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eBay launches the era of Virtual Property
Heads up: here comes another Net landmark: the broad-based mainstreaming of computing games by the hundreds of thousands of middle-class Americans pouring online in a continuing stream and preparing to pay big bucks for characters, property, tools and symbols.
Here goes another online neighborhood, literally.
For the Net, the past couple of years has already been a Wall-Busting time: MP3's, open source, e-trading, and now, bidding for virtual property.
New but mushrooming trading for characters and property on games like Ultima Online has significance way beyond gaming. It suggests that space on the Net isn't infinite after all, and that people may have to begin paying or trading for access to the parts of it they want to use. Also that people with money can alter the balance of Net and Web culture suddenly and dramatically.
As usual, our phobic media has been obsessing on the wrong story: it isn't online violence, but online property.
The idea of virtual property is radical and new, almost completely unforeseen by the legions of futurists and cyber-theorists studying about the Internet. EBay, it turns out, will perhaps be even more revolutionary than the Mp3.
This week on eBay, Ultima Online players are spending real $US, sometimes thousands of them, to acquire video-game assets.
According to a story by Ariana Eunjung Cha in the San Jose Mercury News, players are bidding at online auctions to own imaginary resources that are becoming increasingly scarce as tens of thousands of people try and play.
Since its release in l997 by Electronic Arts the number of Ultima players has been growing by the thousands each month. Ultima is bringing the formerly geeky world of MUD's to the middle-class. Ultima, played by more than 125,000 people globally, and is, increasingly, creating its own reality for people who once viewed computer games as obsessive behavior for weird kids.
On Ultima, people are born, get married, are happy and stressed, get and lose jobs and die, just like they do in the real world.
But so many people are coming online to play that Ultima is facing serious real world problems, especially over-crowding, congestion and runaway housing costs.
So players are buying imaginary but increasingly scare resources as empty lots for housing, tower or castle developments sell out. Although Ultima's software engineers update and expand the game each month, they can't keep up with the population explosion, which means that gamers are trading with other players for virtual property. It's a shocker, perhaps an inevitable one, but urban and suburban planning problems are hitting online games. Perhaps Web designers, social planners and architects can do better than their real-world counterparts.
For the past two months, reports the Mercury News, eBay has offered gamers the chance to bid on property, characters, gold, armor, magical potions and trinkets. Ultimate Online sells for $39.95,plus $9.95 a month for access to the servers. But on eBay, one gamer sold his account for $4,000, and others have gotten anywhere from $1,500 to $3,000. This morning eBay has nearly 200 different items listed for sale.
This trading could permanently change the culture of gaming, as well as Net economics. The amount of time consumed in getting established in games like Ultima is enormous. Some players have spent thousands of hours over months, even years, to develop characters so they are experienced enough to explore the towns and countrysides of the game without getting maimed or killed.
Now, people with money can acquire sophisticated players and property with little work or time. Inexperienced players can have mature characters. That would change the whole nature of gaming.
"I don't want to spent a year developing my character, building property, getting savvy and confident only to find myself up against some Yuppie who's buying his way past me. That alters the whole idea," wrote Jared from Chicago, an online friend who plays Ultima almost every night of his life. "I have to earn the money I collect, and some newbie can start twice as rich as me because he's willing to pay. It's wrong, and I hope they stop it."
They won't. Company officials told the Mercury News that trading is perfectly legal, that they couldn't do anything about it even if they wanted to.
Still, it's amazing to see that the problems, pressures and rewards of a virtual game are suddenly morphing to real life. People are trading real-world money for virtual property. That takes recreation to a completely different level, and alters the very idea of how conventional property-buying works.
The Ultima trading began when a Texas firefighter decided to put his account up for sale when he got a second job and no longer had the time to play. The minimum bid was placed at $39, and it sold a week later for $521. Two weeks ago, a network security consultant from Chicago paid $1,000 on eBay for five virtual characters, three virtual houses and 300,000 pieces of virtual gold. An Ultimate Online fanatic, he bought the characters and property as a gift to a friend.
The eBay trading is especially ironic in the weeks after the Littleton, Colorado school massacre, when computer games - particularly those like Quake and Doom -- were widely described in media as responsible for aggression and violence. The CBS News broadcast "60 Minutes" devoted a whole hour to this question: "Are Video Games Turning Your Kids Into Killers." As more middle-class Americans turn to gaming, and experience its complex, creative and communal nature, the notion will seem even more ludicrous than it already does.
In the most literal sense, gaming is about to be about as controversial as buying a new car or fixing up a second home. In fact, it might soon be almost indistinguishable from it.
Maybe it's time to get your characters in shape. You might soon be using them to buy some new hardware, or pay for your real-world vacation.
Despite all the media hype, this isn't a new trend. If you look at some of the older online games, such as Gemstone III, this sort of thing has been going on for years, even before the internet became a phenomenon. Long before the press story about a UO account being auctioned for $2000, individual characters were being sold in Dragonrealms for over $3000.
I think the main cause for this is that there's now a lot of extra money floating around that wasn't readily available before. A few years ago, it cost $3-$6/hour to play these games (up to $36/hour in the early Genie days). It's easy for that to add up to $500/month, or even over $1000/month for those who were truly obsessed with the games. Now that they're all on flat rate fees, the money that would have been spent just to play the game is being used to gain extra benefits and goodies.
Most likely, the people that are spending this money now are the same types that would have played during the hourly days, as opposed to those who can only afford to play at the flat rates. The shock is to the people who never dreamed that there would people those who could get so seriously into a hobby that they'd spend thousands of dollars on it, or at least don't understand that that magical armor can hold as much value for someone as a rare stamp, or a first issue comic book, or any other physical commoditiy.
There are plenty of other examples, it's just a matter of people trying to classify what's 'real' and what's not. That piece of armor I may buy is nothing more than a bunch of text and data, but then that's about all the article Mr. Katz wrote is as well, and he presumably gets paid for it, as do any number of journalists and reporters. Paying for stuff that's not 'real' is not new, and paying a lot of money for hobbies is not new. So why is the media so surprised about it?
David
Ebay's feedback deal is about the only way to judge a person's trustworthyness. I sure wouldn't fork over several hundred for anything to someone that's just created a new account and has a zero rating. For computer stuff, there's many people/stores that sell on ebay full time and have scores of 1000 or more. I've had no trouble when dealing with them, for the most part.
After browsing the Ultima Online auctions, most of them are by sellers with very low feedback scores. So, I'd certainly be wary. Only try it if you don't mind losing the money.
"GET A LIFE!"
... but this is how it is with almost any
Seriously, the fact that people are paying an
arm and a leg for a bunch of bits and bytes
in a *game* is disturbing in the sense of
"a sucker is born every minute". It's
understandable that as we do go towards
paying for virtual 'items', such as domain
names, web page hosting, ads, MP3 & other
media, and such, that it's important to
question how much will people shell out for
this. However, in all the cases I've mentioned,
there is some definite value that those virtual
items represent, whether it be a better
reputation, or some entertainment value that
can be used at a number of places. But
with the Ultima Online characters, it seems
to be something that can only provide
entertainment at one place (the server).
Everyone probably has a value on what they
would pay for various forms of entertainment;
some people refuse to see movies that cost
more than $5 to see, some people will be hoping
the trans-Atlantic flights come May 18 to see
a certain other movie. So I guess in the end,
those people that are spending $2000 of
their own real world money to buy a character
in a virtual world are getting their own
jollies, or cannot stand the rather tedious
task of building up a character for so long
to get that character to a point where it becomes
fun
well designed game. The beginning is enjoyable,
the middle stages boring, and the end exciting --
that's how you draw in players, and promise
to keep them hooked.
In any case, this seems very reminisant of MUDs
and varients, and I cannot remember anything
like this happening. It must be something to
do with the 'ease' of ecommerce -- it's *very*
easy to spend money when you don't see or
feel it.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
I don't see what's so amazing about this. BTW Jon, the standard term is Intellectual Property although Virtual Property sounds more exciting. The "property" part is debatable too, but that's another story...
Property, money, IP.. they are all social constructions anyway. We're more used to some than others, and some have more dubious justifications. When paper money was introduced people were amazed that someone would be prepared to swap real food for paper money. The amazing thing is not so much that people pay money for virtual property, but that people even think of money as a concrete entity.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
I think you're missing my point. Why would someone practice golfing, for instance, when they can just pay someone to hit the ball for them? Or they can just tee off, or even just drop the ball any old place.
The point of most games is not to win, but to have played. If you want a 'badass' character then you should earn it. Otherwise two things result: 1st, you cheapen the entire experience of playing into an exercise in comparing disposable incomes. 2nd, you destroy the worth of such a character, because what's stopping other people from buying or making up better ones?
The point of a car, OTOH, is to go places. But I think that people who build their own cars have a better appreciation for cars, and the things that go into them, etc. than I ever will. They learned something, and they're better for having taken some time and expended some effort and having done so.
Anyway, no, I haven't played any of the Ultima games. I don't like computer roleplaying much, as it seems much more limited than regular playing. But I've read a bit about Ultima, and it seems to me that the point of the game is to impart a rather good set of morals/values to the player. Being the sort of person who immediately reads the end of a book does nothing for you. Give a hoot, don't cheat.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
People are dumber than even *I* had thought possible.
;)
Amazing! Of course, they're cheating (if you consider it a game) and buying a character, who succeeds primarily because of the player's skills and personality - not necessarily stats, screws things up. If I were playing a game, and a friend's behavior is replaced with that of a total stranger, I'll stop being friends.
Ultimately people who buy love are just fooling themselves, and people who cheat shouldn't play in the first place. Unfortunately I have a suspicion that my brother has just found a job as a professional gamer.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Just as a side note, I made a deck out of black and white mostly-commons which pissed off ALOT of people by taking out their big fearsome deck they'd spent beaucoup dollars on. gave me much pleasure...
... is because it's more than a game to a lot of people. You're interacting with others in a virtual community. It's not just some load-em-up-and-kill-everything game like Halflife-- people create goals and set out to achieve them.
With over 100,000 subscribers, Ultima Online is HUGE. You can do a plethora of things in the game: cook food, socialize with others, create armor, kill monsters, kill players, and even hold a wedding. It's progressed to the point where people no longer look at it as a toy, but an extension to their virutal persona.
The land has grown to the point of overcrowding. It's virtually impossible to find a place to put even the smallest house-- forget about placing a castle! People who buy these structures (and characters, and gold, and other things) via eBay are doing so because it's just so hard (impossible, even) to do so normally. There's nothing wrong with buying these things-- it's a hobby to the players, and if you've ever gotten really involved with a hobby (e.g. model railroads, Magic the Gathering, remote controlled cars, beanie babies), you'll understand how expensive it can be, even though it may seem absolutely worthless to anyone else. Since these items are valued so high in the game, it's only natural to extend their worth into the real world. These purchases satisfy the need to feel more powerful and wealthy than your average newbie.
To anyone that claims "it's just a game. get a life.": Who are you to judge these players? What is so wrong with interacting with others in the virtual world of Ultima Online? Get off your high horses and realize that not everyone is the same as you-- many, many people take pleasure from interacting and adventuring with others in an online community. Although they may spend large amounts of time within the UO universe, that doesn't mean they've totally neglected the Real World. The blanket statement "it's just a game" doesn't apply here-- it's more than just a game, it's a virtual community.
Probably not. There is already a noticable need for more name space so they have added more top level domains. Another thing is that some site with similar names that might get each other's traffic by accident have links to each other to help redirect people to the right location. Things are only as valuable as the value that buyers attach to the item. The millions of dollars for domain names are the exception not the norm. Having formerly worked for an ISP, I have seen a number of transactions for domain names, and they range from $35 - thousands depending on what the buyer feels the name is worth.
The Internet was built to scale, and it has scaled far beyond what the original creators dreamed. tcp/ip handles http traffic surprisingly well considering that http traffic is radically different from what the designers expected and designed tcp for.
IETF, NANOG, ARIN, RIPE, et al are headed by savvy people who know and understand the trends and the problems caused by them. They have done a fantastic job for more than a decade and I see no reason why they won't continue this excellence.
Damon
While it seems fairly new at first glance, after looking at the online world as compared to the real world it just seems like the next step. Buying a character or whatever on Ulitma Online isn't much different than gambling a bunch of money at Vegas or buying that new 3dfx card to play Quake or getting that new DVD player. It's all about entertainment. People will pay to be entertained. Just because it is online doesn't make it revolutionary. I think the domain name bidding is much more relevant. A domain name is truly a sign post or address on the Internet where you can live and do work. It has significantly larger effects than buying gaming characters and pieces. That's old news. How many D&D or Warhammer or any number of other games have people spending thousands of dollars on pieces and boards? Plenty, and the Ultima Online bidding is just an extension of that. What truly sucks about the bidding is that people who haven't earned that character can't control it and don't deserve it, but that's life.
Damon
Read some modified Katz:
"New but mushrooming trading for characters and property on games like Heaven has significance way beyond gaming. It suggests that space in Afterlife isn't infinite after all, and that people may have to begin paying or trading for access to the parts of it they want to use. Also that people with money can alter the balance of Heaven's culture suddenly and dramatically."
My wife has an illness that prevents her from leaving the home most of the time. She can also be awake at all hours of the day/night. With UO and ICQ she has friends world-wide who are awake when she is and that value her virtual companionship.
UO and Everquest have become the dominate forum for her social life. She jokes that this makes her a looser, but I think that it is great.
Just a couple of years ago she would have been basically cut off from most human contact. Now she has friends from many other countries and backgrounds. Wonderfull!!! I would pay a lot of money for anything that could enhance her experience.
She recently quit UO and switched to EQ. Too bad she did this before I found out about this bidding. She had a multiple grandmaster character with a good reputation and a lot of money.
i don't understand the issue. what's the big deal? we've been using money to purchase things that aren't tangible for a long time. what about movie rights? or retainers? or even bonds, securities, etc? just because i spend money on something, it doesn't mean i can hold the purchase in my hand. this isn't any different.
(well, ok, the difference is that a bunch of whack-jobs willing to spend thousands on a mud character probably don't deserve media attention, but that's beside the point).
i think katz writes these because he is interested in discovering a phenomenon -- in order that he can say "told you so" a number of years down the road. well, after enough of these vague, prophetic (and apparently unresearched) articles, something is bound to hold true.
but probably not sexbots.
Kinda makes you wonder...how long will it be until you can buy "pre-made" characters directly from Origin? If people are buying other player's characters for hundreds of dollars, what is going to keep Origin from creating a group of "elite" player characters and selling "premium" accounts that include extras like magic items, higher levels, and castles?
A buddy of mine just last night said "wait till homeworld comes out... you'll see people playing it for a living and selling characters for thousands." And suprisingly to me, he claims there is a yearly winner who takes home $50k in cash.
Think tradewars in 3d with a limitless universe and support for linux.
Anyways, what my babbling is saying is... i dont think we've seen anything yet in regards to the virtual character selling... thank god i dont play games much.
T0ast.
How about a tech company that develops bots, and either:
1) Sells the bot software (boooo!)
2) Uses the bot software to accumulate lots of resources, and sell the chars on eBay.
I used to do this all the time on MUDs (without the selling part).
In response to earlier posters that said these sales violate the spirit of the game, this is an age old debate on MUDs. You have several groups of players that think the other ones are out of touch. The power players, who just want to be bigger badder faster more, and live for the kill. The chatters, who want nothing more than to stand in the town square and chat. Several other sub-species exist, like me who just coded bots on muds where they weren't allowed. The challenge was to make them as un-bot like as possible, if you get caught botting, it wasn't a good enough bot. Also try to make them as hardcore productive as the human hack-n-slash players.
-s.p. Red
.sig Karma out the wazoo, better to spend points elsewhere if this is above 2 or below 0
When I first heard about someone buying Ultima
Online characters I was shocked, but then I
realized that this thing has happened everywhere.
I remember playing AD&D and someone bought
advantages buy offering plenty of snacks for
the DM. The players would also trade items for soda or snacks between themselves.
We ended up making this illegal, people could
offer the DM something, but he could _never_ give
any advantages (this part was obvious)
But we _also_ made it illegal to trade items
between players based on such merits..people
giving other players strange gifts, not called
for during the game, would be taken XP from.
This is in a way excactly the same, only there
are more at stake, people offer MONEY to buy
other peoples items of characters.
I find this repulsive, as people with LOADS of
money will always find a way to use it, and if
you can't ever spend up all of your money, why
not buy yourself advantages like this?
Trading characters should be illegal in the game,
and people caught doing it should be banned IMHO.
People that spend a lot of time and money to build
up a character should not be bypassed by some newbie with a lot of cash buying themselves into
the line.
This game had gods in it, so the GMs were effectively playing those gods when needed. Their table was the "temple", and those who provided sacrifices would be rewarded.
Then my roommate showed up carrying two grocery bags. That's when the rest of us knew that we were doomed...
--The basis of all love is respect
This reminds me...the IRC channel I hang out at on Efnet recently got taken over...so what do the hostile parties do? Sell it on ebay! Wish I could find the URL for that auction, it was funny as hell when we found out.
At any rate, I think that this buying and selling of virtual property is kinda getting too much into the game. But I guess it was just a matter of time before something like this happened. Another case of rich people flaunting their money and taking the easy way out. It's a GAME, for crying out loud. If these people are playing Ultima Online they had better have a lot of time to begin with. All in all, this buying and selling sickens me, but it's natural in the progression of things...people are now buying their ways out of entertaining themselves.
Jack
Demona's Law - "User data expands to exceed available bandwidth." ("User data" being pr0n, mp3's, vob's,
...it's on the development in that space.
It's not that net 'space' is ever going to get scarce. The net has an almost infinite capacity for expansion... assuming hardware can keep up with demand.
What these people were paying for was convenience. Those characters had probably been developed since UO began. That takes a lot of time and dedication. Someone without the time to spend building up a character like that, or someone who's simply impatient would look for an easier way into the world. If all of a sudden, 200,000 more users signed up for UO, they'd probably just expand the game world, but getting that well established would still take considerable effort. It's the same reasoning behind hiring a consultant to do your web page, or buying a pre-made computer from Dell or Compaq. The premium is on the service, not neccesarily the composition of what you're buying. Sure, I could spend a while reading up on HTML or decide to code my own online game, but that's a large investment of time (at least coding the game is) that I probably don't have.
Because the net is so scalable, the only real value is attached to developed space, or unique properties (i.e, altavista.com).
---------
---------
Get back to me when my brain starts working.
While it was rare, it has not been unheard of for
people to pay money for MUD characters, or to pay
MUD admins for favours in RL money and/or other
real life *ahem* favours. While I've not seen
$1,000+ spent on characters personally on MUDs,
I would venture to say this is for 2 reasons:
1) Generally MUDders are poor college students.
2) MUDs are usually free, so while with UO it
actually DOES cost you money to develop characters
like the ones being bought, on a MUD you're only
paying for the luck of good statistics and the
time spent building up the character.
This is totally not a new thing, it's just gotten
bigger. I wish Mr. Katz would stick to writing
about things he knows something about.
...dave
Think different? I'd be happy if most people would just think...
> The idea of virtual property is radical and
> new, almost completely unforeseen by the
> legions of futurists and cyber-theorists
> studying about the Internet. EBay, it turns
> out, will perhaps be even more revolutionary
> than the Mp3.
Not so! In the late 70's and early 80's, the University of Illinois ran a computer aided instruction system based on some CDC computers, named PLATO. This network had terminals across the country, a good number of which were appropriated by students heatedly standing by their orange plasma panels, engaged in interactive gaming with hundreds of others, and wondering whether the Balrog would get them.
Oubliette, among other games, was so popular that when its sponsors lost funding, actual cash was raised among players to support the space for running the game -- unheard of at that time. Likewise, there was a rich economy for booty extracted from the gaming world, and for services of accompanying others into the darkest dungeon. Not big bucks mind you, but a clear demonstration of: (1) the massively wonderful and addictive power of interactive gaming, whether automated or not; and (2) the virtual markets that arise under them when false scarcity is created by the author of the game.
Note that any such economy is inherently at risk. The author can always change the rules or the physics of the game, making hypervaluable assets worthless in the game sense, or by giving away massive numbers of them, which has the same effect.
The same is true for "collectables" markets. Wizards of the Coast might cut their own throats by reprinting rare and, presently, valuable cards, but at the same time the market for those cards would be substantially undercut, if not destroyed (depending how distinguishable these reprints were from the original). Alternatively, they can likewise just change the rules so as to make the cards less valuable.
As I noted, these virtual "economics" are based upon a false sense of scarcity that wholly relies upon the slight and probably unenforcable "promises" of others not to change the result. A bad investment unless you have got the inside track.
Until there is some bid verification, I see online auctions as useless.
Most sites don't try to authenticate bids, so you may be getting outbid by someone who has no intention of buying the product, and in most cases doesn't even have the vash to back up the bid.
Yes, I realize most sites allow the seller to contact other bidders if the top bidder fails, but this seems to kluge up the whole process. I'm not interested in bidding against people who are goofing off. For all I know I'm bidding against a script that is programmed to match and beat my bid...which serves simply to run up the price.
This is, bar none, the best argument I have ever seen for allowing Player-Killing in online games. Sure, go ahead, let some clueless yuppie spend a few thousand dollars to get a high-ranked, rich character. What he doesn't get with that purchase is the skill that comes with hours of work on a good game. While the rest of us are refining our character controlling abilities till they become second nature, this chump is nothing more than a clueless newbie with a lot of valuables. I have a name for people like that: walking-targets. So what if he has high level abilities. As it says in a favorite book of mine, "The most powerful dragon can be brought down by a big enough pack of wolves." and god knows they'll be enough loot to go around. So let the yuppies think they have found a shortcut thru the dark woods of level building; they learn soon enough why no one takes that trail..... ;)
"The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on."..........Dark-Phoenix
This whole idea of "virtual property" brings along a whole lot more serious questions, the type of questions that make lawyers chuckle gleefully and rub their hands together in praying-mantis type fashion. What happens if the Ultima server crashes? Are the people who paid thousands of dollars allowed to sue Ultima for the loss of their virtual property? What if they're the victim of cheating, are they allowed to sue the person who cheated them, or sue the company, or sue nobody? What exactly are they paying for? These are they type of questions that have to be answered soon, because if they aren't, Congress and the courts will answer for us, and some of us won't like the answers.
-Bravehamster
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
In a world where people will pay hundreds of dollars for Tickle Me Elmo and thousands for a Beanie Babie, anything that someone considers valuable for WHATEVER misguided reason will eventually be worth lots of money.
Look at Magic cards. I refuse to play because I don't have that kind of money to devote to a game, and the "good" decks seem to require large investments. If I'm playing against some rich kid who has a thousand-dollar deck, I don't know if I've got much chance.
Pity that it's intruded into the online world, though.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
Write a software program to build your chracters up for you. Remember autorogue? You could run it and have a top level character in a matter of days. I'm sure it's just a matter of time before someone writes an autoUO program along the same principles in order to build characters up at a much higher rate.
Last I checked, UO doesn't check on any other servers to see if you're logged in on any other server, so you could build up a good set of characters on every UO server at the same time this way. You could even include a markoff chain chatter program so that if anyone addresses a message to the character, it could respond in a fairly random fashion, convincingly enough to make it hard to tell who's being run by a computer and who's not. It wouldn't be too hard, it would just have to say "D00D U SUK" from time to time and it would be about as loquatious as your average player.
So you could buy a few accounts each month, set up some autoUO character templates, have the program work up high level mages, fighters, theives, blacksmiths and mules on every server, sell a few accounts with 5 powerful characters on every server every month, and make a pretty good living as long as no one caught on. Of course a hypothetical program such as AutoUO would be a substantial investement of programming time, as it would be advanced well beyond your average macroing program. It would make an interesting project though...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?