Trust In Virtual Worlds

The Escapist's last issue for the year touches on the currency of Trust in Massively Multiplayer Games. With virtual-world currency gaining ever more value in the real world, in-game scams and lies can be deadly serious. When you give away that Trust, business can boom. From the article: "Their business plan is an ingenious one: Rather than engage in the wars that rage through alliance space, ISS has chosen to take a neutral stance, building a huge player-operated structure known as an 'outpost' that provides repair, refitting and marketing services to all comers. In a star system known simply as KDF-GY, ISS has established a little Switzerland in space, where pilots of rival corps and alliances can dock to do business, sell loot and kit out their battlecruisers for the next engagement. And according to Martin Wiinholt and Shayne Smart, the 30-something players behind Count TaSessine and Serenity Steele, respectively, business is good."

Comments

Linden's mistake

[rodentia]

"We want to ensure that new residents have easy access to additional L$ without having to take yet another leap of trust to sign up and give payment information to a third party," said Linden Lab economic czar Lawrence Linden. But residents had already taken that leap of trust with GOM, and been rewarded.

Indeed. I daresay one would have greater trust in the third party, whose business solely relied upon professional integrity and actual fiduciary trust. Linden as market maker for L$ is the fox guarding the henhouse. GOM had no fiduciary interest in the exchange ratio, merely the conduct of exchanges.

On the subject of trust...

[1WingedAngel]

This is the same game where one of the best examples of trust betrayed in an online world can be found. The below story is well worth the read and has been cited numerous times as an example of the risk inherent in an online world.
The Big Scam

Yeah!

[chriso11]

Corporations are here to save us! How come I never noticed that before?

This stuff is cool, but I think that the reason it works is because the virtual corporations still require player support. In the real world, corporations have managed to turn the tables on citizens, so that now the corporations interests supercepe that of citizens.

Re:Yeah!

[eyepeepackets]

"All public corporations in the US are owned by citizens. Everything from
Wal-Mart to Haliburton (in which Moore owns stock) to MS to whatever boogie man
you fantasize about."

Any person on the planet can own stock in publicly traded corporations as I
understand it, so saying corporations are "owned by citizens" is not technically
correct.

What the original poster suggested and the others following refer to is the apparent
ability of corporations, particularly multi-national corporations, to avoid the
repercussions of responsibility for their behavior. Such responsibility
avoidance is, in essence, a variation on the old con known as the "shell game."
It plays out in corporate and governance thusly: One concentrates authority in a
small group (corporate board and their purchased politicians) whilst diluting
responsibility over as large a group as possible (stock holders.) With this
manner of construct, the authority can pretty much do as it pleases and, when
things get nasty, the authority points to the responsible body, stock holders.
But the catch is that only the very biggest of the stock holding groups have a
voice that will garner a response from the corporate board. Funny how these
stock holding groups and corporate boards seem to all blend together into a
rather small group of the same folks.

As a test of your "responsible citizens" theory of corporate ownership,
please go buy what shares you can afford of a corporate stock, complain about
what and how they do, and let us know the result.

That our governments allow corporations under current law is proof simple that
the politicians are in their pockets: The entire corporate law/structure is a
responsibility avoidance device. Companies, whether incorporated or not, are run
by humans who make decisions with consequences and should be held fully
accountable and would be if our political systems weren't so very corrupt. Take
a look at where your congress critter's re-election money comes from for an
eye-opener than only the willfully ignorant (another definition for the word
"stupid") can pretend away.

Caio.

That's right

[Red Flayer]

So, the article is basically saying that it's a new thing for people in MMOGs to have the level of trust where they'd invest (collectively) thousands of dollars in a cooperative venture (EVE). Especially since that the same time, Linden Labs established a currency trading service, despite a private service being available, because people can't trust other people.

The difference here is that the entire foundation of success in EVE is trust and cooperation. In order to have the kind of cash necessary to buy shares, you have to have trusted people previously.

I can't see this working in most other MMOGs, since 'griefing' and scamming are well established in the cultures of WoW and others. Though frowned upon, thiose are games where trust of others is not necessary (as TFA points out, but does not stress).

Trust is the reason that guilds are successful in MMOGs, as has been discussed many times on /. It's the same principle, just not as fiscally structured as the 'neutral outpost' in EVE.

Re:Not quite

[chriso11]

Microsoft enjoyed more than $12 billion in total tax breaks over the past five years. In fact, Microsoft actually paid no tax at all in 1999, despite $12.3 billion in reported U.S. profits. Microsoft's tax rate for the past two years was only 1.8 percent on $21.9 billion in pretax U.S. profits.

General Electric, America's most profitable corporation, reported $50.8 billion in U.S. profits over the past five years, but paid only 11.5 percent of that in federal income taxes. That low tax rate reflected almost $12 billion in corporate tax welfare for GE.

IBM reported $5.7 billion in U.S. profits in 2000, but paid only 3.4 percent of that in federal income taxes. In 1997, IBM reported $3.1 billion in U.S. profits, and instead of paying taxes, got an outright tax rebate. Over the past five years, IBM enjoyed a total of $4.7 billion in corporate tax welfare.

In the US, corporate taxes (state + federal) are about 40%! 40%!
Maybe you meant 4%, not 40%?

even more...
If big corporations actually paid 35 percent of their U.S. profits in federal income taxes, as the tax code ostensibly requires, corporate income taxes this year would total at least $308 billion. But actual corporate-tax payments this year are expected to be only $136 billion. In other words, this year (and next), for the first time since the early 1980S, corporate-tax loopholes will actually cost the U.S. Treasury more than the amount companies pay in income taxes.

Check out for more examples.

How about this?

The more you learn!

Re:Scam

[Swanktastic]

I happened to read this article while glancing at the magazine rack in a bookstore, and found it a compelling read. If anything, all this publicity about scams/events in EVE would seem to attract players interested in the commercial aspects of MMORPGs, along with your occasional bad apple.

Someone put scans up, and the site seems to have exceeded bandwidth. Hopefully this Google cache works for you:

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:ng1TNWjULLsJ: www.mmodig.com/%3Fp%3D155&hl=en

Enjoy!