQ account. I don't think that with these constant costs substracted, EQ will be a very good job...
Hate me!
http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/blacksnow.html It's already been tried - see link above. Some enterprising guy ran a China Everquest sweatshop where the employees played Everquest all day, and whatever they collected was sold for profit.
Would someone care to give us non-gamers an overview of Everquest so I can understand the article more. Thus far, it sounds like an RPG like the Sims but with broadswords?
Please don't mod this down until someone responds with a good description of Everquest.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
Since I can't reach the page, I don't know why he only used 616 auctions (or however many he used). But you can use a tool obtained HERE for about $100 or so that will analyze Ebay listings for the past 2 weeks or so. Using this data you can get a MUCH more accurate reading that a measly 616 listings, which aren't even close to being correct since something around at least 80% of the business goes through IGE/Yantis these days. And don't forget Playerauctions which I can't access here at work due to the proxy but they don't get mentioned hardly at all nowadays despite the large amount of traffic going through them. If you want to read through more reliable reports you should instead roll around HERE (terra nova blogs) where doctors, lawyers and all sorts of other people that have been analyzing this stuff before you created your first level 1 female elven monk, lurk around.
Which would have been a fantastic article. As it is this one is interesting on its own.
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
Articles like this just make me want to get away from my computer and go enjoy the sunshine.
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
I have recently picked up the game of Texas Holdem. I figured out that it was costing me around $8.00 to play online.
So I can make $3.00/hour in one online game to fund an $8.00/hour in another online game.
Heroineware anyone?
hmmmm. If I could only reverse the two then I would be in the money. Sounds like a plan
If if was a fifth then we would all be drunk--Words to live by
Dr. Retarded Check out what they have done now.
These games are so one dimensional (I am a recovering Evercrack addict - so I know what I speak of). Working on an assembly line would be more stimulating than building tradeskills in the game; and the damage model for combat is a points based system - so if you get the math right, you can consistently win (or conversely, get it wrong and lose).
That being said, there was an addictive quality - particularly when playing with the same group of people you know in the real world (many of my coworkers played at the time). I don't know if it was the color scheme, or some subliminal message they strobed in the background between frames; whatever it was, it made it very hard to stop.
Sadly, most online games are built for the least common denominator - for folks who want instant action, and little thought put into the gameplay, with few exceptions.
I have recovered from my addiction - and I warn everyone who considers buying the game: don't do it!
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
The guides in the game (who are unpaid volunteers) are starting to get replaced, along with most of the GMs (who are employees of Sony, and used to be located in San Diego and UK) with GMs working in India.
http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2004/05/econ omics_of_ff.html#more provides more analysis of the economics of Final Fantasy.
Paul Gillingwater
MBA, CISSP, CISM
Now I don't know enough about Everquest et al. to make this thought coherent, but I'll try. Presumably there are organisations (guilds?) made up of co-operating players. These have assets, generate revenue, trade, etc.
:)
So, they should be able to issue stock! Seriously, why not?
In fact, I expect it would be easier and more natural for a derivatives market to emerge (e.g. players trading futures contracts for in-game commodities, etc).
I wouldn't be surprised if that sort of thing doesn't already happen informally, of course. But if one could buy into an investment fund / unit trust which dealt in virtual equities... definitely at the "high-risk" end of the spectrum though!
If you think about some of the business models of public companies whose shares you can invest in via the conventional stock market (ahem SCO ahem), might you actually be better off putting your money into Everquest equities?
Just a thought.
These sigs are more interesting tha
... Wow. I mean, how do I explain everquest without comparing it to toher games which you probably also have not heard of.
Ok, let's see.
Everquest is a third person RPG - with emphasis on the game instead of the roleplaying.
It is mainly based around a reasonably complex combat system and grouping together to kill things and take their stuff tm. It's like diablo.
Except it's larger - much larger. Many more areas and everyone is online in the same world (well, in a fdew seperate worlds) all at once.
It's also a lot slower - there is a big difference between the monsters you can fight in your first week of playing and after your first year of playing.
Does that help?
I never did play Everquest. But, I played Shadowbane, an Everquest-like game - where players completely controlled the economy, built cities, and created nations and guilds and fought among one another..
The first two months the game was out. One million gold pieces went for ~$100 on Ebay. It took my brother's farming character about 5 hours to earn $100. He made about $500 on Ebay when I decided to get the game. Twenty bucks an hour isn't bad for playing a video game..
Soon after I got it, gold quickly lowered in price. After about six months, 100 million gold went for $100 on Ebay. The economy was completely flooded. Any remotely valuable in-game item sold for millions of gold - or an impossibly-long farming time for a new player.
I read that some new MMORPGS that are coming out are actually going to try to take advantage of the players' willingness to pay for an advantage. Supposedly, people will be able to buy uber items that are impossible to get in-game.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
Have the enterprising written EQ "bot" programs which accumulate the platinum automatically?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
But there are sites that specialize in trading real-life dollars for in-game currency and vice-versa. I've recently started playing FFXI, and this has become a bit of a sore spot with fans, as gil (money) is in rather short supply in the game, and you need to spend a lot of it to have up-to-date equipment and be a good asset to a team (the game is weighted HEAVILY against solo play after about level 10 for all but one job class).
Some people with the Windows version are using "bots" to mainly do two things: fishing and camping for Notorius Monsters. Fishing is pretty straightforward: you sell the fish. Notorius Monsters are one-of-a-kind monsters that only appear sometimes, and often drop excellent items (Leaping Boots go for at least 250,000 gil at the auction house). Even without bots, players would have to "camp" these monsters for hours for the possibility of getting the item. But now they have even less of a chance, as people grab these items, sell them for gil, and sell the gil for dollars.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
The piece you reference was cotemporaneous with the original paper, which was indeed published over two years ago. This latest piece is an update published in the June 2004 edition of The Walrus, which has just been slashdotted up the wazoo. Anyone grab a mirror?
Anyway, if you are able to read the article, you'll find a lot more in-depth analysis of the original paper, plus comparisons with other gaming systems and economic activity -- including extortion, prostitution, outsourcing (the Black Snow gang in Mexico) and even the disproportionate dominance of male gender characters.
Paul Gillingwater
MBA, CISSP, CISM
One persons experience of trying to sell the platinum wasn't so great...
Set up your cash farming action in Old Sebilis. If you have a strong group (levels 60+) you can hunt at the bottom of the well in Sirens Grotto where the cash and gem split at the end of an evening can be 500-1kpp per hour grouped.
They are not "convertible" through the normal currency exchange markets but eBay and Gaming Open Market provide this service.
Also, if more people began to exchange their Platinum pieces for USD$ of course the exchange rate would change which is true for any other commodity.
Bullshit. You're soaking in it!
Then I realized if I averaged out my time and what I got for my character, it was only like 50 cents an hour Yeah, but you're PLAYING A GAME. If anyone wants to pay me 50 cents an hour for playing games, email me. I'll give it to my girlfriend so she can go shopping, which in turn will give me more game time.
I think you guys totally missed what this guy meant. He's not saying you as the player are making $3.42 and hour, he's saying that the character in everquest is making the equivlent of $3.42 an hour. Of course this has a much less value in the real world, mentioned earlier.
Virtually, and this is why it is interesting, all those toons in EQ, are doing quite well for themselves.
It would be interesting to do a study like this on a newer MMORPG, like SWG, because their economy is far more intergrated into the gameplay.
And for even more fun, check out the Web site of the good Dr. C., where he offers tools to monitor eBay for auctions of gaming items.
Paul Gillingwater
MBA, CISSP, CISM
The caculation of GNP assumes the fact that the 1st platinum piece sold (converted) to USD has the same worth as the 100 millionth, which is clearly an unsafe assumption for the report to make about a currency of an online game, even though this fact is usually taken for granted about real currencies.
In online games, people tend to not want to sell their in-game pieces just because they spent so much time earning them, inflating the real value of the platinum pieces. For example, if I were to value a ring I don't have so much that I would not sell it for a trillion dollars, that doesn't mean that if I were given the ring, my GNP would be greater than a few countries'.
And did you read the list of moderators on the alternative site you recommended? First on the list: Castronova, Edward
ancarett, historian and zombie gamer
the equivalent of $3.42 (U.S.) per hour.
If I play 20 hours a day, I could be raking in almost $500 a week...
---
Lousy rotten karmic retribution.
Somewhat related, The Walrus runs on the same software as Slashdot ( customized by Canadian company Openflows Networks Ltd. )
....It's only a sustainable economy when there is demand for such things. After say about 6 months to a year, in any MMO, people start catching on to what really gets the payoff. They start using bots, and automated processes to get the job done. You don't see me sending my BOT off to work for money in my real life. They flood the market with crap, and it becomes useless.
I just can't see the comparison. I mean, you don't see me buying US currency at wal-mart with my special BLUE money, for pennies on the dollar. It would be nice, wouldn't it.
Wired magazine had an article about this back in November of 01. Interesting read. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.01/gaming.ht ml
I would have seen this, but I outsourced my TV watching.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Doesn't this ruin the game? You have the in-game fantasy economy (and hence, really, the whole 'fantasy world') being effected by out-game, real-world, sources. That's gotta have a negative effect on the whole 'pretend' aspect of the game, which is pretty much the whole point of playing a game. Oh well.
Although it sounds like a viable economy on paper, in reality the Everquest economy is extremely fickle, as you can expect in a game. Whenever games & money mix, trouble ensues. I think back to the beginning of the magic the gathering and the subsequent market that sort of grew out of that(and spawned several huge retailers like The Blue Troll). Although in this case the "economy" that evolves from a game is a little bit more viable (real property vs. virtual property), it's still unstable in the sense that it is extremely dangerous (today's prize card/ uber item is yesterday's filler/ twink item). I wouldn't in a million years ever think that anybody could make a 'living' off of EQ in the same way magic(and some other card games) has. Couple this with the evilness of SOE et all, and you have a recipe for disaster.
Will wank off Linus Torvalds for fame.
Of course,m the problem here is you have to play the game to make money. One guy tried a scheme in Star Wars galaxies to automate this. Here's how well he did.
I'm hatching a plan to steal Unreal Tournament 2004 vehicles from the other team and then sell them back on Ebay. You want that tank back, blue? It'll cost you!
Yeah - I think his numbers are an average over the totals...most people don't get to the high levels - so they average lower levels of PP per hour.
As a 'part time' player, my group of single friends would level away from me, and I would be stuck trying to get pickup groups, or try leveling alone...both making for slow leveling.
As a result, I started several different characters, none of which made it above level 30 - and enjoyed PVP and part-time free play. It was much more enjoyable that way...eventually this allowed me to break my addiction completely and break away from the game. Even 'part-time', each gaming session took way too much of my real-life time.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Hmm, $4 US/hour... guess I can't make a living playing video games just yet. Stupid mortgage.
- chrish
You can't equate an EQ platinum piece with 1 US cent, for the simple reason that a cent is a symbol (having the backing of a nation and its mints) recognized worldwide as having a specific relative value.
Everquest equipment, plat, etc. are valuable to some people - a subset of the 300,000 people who play Everquest, an infinitesimal fraction of the world's population - but believe me, if you tried to exchange that '319 platinum' for a cheeseburger or video rental you'd get nowhere. If you took this guy's study, and a bonded note guaranteeing the user 319 Everquest Platinum, into a currency exchange... how much real currency do you think you could get for it? Does anyone really believe they could get anything close to $3, or even $0.01?
There is no stable rate of exchange for EQ platinum to real world money, except among a tiny, ultimately transient subset of EQ players. This is like quantifying the value of a sunday sermon based on analysis of the donations that week...
This marvel leads to a big problem:
I started playing Lineage II lately. There are complete areas inhabited only by Bots and Farmers. Bots are Programs which gather gold (scripted characters with hacked clients). Farmers are users which make a living from the virtual income. Both sell their gold/items through auctions and other eCommerce to (some) users. All three clases are not highly regarded by other players.
Regards, Martin
P.S. Please do not missunderstand me: If i had no income and could earn some living by playing a MMORPG, i would probably do it too. The problem is a direct consequence of the social gradient. I have no real solution for this... Banning the sales in the real world is only a measure of limited use.
99.99% of players lose in the medium to long term.
And if you play at a casino it's 100%.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Interesting. It would appear that the economies in online games are in a state of hyperinflation
:)
:(
I find it intersting too, but it's deeper than that, not all games have the same condition...
EQ and SWG have similar (not the same, SWG has more depth/complexity, but untilmately similar) economic models. MOST games do seem to suffer from the trading of in game credits off line, or of powergamers setting prices, making items more and more expensive, thus presenting a barrier to entry.
One shining example of a game that *doesn't* have this problem, and that has slow *deflation* (but kept up by a fixed level of the worth of raw materials and the time/effort/risk required to gather them) is EVE Online. It's got slow deflation at all times on the very expensive items, e.g. the cost of an uberbattleship was 100 Mil ISK last month, it's now 90 Mil ISK (and you can view trading results via the in built stock market, so it's great for having a stable market, though of course rip offs and bargins are still to be had). The difference isn't as noticeable with lower cost items (where the potential profit margin is smaller) but overall this is great news for players, as it means they can afford to spend more time blowing each other up and having fun with PvP, and not worrying about how much it will cost them.
Partly I think this is down to the unquie and superior skill system, where there is no limit to the skills you can learn (unlike other games such as SWG, which force you to be a fighter OR a crafter - you can't be good at both as the number of skill points are fininte, meaning crafters are rare and so can charge high prices). It's also down to how you learn skills - you pay for the appropriate skills (from another player, or from an institution like a space academy) and you devote time to racking up skills in that area, the training continues while you are off line.
Level I takes typically 20-60 min, while Level II skill in something might take around 2 hours or more and Level III a day or more and Levels IV and V days and weeks. You don't actually have to 'grind', just devote the time to learning it. From there you need to buy the blue print (single use, or unlimited reproductions), get the raw materials (easily enough done via mining or even more simply, on the open market) and rent some time in a station to begin some construction.
I know it may sound a bit complex, but honestly in reality it's all very simple and straight forward (thanks to a pretty clear interface), and the low barrier to entry keeps prices down.
They also introduce new technologies, such as new ships or the next generation of a given technology (so that items can be created that drain less power, use less ship CPU time, etc) which are rare and so the 'expensive new toys' for those with the cash to spend, while the older technology gets cheaper (but not cheaper than the raw materials).
It's the only game I've played with a wide and stable economy though, most MMOG do have hyper inflation, I put this down to bad gameplay design (though to be fair, while some of the problems are obvious, others are more subtle and harder to spot for non-economics majors, so it's understandable that as MMOG's are new there will be bad economic models initially). It may take a few iterations for developers (especially the likes of SOE) to start seriously thinking about them though.
Please remind that some european countries have introduced the euro a couple of years ago.
--- Sigmentation Fault - Comments Dumped
Since players were killing monsters or skinning bunnies every day, they were, in effect, creating wealth.
Something about that sentence doesn't seem quite right. If the government printed money and gave it to citizens that waited in line for it, that would not be creating wealth, would it? It would be more like redistributing wealth.
Well, hey, I didn't spend all those years playing Dungeons and Dragons and not learn a little something about courage.
Any time there is profit to be made by ruining an online economy, there will always be people lining up to make it.
In Everquest, there is virtually no control of the money supply. And since very little of the things EQ money is spent on are consumable, there is nothing to take money out of the economy.
So it's really irrelevant to compare EQ's economy to real economies. The only point of interest is how the trading market works in EQ.
Ignorance, greed, and desire are all prevalent in the trading of items, and those who see and take advantage of it can make lots of money as brokers.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
I didn't play M:tG back in the days of the Power Nine, but I estimate it's still the case that you can make more by selling the cards individually - most sets have one or two rares which sell for four times the cost of a booster, and the last couple have uncommons which sell for twice the cost of a booster. Sell the commons in chunks of 100 cards on E-bay, and you've probably got a viable business model. (I haven't done a complete analysis, but AIUI there are a few businesses running on a model similar to this).
I'll give $5000 for a BFG that doesn't need to charge and has unlimited ammo!
...we hear the Fed. Chairman Greeenspan talking about the upward pressure on inflation because of the EQIPEC (EQ Item Producing and Exporting Countries) are restricting demand and therefore driving up the value of the Platnium. Then pressing on he states that we should start 'mining' the American lunch hour reserves and use this otherwise down time to produce more domestic EQ Items.
is a trade agreement. In order for this to happen, the US (or perhaps Japan would be a better place to start) would have to recognize EverQuest, DAoC, SWG, and thelike as actual countries.
.. there's a lot to think about here, and I haven't had my coffee yet.
Because they -are-, in every sense except that they don't own land. They have citizens, who create valuable products (apparently, since people trade them for real money), make relationships, govern the land, etc. What is lacking in these cyber-countries is a sense of law, to some extent - the crime rate is insane, and governance is a joke. There's simply no way to govern a group of incredibly powerful people. And part of the point of video games is to give you power over the universe you play in.
It's very difficult to reconcile a virtual world with the real one. Should an economic bridge exist at all?
There are programs like MacroQuest for botting in EverCrack. Some of the scripts are for making tradeskill items, those are primarily used when there is some tradeskill recipe that makes a profit (which happened last year, depending on cpu speed, up to around 50kpp per hour; and to throw people off the scent, they started rumors about a broken banker in zones like najena or befallen). There are other experience making scripts. There are even some folks who find fun in griefing botters. The folks who spend time writing the scripts and code for MQ could probably make more money writing their own games. But oh noooooooos, we be evercrackheads here.
It's available on SSRN . Search 'castronova' and take your pick. Or go here. One thing: EverQuest's GDP PER CAPITA is bigger than India's. I don't why people keep reporting it as 'EverQuest's GDP is bigger than India's.' It isn't. That would be absurd. PER CAPITA. {sigh}.
Maybe it really did equal 1C at some point, but due to the fact that there is money constantly being created (spawning on creatures or whatever) combined with the encouragement to buy and sell between players (money transfers hands instead of leaving the game), the longer an MMORPG runs the more its currency will get devalued. On top of that, for a new MMORPG, its currency will be highly over valued because of the large influx of players trying the new game and wanting the hard to get currency (since it is new, not much has been created yet)
[quote]When he averaged the results, he was stunned to discover that the EverQuest platinum piece was worth about one cent U.S.... ...Crunching more numbers, Castronova found that the average player was generating 319 platinum pieces each hour he or she was in the game -- the equivalent of $3.42 (U.S.) per hour. [/quote]
.01 | 319 * .01 != 3.42 /confused.
.0025 USD per plat piece.
.0025 USD or less!
now I admit I haven't read anything more then the above summary...but can someone explain how this works out?. 1 plat =
besides noone who sells plat cares in increments below 10k plat(occasional 5k). Which based on current market prices is about 25.00 USD. Thats
Another example: 100000 plat is about 85.00-100.00 USD, which means 1 plat still equals
(yes I am an EverCrack Head...no don't buy/sell plat, but I do watch what happens with it.)
"why don't you just slip into something more comfortable...like a coma!"
yea I dont see the problem with this.
Time is money. If you invest time and effort into playing video games. Then there should be a coresponding growth of production. Video games are not wasted time. It's un-accounted for work. Mostly if you think about it. Market places real or virtual are mediated realities if you have something that someone wants whether its "real" or "virtual" it should be allowed to be traded.
Tim H
Casinos are games that exchange game tokens for real money.
Everquest is a game that exchanges game tokens for real money.
Almost forgotten in the of the MMPORG: multi-player play-by-mail games.
Most of these were fairly simple strategic tournaments. Flying Buffalo Inc. was the big wheel of this industry. It's still in business, running games like Starweb for afficianados.
A few companies ran open-ended society games which were similar to Civilization or Masters of Orion.
The biggy was "Tribes of Crane" by Schubel & Son. It was entirely paper based. You led a tribe of nomads on a barbarian world. If your tribe found something neat, or your shamans learned a new spell or whatnot, you got a paper chit explaining it. Money was in the form of paper slips too. You spent money by mailing it to the game master or another player.
I played another S&S game, "Star Master." You designed an alien species, picked out a homeworld, and did standard Masters of Orion type stuff ("Explore, Expand, Exploit, and Eliminate" or something like that). If you engaged in trade, you could earn EUs, and trade them in for tech advances.
There was a vigorous out-of-channel trade in artifacts, money, and even entire species. People leaving the game would sell their empire to the highest bidder. That's what I did.
Some of the trading was illegal. After the "Central Galaxy" filled up, S&S opened up the "North East Galaxy." It was many, many months away by fast spaceship. Essentially a different universe.
Central Galaxy and NE Galaxy had different-colored EU chits. Not exchangeable in-game. However, a few players had species in both galaxies. They acted as middlemen.
Small scale and under the radar compared to the economic sideshow of Everquest, but still interesting.
If the world didn't have to allocate resources via supply/demand. If supply programmatically matched or just tailed demand...
This silly author should do a conversion table for EQ platimun to US dollars. Then calcualate how much startup cost, electricity, and mountain due impact the players bottom line.
Right now all this crap is bullshit until these markets *really* converge.
American company with money opens a production facility in Tijuana. The article says the workers were "unskilled Mexican laborers," which would presume two things: 1) their time isn't worth much to begin with (unskilled), and 2) they are "laborers," so they are going to be earning a wage somewhere (hopefully), regardless. If they were school-aged children, that would be another matter, but the article doesn't say that.
If the rates they were paid were too low compared to what other companies in Tijuana were paying, then the company would have been unable to hire anyone in the first place. More likely, the wages were competitive with what was being paid in the region.
Was the company evil for doing this? Well, 24 unskilled Mexican laborors had steady employment that they were compensated for. Not only did the laborers receive compensation, but the money they received was invested into the local economy as they bought goods and services.
Well, maybe the work they were doing was too demanding. Hmmm... sitting in front of a computer, playing a game for eight hours at a stretch. Yeah, sounds like a rough life.
Sorry, I just have to disagree with the author's attempt to cast the company in a further negative light (yeah, they were dirtbags for selling nonexistent computers)... but I have to say, I think this idea is brilliant. It just can't be sustained, though, because the game developers are either going to fight with you and prevent you from building up a meaningful income, or they are going to wise up and compete with you by selling characters and items themselves.
But it looks like there might be a brief window of opportunity right now to make a buck.
Wouldn't EQ inflation really dillute the real value?
I played EQ for 18-24hrs a day for over 2 years.
:)
:)
;)
I walked away cold turkey.
I just started playing EVE Second Genesis last month. (free 10-day trial download from Fileplanet.com)
I wouldn't have signed up for permanant except for the fact that I can walk away at any time.
Depending on what I'm doing, I vary my game play.
No combat at work (since I may have to leave the computer at any second) but I can put in plenty of mining and trading and a little chat while working without problems.
The BEST part is the skill advancement continues wether or not I'm playing. Right now I have 22 hours before I need to change skills I'm training.
I set that skill training yesterday before I left work.
I can play solo without getting bored and with two accounts my girlfriend and I occasionally get to team up for some great fun
That was really funny.
I couldn't stop laughing.
I guess I need to get out more.
EQ is NOT a economic wonder. It has not been responsible for any neglgent deaths. And you can't quit your day job and make plat for $.
I have been playing for 4 years on the E'ci server and am in one of the most well known guilds in the game.
As we enter this virtual era, we have many reality questions to answer. Some of my best friends I have are NOT living on my street, in my town, or even in my country. If I want to spend time with them then I have to log on to EQ. This is reality. If I am in a jam they will stop what they are doing and come help me. I can always count on them, and they are a great source that I can confide in. Isn't that what friends are (virtual or real)?
I have skipped parties weekend getaways and other such real life experiences because I simply have more fun with my "fake" friends online. I have even taken vacation days for big events. All this is very real and 450,000 subscribers will tell you is NOT virtual. Just because you can't understand it doesn't mean that's not the way it is.
During college EQ was a godsend. I had ZERO cash to spend and staying indoors playing EQ saved me who knows how much money. Now that school is over and I have a real job (no pun intended) I don't play nearly like I used to, but EQ is still without a doubt the best entertainment value I have ever seen. For $12 you can have unlimited playing time each month. For $7 you can go see a 2 hour movie.
The reports of some fuck-up being glued to EQ while his kid dies in his car are tragic. But the bottom line is that guy had no more business raising children with his level of maturity than the man in the moon so let's make sure we give the appropriate blame.
EQ as constructive social tool...
Have you ever tried to lead an elemental raid with 70 people? Too hard for you? How about getting a high risk adventure going in Everfrost? Still not workable? How bout simply working with your group and doing your part to keep you the rest of your group from dying. I am against the shooter games you see how many terrorists/SWAT members you can blow away within a 15 minute time period. I can find very few arguements of how this could be a positive influence. The only thing I can think of is some of the quick reflexes that you would develope and some tactics learned that could be called our modern day chess. The violence and lack of creativity are disturbing.
EQ is a team oriented game where you have to build up your team work skills. There are fantsy creatures that you battle against, not terrorist or SWAT teams.
I read a post of someone complaining that the amount of time that you have to spend to reach higher levels is rediculous. After 4 years of play, if some noob could reach my level and AAs in just a few months time (I know there are those who have, but this is not the norm and these are people who are hardcore players anyway)I wouldn't be proud of all of the work I have put in and would probably quit the game. If I were to send anyone a character link of my gear, this is something I could be proud of. This is one of the "addictive" properties of the game. If you only had X amount of weapons to choose from and could never increase in power why continue to play? This is Sony's advantage. I would like to take a moment to laugh at all of the people who bring this arguement, you lazy undisciplined dorks!
Who did this "on average you make $3.40 an hour" study? Did they actually play the game, or just hear some figures and put them on paper for some deadline. There are ways to make much more than 340 Plat an hour, but trying to make real money through plat is obsurd. It would first take you years if you have never played the game to get to a level where you could make that kind of cash. The amount of time you need to put in comes NOWHERE near $3.40 an hour. I just did a calculation and if I would have been paid each year for everything I'm worth (two lv 65s, all my plat and extra gear) I would have made about $714 per year...sounds like I need a second job...oh wa
Basically you're right.
Realistically there is lots of product in USD to buy. Everything from Oranges to Cars and Internet access and company stock.
Modern currencies with a good sized economy and sufficient goods and a small trade imbalance it is a pretty stable situation.
When you get a small economy or one with few tradable goods, or a huge trade differential, you get problems.
You can't keep the value of currency higher than it would usually be. You also don't want it unfairly one way or the other.
Money is an abstraction for value, it is a unit that can account for goods, services, time, quality and any other factor.
Currencies only have relative values to each other. This is backed by the goods you can buy.
The million platinum pieces don't have a value themself, only that of the underlying good.
Missing 2 points here.
1. Keeping 2 currencies equal would involve making one higher, and one lower then they would freely trade.
2. It doesn't work in a free market, you can't force the value of anything. The only exchange is at the agreed transaction price.
Pick anything you can buy. It is only at that price because the seller can charge that, and the buyer will pay that.
While this is interesting, it doesn't really mean much in the long run just yet. The implications for the future, though, are pretty big. Imagine a MMORPG, somewhat like the matrix mixed with .hack, in the future, as a solution to overpopulation. Too many people? that's alright, we have 40% of our population living, working, and communicating in a fake reality. But still, will false items in this fake world account for anything in the real world? Will anyone care? Just my $.02.
I'm starting to see this occur with Eve Online as well. Recently, a 3 Account bundle went for over $1200 (US) on eBay. And it appears that ISK (the currency) is averaging 1Mil ISK = $1 US. So, if you're heavily into mining rare ores and can gather 10M worth of minerals in an hour then you're making around $10 an hour. Not bad for playing a game.
TheTiminator
Are these games every going to place ecological balances in their games? Comparing a video game with rules about when and where to place bunny rabbits and fish versus China and India is not a fair comparison. One of the above posts about people using bots to camp out highly valued monsters is just an artifact of the computer putting these creatures and items in deterministic spots. If all of the sudden people over-hunted bunnies in EQ and FFXI, to the point at which they became extinct, then we could probably start comparing these economies with real ones and hope to get some meaningful information out of the comparison. Until then you're just comparing a pseudo-random utopia with the "Real World".
Which I don't have.
Oh, wait, EverQuest IS my day job.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Can't you just kick people out of your house or put them on ignore?
How come everyone says crime is rampant in the Sims Online?
Atitd (A Tale in the Desert) has only player made currencies (you learn to make paper and print money).
Two currencies now survive what was a 'battle' of sorts between different currencies. The main one, TN, is maintained by players who post prices of their goods online, and the value of TN slowly shifts over time.
Another currency, Goodscrip, is tied in value with a notion they call First Good, where the tradehouse maintains a supply, giving 1 First Good (10,000 Goodscrip) value to the first good of a type in their store, and it drops logarithmically, so that if they have N goods in stock, they are worth log2(n+1) First Good value.
Its really a fascinating system, and the prices of all goods quickly converge on supply and demand based prices.
Goodscrip explanation is up at http://wurb.com/goods/ - very neat system.
Your signatures belong to me.
342/319 = ~1.0721
That's still approximately one cent.
grrr not to get into a flame here... but...
.01
319 pp / hour
1 cent per pp
equals 3.19 USD / hour
ok so to nitpick he did say approx. 1 cent an hour...but so I concede that point (though I hate approx. figures)
the point was more that 1 pp !=
check playerauctions.com to see what plat goes for these days... at the prices from the article 10k pp would equal 172.10 USD !!!! You can buy almost 200k pp for that amount of USD!
If thats the case hell I need to quit my job, cuz I can net at least 5k an hour if thats all I did was PP (and not exp/quest) that's 86.05/hour!
hell even the figure about 319 pp/hour is weird in itself... the "companies" that farm the plat to actually sell it make A LOT MORE then this an hour... the data just seems flawed to me...or just plain outdated.
The figures still don't make sense in the end.
"why don't you just slip into something more comfortable...like a coma!"
I remember an article a while back talking about an employee of one of these companies secretly placing and stealing houses. I think in UO. The employee was able to get an extra income for himself by doing this until he was caught. Maybe someone else remembers and can say more on it.
brxndxn wrote:
"I read that some new MMORPGS that are coming out.."
Check out www.project-entropia.com! It's been around over a year...
This is the difference between a real free-market economy and a MMORPG - What the article doesn't really touch on is that the wealth generation here doesn't rely on consumption of fundamental resources. You cannot compare skinning bunnies, which automatically respawn and will never be in any shortage, with (for example) burning fossil or nuclear fuel, which are strictly limited. Or with producing real goods, which must ultimately be disposed of, rather than simply "deleted" when their usefulness is spent. MMORPGs provide a very idealised and non-realistic model of a free market economy.
Gaming Open Market offers game currency portability; you can exchange your Ultima Online gold for Therebucks. This may increase game churn, just as number portability does for phones. You can take it with you when you leave the game.
Networks of people doing the equivalent of a Slashdot modding down to a person, keeping them from entering other people's buildings, or something like that. I read about it for a while, and though it might almost be fun to play Sims Online if I immediately joined a mafia, but then Project Gotham 2 came out, and a friend convinced me to buy Star Wars Galaxies, and, well...
Big business exists as such for the same reason as assembly-line manufacturing: economies of scale. A big business can absorb costs and wastes-of-time that would drag down an individual.
In a freer market, many more people would prefer to be self-employed or freelance.
It has been said "communists love the poor and oppressed, they make so many of them". Likewise, it's ironic that anti-corporate socialists create the necessity for big corporations.
It used to be backed by gold, but that time has long passed.
Security is inversely proportional to the commitment of one desiring to circumvent it.
Dear "expert on the subject" who could "honestly write a book",
This is a message from a capitalist to let you know you have been a good community citizen. On the back of your needs within the EQ community, the capitalist will build endless arbitrage opportunities that will create supply and satisfy demand. And the capitalist will take advantage of those to the fullest, maximizing the profit and benefit to himself.
Fare well, citizen, the capitalist will meet you somewhere where you will least expect it and you will be thankful to him that he is the enabler of your community experience.
And the calculations by a peasant today will not matter in the future, because that peasant tried, but only with time, everyone will see how the capitalist is a beneficiary of the system.