President of MMOG Currency Seller Grilled

Garthilk writes "When I first saw the interviews with IGE's President on Gamespy and OGaming, I was disappointed. Where were the difficult questions? I got to thinking that an average gamer could try to ask the hard questions. I emailed the folks at IGE and to my surprise, they agreed to conduct an email Q&A. Not soon after sending off my questions I received some replies. Unfortunately, some of the answers were not to questions I sent, so I sent some follow up questions as well. To my even greater surprise, the follow up questions were answered as well. Here is my interview, perhaps it's best to leave the journalism to the professionals."

Comments

Um, try again?

[nathan s]

From the article:

Let us take for example you invite your friend and myself to your house to play Monopoly . I land on park place and buy it. Your friend then lands on Boardwalk. I offer your friend 5 real life dollars to sell Boardwalk to me, and he does. I now have an in game advantage. Does this behavior undermine the spirit of the game?

PR MOUTHPIECE: I THINK YOU'RE REACHING A BIT WITH THIS ANALOGY. THE SECONDARY MARKET FOR MOG IS A YOUNG PHENOMENON AND ALWAYS EVOLVING, WHICH LEAVES IT OPEN TO A LOT OF DEBATE AND DISCUSSION. HOWEVER, YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT BLATANT CHEATING, WHICH IS NOT WHAT THE SECONDARY MARKET IS ABOUT, IN A GAME THAT IN NO WAY MIRRORS AN MOG. WE COULD GO ROUND AND ROUND ON THIS BUT I THINK STEVE HAS STATED HIS THOUGHTS PRETTY CLEARLY.

Am I the only one who doesn't see a difference between paying $5 for Boardwalk and $5 for that +5 Mega Item of Doom to complete my Doom Set of Items?

I think that it's cheating, and I also think the PR person knows it. The only way this would be fair is if it was allowed only on servers where players would know going in that it was being done.

The end of IGE will be....

[MBraynard]

When the MMORPG publishers realize that they can sell the virtual items with zero overhead. They can be a broker and have no acquasition costs. Some are doing this now - Second Life?

OR when they create a game where the only ingame commodity is ingame skill. PLanetside did a good job of leveraging this against time-spent ingame. It balanced beause even if you had no twitch skill, you could still have a roll, like engineer or medic.

I'll take a shot

[Otter]

Let us take for example you invite your friend and myself to your house to play Monopoly . I land on park place and buy it. Your friend then lands on Boardwalk. I offer your friend 5 real life dollars to sell Boardwalk to me, and he does. I now have an in game advantage. Does this behavior undermine the spirit of the game?

It seems to me that there's a difference between a Monopoly game, where a contest is carried out from start to finish with a set, small group of people, and an ongoing MMORPG where player-player interactions are discontinuous.

Buying items is much more disruptive in the former (imagine playing chess and having your opponent announce that he just bought a new rook on Ebay) than in the latter.

Kudos for trying, but

[bsdbigot]

As you said, "perhaps it's best to leave the journalism to the professionals."

(evil grin) Does anyone else feel that the interview read like Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson?

To the interviewer: it's a good strategy to butter up your subject and take a gradual incline to the "hard questions." A valiant effort, but you need a little more practice on your incline; the three or so questions that PR answered were a little out there - it was clear from these questions that you had an agenda you were trying to further, and the Business wanted no part of that. I don't fault them at all for not answering. Tact - look it up.

Bad PR

[MobyDisk]

If the PR group were smart, they would have had their legal department coach Mr. Salyer against saying certain things that had legal ramifications -- rather than inserting obvious PR crud. Steve could have just said "There's serious legal implications to that, and I think I'm going to have to skip that one." This is a common thing to do. Quite sad when they can't even be professional enough to speak with one company voice.

That's FPS discrimination

[MattW]

I was a fairly dominant Q3 player. I hadn't played an FPS before that since Duke Nukem. I moved on after that to NWN, and played on a RP-oriented server.

Now I'm playing CoH and WoW.

Those games require only a modicum of skill. Yes, it is possible to be 'better' by knowing your character and capabilities, and in the more hectic group-battle situations your decision making can be amplified to the level it is at least somewhat significant. However, there is nowhere *near* the level of learned skill you get compared to a game like Q3 or Counterstrike. I've *always* had fantastic hand-eye coordination and reaction speed. I was competitive with the very best Street Fighter 2 players (back when Capcom used to give away full-sized videogames for winning big tournaments, back in the 90s). Reactions don't translate into skill. They may provide a ceiling, in the same way that physical fitness is a ceiling for competitiveness in a sport like tennis, but those underlying attributes are far less significant than the "learned skill" that goes along with the game.

MMORPGs place an artificial cap on the skill you can attain because the "margin of error" is so large that it is easy for a very quick-thinking, mentally agile and highly practiced opponent to have virtually no advantage over someone who is distinctly second rate. Both of them might trounce on a newb who can't play his character, but their differential of skill at the high level of play doesn't translate into a game significance.

Morever, if you think outplanning and out-thinking your opponent is not a significant part of an FPS, then you're talking out of your ass. Anyone who has watched professionals play a game like Q3 knows that the entire game is a chess match which revolves around control of the map and the resources it provides. Anticipation, timing, the ability to adapt quickly, understanding an opponent; those are the skills which make you good at the highest eschelon of skill in "twitch games". Newb players think it is about fast reactions or perfect aim, but it isn't, because at the top level, EVERY pro hits almost every shot. I only played as a warm-up snack for pros, but when owning one of the major open DM servers at qcon '02, I racked up something like 80 straight hits with the railgun on Q3DM17. My aim and movement was pro-level; I'd still get absolutely *owned* against a pro playing 1v1, because they do that sort of thing automatically, but they back it up with beautiful execution, perfect timing, fluent adaptation, and hard-to-crack strategies for controlling a map. Watching pros play that game was like watching chess. They'd feint, move to control resources. They'd fall back and grab secondary objectives while their opponent was busily getting a primary one they thought they couldn't effectively contest. They'd viciously press their advantage; sacrafice several points in order to get a positional or strategic advantage to put them back in the driver's seat, and so on.

Actually, there's a better one in there.

[Moryath]

Consider the following:

Secondly, do you believe developers may hurt their own customer base by targeting them rather than the companies who purvey in the secondary market? Steve: When they try and stifle the secondary market by action against players or companies like IGE, they hurt their game. If I were sitting in a management position at a developer or publisher, I would give my customers what they want. Gamers, by in large, want the benefit of the secondary market. If you don't believe me, check out the size of the market. Millions of gamers are involved. They vote every day with their dollars.

Yeah, there are how many players playing these games, outnumbering their "clients" by at least a 100 to 1 ratio. And we, the players, hate their "employees" who farm all this shit, because they grief us, get in the way by spawn camping, and are 100% certain to be nothing but bots that are in violation of the unattended character policies in any event.

Guess what, Steve. I voted with my wallet. I walked away from FFXI because they weren't doing shit about your "employees." And I know more people that have done the same, than haven't. They went to games like WoW where the terms of service are actually enforced, too.

We, the gamers, do not like your service. A bunch of Skr1pt Kiddiez who crow about twinking their characters with their parents' credit cards like your service, but we don't like those idiots either.

Let the market figure it all out

[jgardn]

I have a suggestion, which it seems people are already following. Why don't we just let the market decide the way things should work?

I think what will happen is the publishers will eventually grant real legal rights to the objects and avatars in that world. The players seem to want this, and seem to understand that this is fair.

If I were into this sort of thing, I would begin forming enterprises that facilitate this. For example, if your avatar owns a lot of expensive things, how about you get an insurance policy that will pay our real dollars in the event the items are lost in certain situations? What about in-game escrow services - avatars who belong to particular groups who have built up a reputation for being responsible in holding items and in-game cash? How about time-share contracts, where items are loaned but only for certain times of the day? What about item rental?

Re:Let the market figure it all out

[DingerX]

Several reasons why this isn't a good idea: A) if you grant legal property rights to junk in games, then you subject your company, which maintains the servers, to all kinds of legal nonsense. Nerf a weapon? someone files a lawsuit. Add a new weapon? Someone files a lawsuit because their weapon was de facto nerfed. Basically, you resign all control over the game balance, and you lose customers.

B) If you ignore that, companies have the ability to print money and sell it. And if they engage in it directly (a la "there"), nobody's going to be interested. Playing a game that can be "bought" is simply no fun. It might work for certain "religions", but the rest of us just don't like the idea.

So tacit collaboration helps everybody. No need to advertise it, but you cut a deal with a company like IGE, and everybody benefits.

Of course, the real problem would be a game design that rewards tedious menial labour. The game itself should be rewarding, not the prestige gained from doing crap simpler than flipping burgers.

Now, if you're running a virtual currency, and you're looking to keep the power in the hands of producers (and not hoarders), may I suggest a solution from the Federal Prison system?
Establish two currencies: 20 dollar bills and cigarettes are traiditional, but you can use Quatloons and Augustan Denarii if you prefer. At regular intervals, change the exchange rates from 2:1 to 1:2, and back: and make sure that no vendor takes both currencies.

If you want to have some BS magic devices, have their efficacy follow similar cycles.

The final unanswered question...

[Anonymous Coward]

Regarding the question about IGE trying to cut a deal with the game developers/publishers...

IGE has indeed approached one company that I know about, and has probably approached others. From what I hear IGE is always eager to cut some kind of a deal. The theory I've heard discussed is that they are in search of legitimacy from the publishers of MMOG's. Any legitimacy they can obtain from one group could be used to leverage more acceptance from others.

I suspect that the "service" that IGE and other brokers provide is actually a net boon to the game companies since it provides more total value to their game for their user population. That is, the game company gets more revenue by allowing a bit of "illegal" trading ==> thereby providing high value for some players and a little bit lower value for the rest. As long as it is officially illegal the game company reserves the right to crack down should they see the practice actually cut into their profits (more unhappy customers than happy ones instead of the other way around).

Why not a market in services?

[tillerman35]

Hopefully this isn't thread-jacking. At worst steering the thread a little, anyway.

But why not a secondary market in services? Stop selling stuff because you don't own the stuff anyway (if you believe the publishers). On the other hand, nobody owns your time. There's no reason you, either as an individual or agent of a corporate entity, can't use your time to help out another player for pay. You've paid your subscription, you're following the EULA, no cheating is involved, nothing is being done that couldn't be done for free without breaking any terms of service.

Some examples:

• Corpse Retrieval- lost your soul/corpse/shard/whatever in a skeery dungeon right next to the uberunderlord? We'll dispatch a Level 99 Brawnmeister to escort you safely to it and back to the newbie yard.
• Tour Guide- Want to see all the cool sights in the game? We'll provide you with safe escort.
• Quest help - Last quest item near a mob that's just to uber for you? We'll get you help.
• Group help - Tired of fellow players who jack your groups, can't play their class, act like idiots, get your character killed? Need just one more character to round out your group? We'll send out 2,3, as many characters as needed to get the job done. You get the exp, you get the loot, we fight for you (to the "death," if that's what it takes to get your quest done and keep your character safe)
• Entertainment - Are you lonely? Need someone to "keep you company" in the Owerly Inn? We'll send a member of the race/gender/alignment of your choice to a location where you can "converse" in private.
• Match Making - Need to hook up with someone who has similar likes and dislikes both in-game and RL? Take our Xanthian Compatibility Survey and we'll find the right troll for you!

All the controversy goes away because the secondary market company becomes a broker for services, not items. No more question of who owns in-game geld/items/whatever. It's no different than paying someone to help you mow the lawn.

Note: My exposure to MMORPG-ing is limited to EverQuest 2; do your own mental translation to the MOG of your choice.