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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.
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.
"How much for your woman?"
Actually if you think about it, this is even better than software fees. Need money for the yearly employee bonus? Just make some pretend stuff out of thin air and sell as needed! Who said magic isn't real?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
- Preventing people from hacking/gaming the system.
- Making sure it's all skill and not chance.
I'll wager that this is a fiasco. Oops, I mean I suspect it will be. No gambling allowed on Slashdot...Actually, I was trying to be Insightful, not Funny.
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
...Poor players will have to work for their virtual items, while some punk kid will spend his paycheck on a +1,000 sword of n00bPower.
It makes sense to me to limit or ban this kind of trading/buying. What's the point of earning money and stats, if you can simply buy them?
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.
So the rich get to stay on top even in games?
oh what fun that will be, my character can be a penniless student just like in real life.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
I didn't RTFA but I'm guessing Sony gets a percentage cut of all items traded on the Station. And even if they don't, it's generating traffic and thus ad revenue.
I mean, WHOA! RIAA! Look at this! Somebody had customers doing illegal things with their property in violation of their license agreement and found a way to make a profit off it instead of sueing their own customers! What a novel friggen concept.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
If people want to give real money to buy imaginary items, they should be able to do so. I wouldn't do it, because I don't see what value I would be getting, but if others feel differently, more power to them.
I am surprised that Sony is doing this, though, because they have a tendency to shoot themselves in the foot with propriatery standards and a sometimes control-freakish mentality which makes some of their hardware less desireable than it would otherwise be.
It's almost like someone with a different (non-Sony) mindset approved this decision.
Poor people at a disadvantage to those with high disposable incomes! I can only hope that life doesn't imitate art or we could end up living in a world where the wealthy have access to the best homes, food, clothing, transport, education and health care! What a nightmarish vision!
Hello and may all the Gods of Everguest Bless Yuo!
I am writing because I know that yuo are a sincer and honest person who will hep out a preson in need.
My Everquest cahacter MINOLLY WEATHERALL was sadly kilt in a server crash leaving behind an account of $70,000,000 SEVENTY MILLION AMERICN DOLLARS with no claimant accessible.
If you wil assist me with your Everquest cahracter to recover this money I wil give you 15% plus expenses
This is a sincer offer and I know I can trust you with this verry sensitiv informations!
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
Smed says that 40% of their customer service calls are related to fraudulent in-game transactions. Sony could make this disappear instantly by creating an escrow system in-game. You have a sword to sell, you take it to the EQ Escrow storefront and drop it off. The buyer picks up the sword and the credits are automatically deducted from his account. No chance for fraud.
This isn't going to legitimize IGE, this is going to put them out of business, once Sony gets rolling with this.
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.