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Virtual Farming Firsthand

Posted by Zonk on from the a-sad-state-of-affairs dept.

This past weekend we discussed virtual sweatshops, and the legal issues they bring up. Today Terra Nova has a discussion in which Julian Dibbell, noted VW economics researcher, asks do such things really exist? Firsthand experiences would seem to indicate they do, with extensive chat logs (via Broken Toys) and the experiences of players documenting farming behavior.

14 of 89 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Heard about this for awhile... by ZephyrXero · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I see both sides of the issue I guess. As a developer...it is important for the game world to have it's own economy independant of the real world. It is essential for virtual economies to exitst.

    But, on the other hand I think that if someone wants to provide a service, they should be able to get paid for it. However, as I don't find fault with people working hard and making real money off of that work... I have a problem with the cheaters who buy all kinds of stuff without having to work for it. If you don't want to really play the game, then don't play it... I say ban the buyers not the sellers.

    --
    "A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
  2. virtual economy... by phUnBalanced · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You mean as opposed to the "real" economy?

    The "real" economy went virtual the day we didn't have a value in gold to back the value of ever dollar.

    There's no difference between the economies of a MMORPG or a country. You pay a service to play MMORPG, you pay a tax to live in country. While in that country / MMORPG, you have opportunities to earn local currencies. Why shouldn't you be allowed to convert them? (country lock-in?)

    It bugs me that people (not necessarily parent poster) and developers seem to think users have no rights to this. Developers just don't want other people making money off their game, which is silly if you refer to the tax analogy above. (more farmers, the more monthly income) Players seem to think that anything that can be done for fun shouldn't be desecrated by the concept of economy. Only they don't know when to say when, because they're perfectly happy to take part in economies to sell an item here or there but upset when someone makes this the point of the game for themself.

    Who cares? Ok... now if there are sweat shops, honestly, something needs to be done. Otherwise I say let them farm if they want.

    1. Re:virtual economy... by C0rinthian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Here's my theory on why game developers will NEVER support this.

      Liability.

      If they endorse sales of items and currency, they agree that said items and currency have real world value. Since they agree to this value, then they could be held liable for losses incurred because of server issues, balancing, database rollbacks, etc.

      Imagine Johnny's $100 Mace o' Doom gets nerfed in a patch and is only worth $10 because of it. He could make a claim that he should be compensated for his loss.

      Imagine a database roll-back on 500,000 characters.....

    2. Re:virtual economy... by dasunt · · Score: 2, Insightful
      The "real" economy went virtual the day we didn't have a value in gold to back the value of ever dollar.

      Gold has as much inert value as giant stone wheels.

      The value of gold can (and does) fluctuate in regards to other goods, as a minute's worth of research would show.

      Money is the concept to use a scarce good as a medium of exchange, nothing more, nothing less.

      Historically, gold has been useful as a currency, due to its rarity, but there are some problems with gold: The supply of gold tends to be fixed. The size of economies fluctuate. This leads to problems. (Of course, I tend to worship at the altar of Keynes, so I might be biased.)

      Fiat money has a few advantages that gold does not, the major one is that the quantity of fiat money can be expanded and contracted as need requires, leading to a more stable economy.

    3. Re:virtual economy... by Skippy_kangaroo · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Gawd!

      What is it with gold nuts? Backing currency with gold means that whatever gold is worth, so is the piece of paper in your hand. You could back it with sheep if you wanted, or triangular rubber pieces 10,000 miles to a side, or cling-wrap. It's all the same. Fiat money (which most currencies are these days) is implicitly backed by the future taxation power of the government. If the government's taxation power goes down (civil unrest is a really good way to do this, government debauchery is another) then you get inflation as the relative value of that promise and all other goods changes. But you get the same situation if you happen to increase the supply of gold (the discovery of the New World was a good source of inflation).

      Gold is no more special than any other backing.

      And, to bring this back into the thread, virtual currency is backed by the trustworthiness of the game creators providing services (entertainment) in exchange for that currency. Depending on your government, you may rate virtual currencies as more or less valuable than real currencies. However, there is one aspect in which real currencies are better than virtual ones - you are legally obligated to accept them in payment for debts incurred. Just try going into a corner store and buying a slushie with some EverQuest gold.

    4. Re:virtual economy... by patio11 · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Here are four reasons why developers would rationally want to avoid monetizing their gold supply:

      1. Establishing an equivalency between real world currency and gold/Archmages Robes of the Eagle/Swords of P0wning invites real world courts and governments to see gold/robes/swords as tangible property. This would lead to a couple of things: taxes, first of all. If every time Onyxia gets capped $150 of virtual goods spawns in Irvine California, sooner or later the CA IRS is going to wonder "Say, where are our income taxes from independent contractor Onyxia?" How long do you think any taxman is going to let a multi-million a year revenue stream go uncounted? Second, if I *own* my little 30 kb that describes the state of my WoW character and Blizzard decides to nerf my Sword of P0wning I could theoretically sue them for taking away my property interest in the Sword. Currently, their EULA protects them (they say its ALL their IP), but if they allow the IP to be bought and sold they can no more expropriate the goodness of my sword than my ISP can arbitrarily delete content off my professional website.

      2. More farmers might mean more monthly income, but the developers will never see a penny of it. It just means there is more gold/items floating in the game than they planned for, possibly bursting their sinks, and thats a problem. For one, it will impoverish non-farming players, because as inflation increases the price of finished goods/endgame content the price of "vendor trash", coin, and static quest rewards will not increase, seeing a drop in the virtual "real wealth" of the casual players -- who aren't going to pay $15 a month just to be lvl 40 Serfs.

      3. Some players are morally offended by the idea that their "fun" is being corrupted, and regardless of whether you think they're hypocrites, off balance, or whatever, their $15 a month is as green as everyone else's and they will gladly take it elsewhere. Most developers think that this segment of their playerbase buys more months of service than the "farming community", and they're likely correct.

      4. Buying upper-level content means content gets exhausted faster, which could increase the churn rate of the same very interested customers the developers are most happy to keep in the system (both because they typically play games for a long time and because they provide structure to the playerbase via guilds/etc, increasing newbie retention and generating "content" for other players via social interaction, guild rivalries, etc).

      --
      Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
    5. Re:virtual economy... by dasunt · · Score: 4, Insightful
      In the short run, it does. In fact, all goods fluctuate in regards to each other and to currencies. But in the long run, gold is remarkably stable. A man who owns an ounce of gold today can buy roughly the same amount of goods as someone who owned an ounce of gold 500 years ago. That cannot be said of *any* fiat currency that has ever existed.

      You need to pay attention to your history lessons.

      The value of gold has fluctuated historically, over the long term. Different societies valued it differently. One often-cited example is gold and silver in the east and west: During the 1700s, the Far East wanted silver, while Europe wanted gold -- the result was that silver flowed out of Europe and gold flowed out of east Asia.

      Also, you need to pay more attention to your economics.

      Gold doesn't buy the same amount of goods now that it does 500 years ago because the value of other goods fluctuate.

      If you are advocating gold for economic stability, it doesn't allow the same 'tricks' that fiat money does, and I feel that weakens the economy.

      If you are advocating gold for a measure of value after the US crashes and burns, taking the rest of the world with it, I humbly suggest that bullets, books and medicines may be more valuable.

      Of course, I could be wrong. Greenspan disagrees with me as well. :)

    6. Re:virtual economy... by Dachannien · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Then why are high-level eBayed characters so easily detected by other players? No, wait, I'll answer that for you - it's because the purchaser of the eBayed character lacks the skills to back up the gear and experience possessed by the character. These skills are obtained naturally by spending time learning the game through levelling up one's own character.

    7. Re:virtual economy... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      "Gold has as much inert value..."
      I think the word you were looking for was inherent.

      your comments are otherwise thought provoking

      And I love iRate radio.

      Have a nice day

    8. Re:virtual economy... by servognome · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The "real" economy went virtual the day we didn't have a value in gold to back the value of ever dollar.
      No the "real" economy went virtual when we went away from direct barter. Gold, like paper money, is an arbitrary form of wealth measurement, it has no inherent value. Its use as a means of virtualizing wealth relies solely on its ability to be accepted, rare, and hard to counterfeit; same as paper money.

      --
      D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
  3. Re:Heard about this for awhile... by gl4ss · · Score: 3, Insightful

    exactly.

    the buyers, the people who don't want to *play* the game in the first place to get those items should be banned if anyone.

    though, if the devs have come up with a game that has an indeed so boring system for gaining wealth that you'll rather work at mcdonalds for few hours than play it then it really has gone wrong right there.

    the game worlds should be designed so that while designing they would keep it in their mind that the real world exists and they *Can't* isolate the gameworld from it.

    --
    world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
  4. Re:Almost as prevalent by damiangerous · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You made $80,000 dollars running an EverQuest script while a minor living with your parents? And they STILL wouldn't spring for broadband?

  5. Re:Almost as prevalent by Bagels · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Plenty of reasons why it would be hard to get broadband that have nothing to do with his parents' willingness. It wasn't always easy to get good broadband everywhere. Some places were probably stuck with satellite, for example, which stinks for online games (really bad latency, crappy upload because it's tied to dial-up for that part).

    --
    --- Bwah?
  6. Re:Almost as prevalent by jayhawk88 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You believed even a word of that?