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Sony Online To Sell Virtual Property
OMG! writes "In an open letter to the community John Smedley, the president of Sony Online Entertainment, announced their new service 'the Station Exchange' which will allow players of Everquest II to trade their items for real live money.
Sony Online is the first major player in the MMORPG genre to embrace commercial trading of in-game items." Commentary available from all the usual suspects, including Wired, the Players, Terra Nova, F13, and Grimwell. This would seem to be a total reversal of the policies of certain other MMOGs.
I jumped out of my chair when I saw this. My inital thoughts:
- This is going to legitimize the activities of companies like IGE.
- I hope it's a unprecendented failure, even though I fear it won't be.
- What's next? SOE selling in-game currency?
At least they have the good sense to do this on new, seperate servers. This is going to have far-reaching consequences, they've essentially broken the "fourth wall" of MMORPGs. First-sign-of-the-apocalypse dept, indeed!
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
The makers of Second Life have taken a very unique approach to player rights with in the game.
.This is totally against the grain of most online games where the company owns it all.
In Second life, the content player create, is owned by the player and not the company
Additionally, they have started tying in real currency to the in game currency. I know this not unique, as Project Entropia does the same thing.
I personally hope this is the way games will go--giving ownership of virtual property to the players and allowing them to use it, sell it, convert for real $$$. I find these environments more enjoyable and rewarding that environments like Everquest, where Sony pretty much owns you.
but what happens when there is a server crash and I lose some rare object I was going to sell for 50 bucks?
people who play everquest for a living can actually play everquest for a living.
By allowing (condoning, actually) this sort of activity, Sony is ensuring that this game dies a slow and lingering death. Gone are the days when all you needed to excel at Everquest was a good internet connection and a complete lack of a life...now you need the cash, too. People with money will be better equipped than people with no money...those with no money will quit in disgust, and those with money will lose interest after they run up against enough other players with enough money to equip themselves well. Fortunately, those who don't want to participate in this mercenary practice will have the option to play on non-Station Exchange servers...that is, until a majority of the players on that server want the server to be a Station Exchange server...in which case you'll have to find another server...sorry.
It seems that Sony is turning on their major client base...risking alienation and mass defection...so why would Sony embraace such a controversial move?
From The Players:
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
My roommate was addicted ("No, I just like it a lot! I swear!") to a MMORPG a few years ago and learned that you could sell your character on eBay. He worked some numbers and figured out that if he kept leveling up at his current rate, then within XX weeks he could get to an attractively high level and acquire enough good items to sell at $XX, and he would effectively get $1 an hour for failing grades, failing relationships, failing sleep patterns, and failing personal hygiene.
Amazingly, he decided not to bother.
Give's a whole new meaning to the phrase Earn Big-Bucks working at home.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Economists love MMORPGS -- it allows them to observe relatively isolated microeconomies.
I imagine all the ills that befall the global economy are going to affect these economies as well, but perhaps in new and interesting ways.
Great time to be an Economics grad student....
I think the future is obvious with this plan. SOE will eventually create items which can only be purchased by real money. (It would not be a drop off any creatures for example). These items would have some significant power and 'wow' factor coolness via animated / high quality graphics. They would most likely make these items no-trade so people couldn't sell / give them away in game (forcing players to buy the item for each of their characters. Imagine being able to buy a Pegasus flying mount which can't be obtained any other way? Or some neat looking undead / skeletal horse mounts)? Eventually, you'll be able to buy NPC's who follow you and assist you in battle. Perhaps buy a castle and an army to support you?
SOE has taken the first steps in this direction and I am sure we'll see unique items for sale in the next 12 months. You can bet that if I thought of this potential cash cow, that people at SOE have thought of it and are counting on it as a source of revenue.
Sounds like a good way to improve the standard of living in underdeveloped countries if you ask me. ;)
SOE could completely dress this up as humanitarian aid, set up some "internet cafes" where none exist, siphoning money from the lazy rich countries.
It's already happening in China.
One of the great things about online games has always been that if you are black, white, poor, or rich, you all start the game with equal footing and have equal chance at success.
Not any more. Once again, the old money will reign and trod on the up-and-coming, or the hobbyist player.
Hey, wait a minute. That means eventually the vast majority of people playing will be those who have been economically filtered to the top; those who have, and are willing to pay, lots of money for games. And Sony will have their names, addresses, and the ability to advertise directly to them.
Wow. Sony is fucking brilliant.
---
Students, children, those in countries of economic hardship, don't whine. Your computer COMES with solitaire. For free!
To those objecting to exchanging virtual goods for real money, please explain how money is any more "real" than the objects in this game. Money is just a concept; those pieces of paper don't have any intrinsic worth. Hell, even an amount of gold isn't instrinsically "worth" anything, except the price put on it by those who might wish to acquire it.
As for the objections that Sony can create new virtual goods from thin air - isn't this what Microsoft does every time they release a new software package? How is Office "real"?
Regarding the complaint that this system will favour the rich, isn't this already the case in that rich people can afford better PCs - ie: the advantage conferred in FPSs by higher frame rates.
And finally, to those worried about cheating or viruses, or crashes or whatever; since the vast majority of "real" money only exists electronically these days, the exact same issues are faced by banks, and they seem to do OK. It can be done right.
It's going to be interesting to see how this turns out. I wonder if they're going to have to make use of the same tools as in the "real" economy, such as controls of the interest rate and so forth.
With online gaming, XBOXLive, Micropayments and the plethora of subscription-based massive-multiplayer-online games comming out now, games are no longer a product that you buy and pay once for, but a service which a company provides for you, and - if you want to spend more, you get better service (easier items, higher levels) without having to put the legwork in for you.
Sure, you could go to a bar, be a slub and walk up to the bar, deal with getting the bar-tenders attention and yell your order and hope it gets heard right.
Or, you could walk into the VIP lounge, pay extra for bottle service, and not need to deal with the hassles of trying to get the attention of the waitress at the bar.
The more you pay, the better service you get, and this is simply an extension of that. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out in the long run and if other MMORPGs will follow suit.
There is another MMORPG out there (forget which), where using real-life currency for in-game items is the norm, its built into the game. I recall an island being sold in game for a few thousand dollars (by the developers, not some IGE-yantis ass), and the guy gets to develop it however he wants, or even rent out parts of his island to other people for real money.
OSI has been doing a very 'mini' version of this in allowing players to buy characters that start off with their skills in the 80s (they still need to do the legwork to get them into the 100+ range), but having a 'master' character from the get-go for an extra few bucks is a good deal.
UO I think, is one of the few MMORPGs which actually allows and encourages account transfer, and provides a service which allows accounts to change hands in a secure manner to help reduce fraud.
Selling items in game has huge potential to be a cash-cow, Sony has realized this for ages, and their main reason for banning people before for it, is because someone else was making profit and not them.
Personnaly, I dont care if items/stats or characters can be bought - aslong as they are NOT exlusive to 'buying them'.
If you can buy a sword-of-ass-kicking with +555 damage, there best be a way to get the exact item in-game.
I. I think it's funny that in the past there has been great opposition to this. And only now after Microsoft announced that it would be a major offering throughout many Xbox 2 Live! games does SONY seem to alter their position on this.
II. I am just waiting for some "virtual nation" to have their GNP exceed that of real nations. "In the news today, the virtual nation of "Eschboxia Livia" has exceeded the GNP of Poland. Much question has arose since their recent purchase of an entire island in the Bahamas as to whether Eschboxia can in deed be called a virtual nation any longer.
The only problem I can see here is if SOE starts going overboard and just madly tossing ultra-rare items that have to be farmed for willy-nilly. In that situation, I'd say that yes, the consumers eventually lose. However, if they just want that nigh-on million dollar yearly bonus, I say why not?
This will highly increase the value of rare items and people who have addictive personalities will play games where there is a chance of getting that rare item that now not only makes your toon more uber, it is worth a bunch of real life coin. Smart idea imo.
But these games aren't actually fun... (Well maybe for the first 15 minutes when everything is new to you) They're repetitive, formulaic, and specifically designed to get you addicted: Hmm, if i level for just one more hour, i can get the sword of cunning and then leveling will be much more fun..except it won't because you'll be fighting harder baddies. You get locked into a cycle of leveling to beat harder badguys, and therefore being introduced to ever harder badguys.
In the end it's never more complicated than walking up to the baddie and pressing two or three fire-buttons and watching your sword wack away. Why not let people who don't have months to spend on A GAME skip by the boring parts if they want to. i.e. farming for money so you can buy a slightly better weapon.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
"But quite frankly, if the cheats can make Sony richer in the short term, what do Sony really care?" Exactly. They need to make the money back that they spent developing this game. It clearly isn't doing that, AND they're losing customers to the competition. Sony has written this game off. It's no longer a long-term venture for them. It's the MMO maker equivalent of "selling off".
-Randy
I think the poster is basically saying that it's a game, and it takes some of the fun out of most games it if people can pay for advancement - not to mention makes you feel like you have to pay extra, too.
This is one reason why most people don't play games like Magic:TG - the feeling that you can't compete unless you spend tons of loot on the game. And, to many people, games are less fun when you have more than a trivial amount of money invested in them.
This isn't going to legitimize IGE, this is going to put them out of business, once Sony gets rolling with this.
Quite true. Obviously, no 3rd-party seller of in-game resources can survive being undercut by the system administrators, who can accomplish the equivalent of MONTHS of gil-farming with a single command-line.
However, although the short-term effect may seem beneficial, I've always thought that the legitimized (or merely widespread) sale of in-game items would hasten the collapse of any typical MMORPG. This seems to be a desparation move by SOE, whose EQ2 project has been eclipsed by WoW anyhow.
My thesis is that MMORPGs provide a substantial amount of their entertainment in the same way casino gambling does: the players' victories and rewards are quite arbitrarily handed out by the operators, but the cold-blooded arithmetic is hidden behind a screen of glamour and fun. Expose the honest real-dollars cost of an activity to the player, and they'll flee to a more fantastical game.
If a slot machine has a sign on it that each 10 minutes of play loses an average of $2.85, few people will enjoy pulling the lever.
If level 60 epic flame-armor has a "Buy Now" hyperlink which costs $14.31, few people will find it fun to camp a dragon every 3 hours hoping he drops one more of the pieces.
Basic psychological principles: addiction can best be sustained if the game gives out rewards unpredictably. Game items are valued more because it was hard to know when they'd appear. Putting a blatant dollar-sign on the items is the ultimate form of predictabilty. The virtual Skinner box falls apart. When the mystique is gone, the players will be too.
PS. The Economist magazine agrees with my prediction, although the article isn't posted for nonsubscriber online reading.
Sony isn't selling items. You buy items from other characters.
Most players play for fun.
With those two in mind, it makes sense that buying/selling would not be too central to the game. You can still use EQ $$ to buy other in game stuff, and most players don't have the real cash to buy themselves to victory. Buying/selling w/ USD (or the Euro, or whatever.) won't necessarily dominate most players lives.
BUT:
There are going to be people who go NUTS over this. You all know the type, it's the player who is convinced that his success in the game is the justification of his otherwise completely unjustifiable high opinion of himself. That guy is going to center his life around getting real money out of EQ, and he stands a pretty good chance of ruining this for everyone.
put more coherently:
Since you have to buy from other players, there shouldn't be an overabundance of high end items for sale. (if you get something cool, you want to use it.) BUT some people are just asses, and this will only give them one more excuse and one more outlet. They will ruin it, not by buying their way to victory, but by (insert unfair way that jerks can acquire high end items) in order to sell them for real $$.
If I play a card game with you and you got up to go to the bathroom, you could lay your entire hand down face up on the table and I'd never look. The whole game is an artifical structure with artificial value and balance and it only "works" if you adhere to the rules. Cheating defeats the whole purpose. However, I have some little cousins of various ages that are the exact opposite. The game is about the win or the top and the ends justify the means. The first thing they do with ANY new game is google for cheat codes.
I simply can't explain it. It makes me personally ill to witness. But I wouldn't be surprised if you and I are severly outnumbered by kids more than willing to run up mom and dad's credit card for a level 50 uber warrior. Then again, you can no longer use red pens to mark up errors on tests in school because it stresses out the kids, so I'm not sure I understand or agree with anything relating to the pussy children we're raising anymore.
Now where's my cane and Metamucil?
I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!
OK, first of all, "fun" is relative. Saying that a game is not fun more often than not (and specifically in this case) is actually just saying that you don't find this type of game fun. There are many people that don't find FPS's or RTS's or Sim's fun, that doesn't make the type of game "not fun".
Secondly, you're mistaken about what an exploit is. An exploit is when you use a bug in the code to gain advantage. Using terrain isn't an exploit unless that specific type of terrain has a bug in it that grants an unfair advantage. In real world combat, terrain does provide advantages, i.e. hiding behind a rock and shooting a gun around it, sword fighting on uneven ground or choosing a bottleneck canyon. Where in the world did you come up with the idea that using a tree to protect your backside in a fight is an exploit?
BTW, back to the original post, I think this is a sad and pathetic move by Sony. It's only showing that they have absolutely no clue how to make a good MMO, so now that their new product is doing so poorly financially they're relying on cheap gimmicks to make money.