Slashdot Mirror
Legitimizing Real Money Trading In Games
MMOGamer interviewed Andy Schneider, co-founder of Live Gamer, a company working with several major game publishers (including Acclaim, Funcom, and SOE) to legitimize the real money trading (RMT) industry in online games. Schneider expects this method of customer service to grow much more popular in the West over the next few years, especially after the success it's had in Asia.
"It started in the very earliest MMOs, if not back in the MUD days in a very grassroots sort of way, but then obviously got into a more opportunistic and nefarious industry. When I talk about legitimate RMT, it's about a publisher supporting the notion that people want to buy and sell virtual items for real money, and they have decided to proactively support that notion and give their player-base a way to do that. ... It takes the manual process out of the equation that most players are engaged in with the black market, and reduces the fraud considerably, which is good for players. ... The reason there are gold farmers out there, the reason why there is nearly a two billion dollar secondary market for virtual items, is because of consumer demand."
> Funny... I will just compare this to sports
That is perfectly fine, playing an online game is just playing a game the same as baseball.
> NASCAR wins by having more money to pump into car mods and engineers.
But only up to a point. NASCAR goes to great length to level the playing field. Any serious team should be able to muster the resources to 'play in the big leagues', otherwise they should have stayed on a less prestigious racing circuit. So all of the teams have roughly the same resources (or at least sufficient to compete) at their disposal and winning is more a matter of getting the right people on your team.
> NBA/NFL/NHL all make more money and have better teams if they pump money into someone that another team can't afford.
Actually, that was the motivation for the salary caps and revenue sharing rules enforced in all of the big money sports. Of course the big teams in large markets always find ways but again it is within limits. If some billionaire could take a minor market franchise to a national championship in a couple of years it would totally destroy the game and viewers would start going away until the league got some control back.
> A company has a decent plan to try and level the playing field and get farmers out of games
> and you just call them "pathetic losers."
Yes, anyone who has to cheat at a fricking game is a pathetic loser. If that judgement hits a little too close to home then deal with it and ask yourself why it hurts to be called a loser by someone you have never met.
My objection is that the companies see the farmers as the problem instead of as the symptom. Yes selling items will quickly run off the farmers if the company sells the items/gold for less than the cost to farm them. That is Econ 101. But the problem is the people buying the items and that problem only gets worse when the social sanctions are removed from the bad behaviour. It's just defining deviancy down.
> Look around you, this kind of stuff happens all over the "real" world.
Yes, the real world is a crappy place overrun with pathetic losers wanting things they haven't earned. We call them Democrats. If I am playing a game I want to forget about this place and it's problems and go explore a less depressing world. You know, one where Heroes do mighty deeds and survive based on their skill, wits, raw courage and just a wee bit of fortune. Adding "and when that fails entering their credit card number" just detracts from the poetry somehow.
Democrat delenda est
The advances come from proper motor racing - the kind where the cars can tun both left and right.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."