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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.

22 of 89 comments (clear)

  1. Almost as prevalent by Sparr0 · · Score: 2, Informative

    At one point in time people running macros and scripts (controlling their characters) to produce game-money were almost as prevalent as the sweatshops. Sadly I was stuck on a sub-par internet connection at the time, and not old enough to move out on my own, but I made about $10000/mo for just shy of 8 months running a pair of computers playing Everquest for me while I slept. Today the sweatshops have taken over, but once upon a time it wasnt so.

    1. 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?

    2. 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?
    3. Re:Almost as prevalent by jayhawk88 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You believed even a word of that?

  2. Even more conspiracy by CrazyJim1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I saw one guy on two games: AO and DAOC, selling what amounts to 100 player loads of items. But here's the catch, no one was mature(leveled up) enough to get to the level to sell even 1 player load at the time. Also, everyone else was being banned. So somehow one dude is able to evade detection with his 4 pages of gold selling, while everyone else gets banned within 2 hours of their post. This was about 2 years ago, but there is no doubt in my mind the MMORPG companies were teaming with this guy to sell extra gold. I found out the company would be in the position to make $100,000 a month of the endevour. At the time there was also the philosophy prevailing for companies to spoil the ebay markets by flooding them with loot. I sold lots of stuff in the past, and I have tales of awesomeness and pain. 100$/hr is awesome, losing your apartment, fiancee, and flunking school out because Everquest bans you for selling Asheron Call cheats is pain. But theres degrees within.

    --
    God spoke to me.
    1. Re:Even more conspiracy by realdpk · · Score: 2, Informative

      Sure that guy wasn't just a AO/DAOC employee trying to catch people in the act of buying?

  3. Heard about this for awhile... by rekenner · · Score: 2, Interesting

    MMO Players have noticed and complained for months because of the game economies being ruined because of the sweat shops and whatnot... Or at least my MMO playing friends have, anyway.

    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. 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. Virtual Farming? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    I thought this was going to be a story about Harvest Moon.

  5. 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 Lord_Dweomer · · Score: 3, Informative
      The fact of the matter is, you are paying the game company to use their service. You are agreeing to a contract with their rules in it.

      In other words, you are not entitled to ANYTHING. They can make those rules for whatever reason they want, but as long as you pay them and are under that contract, you play by their rules or you don't play at all. There really is no point in debating this.

      --
      Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
    2. 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.....

    3. 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.

    4. 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.

    5. 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.
    6. 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. :)

    7. 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.

    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.

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      D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
    9. Re:virtual economy... by DerWulf · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The virtual goods have value attached to them regardless of the game companies recognizing them. The evidence is clear on this: ask players if he prefered to keep the items he has or loose them with no compensation. If only one of them opts to keep, the goods are actually valuable. But this is unecessary since ebay auction not only proove that people attach value to those things but also establish a price. Whenever there is a price there must be value.

      The liability issues you mention probably come down to what is in the service contract. If nothing is there, the courts must decide the property status of such 'virtual' valuables.
      On a side note: common property law is not a tool to preserve the market exchange rate (price) for ones possesion. Property rights only preserve the physical integrity of your property. In example: while it is valid to sue operators of a plant that opens near by because they pollute your grounds, it is futile to sue them because your estate has become worthless since no one wants to move in next to a factory.

      --

      ___
      No power in the 'verse can stop me
    10. Re:virtual economy... by DerWulf · · Score: 2, Interesting

      what do you think gold economies are? They are, in fact, direct barter economies.

      And there is nothing abitrary about gold (unlike paper money). The following properties make gold uniquely suitable as money:
      - durability (it doesn't spoil, rust, break or tear, unlike paper )
      - low weight (in relation to the other goods on the market, there is relativly few gold to go around, unlike paper)
      - divisibility (gold does not have to be treated as a unit (unlike cars ie.), many small pieces are almost exaclty as useful as one larger piece, unlike paper)
      - impossible to counterfeit ( as you noted, but I disagree that any paper money is)

      - stable supply (very unlike paper)
      - gold is a commodity serving real life purposes.

      These factors combined increase its utility to a point where it was natural for people across the globe to accept gold as a universal medium of exchange. Paper money works differently: It must and always has been forced onto the populance. So the direction is reversed; universal (forced) acceptance preceded the little utility it has now. And the problems resulting from this are not to be ignored. Whereas drastic inflation of the gold supply only happend once in 5000 years, a lone mad statesman is enough to create inflation rates near infinity wreaking havoc on the economy. Also, don't underestimate the inflation tax. Realize that if you store 100 dollars in cash over 50 years, those 100 dollars won't buy you near the amount of goods you could have bought initially.

      --

      ___
      No power in the 'verse can stop me
    11. Re:virtual economy... by JavaLord · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

      Yeah but the funny part is this segment of their playerbase is often a part of guilds/clans who screw the economy up and screw solo'ers time up by giving insane amounts of gold/items to their low level guildmates. I've run into people in World of Warcraft who were decked out in equipment and bragged about having 5GP's at level 10. I of course asked how they got it, and I got "My guildmate gave it to me!"

      I don't see any way to prevent people from having their "fun" corrupted. The people buying on E-Bay are no different from the ones who get good equipment/gold from their clanmates at low levels.