Virtual Farming Firsthand

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.

Comments

Even more conspiracy

[CrazyJim1]

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.

Virtual Farming?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

virtual economy...

[phUnBalanced]

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.

Re:virtual economy...

[Lord_Dweomer]

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.

Re:virtual economy...

[C0rinthian]

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.....

Re:virtual economy...

[patio11]

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).

Re:virtual economy...

[dasunt]

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. :)

Re:Heard about this for awhile...

[gl4ss]

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.

Re:Almost as prevalent

[damiangerous]

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