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Source Article (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/5151916.stm)



Too bad they didn't also include powerleveling services, high end quests/ raiding, and non drop item item acquisition services into that total.  Some services also include hard to get crafting materials, etc.

It all goes back to the fact that the average PC gamer is 25-30 years old, has a job, loves gaming, and doesn't have time for all the timesinks. (http://www.lotd.org/index.php?page=31)  When they are online, they want to play instead of sitting on their asses waiting for other people or doing mindless repetitive tasks.

They work 6 days a week, 8-10h a day and get paid $100 a month. 

I'm speechless.

If a significant subset of your playerbase is paying real money to avoid playing parts of your game that you theoretically intended to be enjoyable, that is a design flaw.

That's actually fairly high pay for rural China.

Yes. Mmogflation at the very least.

That I'm well aware of. I've been to rural China and it's still sad.  

Lum is right. Those guys can live on less than a dollar a day. 

In the West.

In the East, it's the business model (in many cases).

As you know :)

I'm not so sure its the parts rather than how long it takes to complete them vs the time that more and more gamers actually have to play.  That's why we broke down some of those parts in our article over at LotD, but you are more than familiar with those issues.

I'm paying 70 bucks right now for a few levels of PL'ing to get me to the end game in a game I'm playing right now.  Grouping issues (getting and keeping them) take too dam long, and cuts my game time in half.  When you are returning to an old game, there's alot more pressure to get to the end game, get the gear, etc and few people to even group with in non end game zones.  Paying 100 bucks to be ready in 2-5 days is dirt cheap compared to gnashing your teeth with idiot groups, and taking 3 months to get to the end game playing 1-2 hours a day.

Thank god RMT is back on the slate for discussion. Who doesn't have an opinion?

A couple notes:

1) How is the industry ever going to get virtual property ownership laws established in western countries, let alone developing superpowers that use it as one of their main exports in the next couple years. It's not. Gotta start thinking about it from the design perspective, devs.

2) It's not a bad job. They're playing games in a social environment with their peers. It's the ideal job for a lot of young people. And it's good money for a lot of migrant workers. But, on the other hand there was an article in the German media not too long ago saying that bosses would take away an ID card/passport of some type from their workers so that they couldn't leave the PCworkshop. I don't know about any Chinese laws involving needing a passport to go out in public, but that sounded like an isolated situation to me.

3) Taxes. Lol, whats dem? How long until governments get involved.

Mostly yes, but I also think you'll have a hard time designing any MMOG that doesn't include a significant subset who pay to skip parts of it unless you scrap advancement of any sort.  For any feature in a game thar requires X before Y, there will be a subset of people who have disposable money playing the game who want Y and don't like X regardless of how supercool X is.

"Skip, to the end"
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f5/Humperdinck.jpg)

If I were a development company I would simply develop a premium level of service where people could buy points, and then have different items, levels, etc available to be bought for points.  Otherwise, they are leaving money on the table and giving it to the chinese farmers who will undercut any American operation.

Its proven that people will pay money to save time for certain things, so the dev studio or publisher should simply respond.  After a game is 6 months old its flooded with farmers, PLer's, etc anyway, and that would be a good time to roll out with premium based services that can compete.

Well, you put it that way and it sounds like so much fun.

The "leaving money on the table" argument really, really rubs me the wrong way. I mean, nursery schools "leave money on the table" by not subletting the children under their care to kiddy porn manufacturers. At some point there are issues at play beyond pure financial potential.

It is incontestable that, in the Western MMO market, people want:
  -a-  A level, fair playing field
  -b-  A feeling of accomplishment for the time invested
  -c-  Regular rewards for advancement
  -d-  The ability to have an enjoyable experience tailored to their needs (time, ability, etc)
  -e-  Support for basic social networking

If a game can meet all of these aspects, it will be a success. For every game that has not done well in the market, I can point to one of those bullet points and explain where it failed.

Now then, how does RMT enter into this? Well, people rank what they value on that list differently. Many play purely for the social networking and couldn't give two figs about advancement or fairness. Others want the rewards for advancement, but don't care whether or not they were earned "fairly" (the classic "buying powerlevelling" dilemma).

So, an RMT-resistent game ideally would allow people to jump into any of those goals, while still supporting all of them to a degree. It's a fairly difficult problem, which is why you haven't really seen much progress to date. I actually believe that World of Warcraft is a very RMT-resistant game until the very end, at which point they betray some of their core principles (high level raiding requirements vs reward, PVP grinding requirements vs reward; both are seriously, seriously out of whack in an attempt to provide a "challenging end game" experience) and studying ways to bring that ease of use and lack of need for RMT whlie still persisting the worldly aspects of an MMO would be helpful.

 

So you're saying that dev studios or publishers don't want any of the 900 million to 1.5 billion dollar pie that people make off of their games?  All the people who are pressed for time or simply refuse to grind doing stupid repetitive tasks to get to the next zone, are making a powerful financial statement.

If I was a manager in the MMORPG industry, I would view this as a revenue loss.  There is a a lot of money being made on the backs of games, and its not causing people to hit the cancel button. What is causing people to hit the cancel button are those core bad game mechanics that are causing the need for these services, or creating a customer loss for people who aren't willing to pay for it.

You say this as if publishers aren't trying this out already. Guild Wars offers "PVP Unlock Packs" now, which basically means you can bypass the entire PvE game for your PvP character if you want. SOE opened Station Exchange for EQ2, which is company sanctioned and supported RMT. UO has offered "Advanced Characters" for quite some time.

The trick is to keep a level, fair playing field even with these new revenue models. Many players *hate* the feeling that they have to *insert coin here* to be competitive - in the Western market, I'd hazard a guess those players far outnumber those who are comfortable with the idea. There is still vehement hostility to "ebayers" and "gold farmers" in the higher level communities of most games.

But again, the amount of money "on the table" is not the only factor in the equation. And the naked truth is that while the maintainers of a game have to balance the impact of new revenue models on the rest of the game, outside forces who just want to mine someone else's work don't care. Thus they will always operate at an "advantage", because they couldn't care less if the game's community is alienated by their actions.

I think this was Archlord's original business model. Then the catass crew went ballistic about it, claiming it nullified all of their hard work and time spent blah blah. Codemasters then folded, and went to monthly fee only. People don't know what they want, only what they don't want.

I guess the obvious noob question would be: Why aren't game companies selling gold/plat/whatever at prices that are competitive with the overseas farmers?  I imagine you could offer servers where this service is available/unavailable to segregate player styles.

Seems to me that no matter how "fun" the game is, that some small number of people will always prefer to shortcut it. 

I'm sure they do want the money. However, it's very likely -- damn near certain, in my opinion -- that they cannot have both the game AND the RMT money. Not in North America, for sure.

It has to do with Western attitudes towards money and purchasing achievement. We're steeped in the mythology of the self-made man -- of the concept of equality of oppurtunity. There's plenty of resentment for "the bosses' son" getting the promotion he didn't deserve, or the Hilton's of the world getting into the good schools not from effort or skills, but from buying a new building for the campus.....

In a game, it's worse. Games are supposed to be where the rich and the poor are equal -- it's all skill, baby. Now, that's bullshit in one sense -- people happily buy gold and it's really about time investments -- but that's not important. It's the illusion that's necessary. Third-party RMT that's cracked down upon, even ineffectually? That's cheating. No skill. Just money. It's waved away. Ignored. Heck, you even feel superior to those fucks.

But if it's part of the game? Paying for the uber-items or levels or whatnot? Now that's just playing the game, and the rich have an advantage. And the average North American player is going to get a little more pissy each time he feels he has to buy -- with real, hard cash -- the shiny new item.

Companies will keep trying to get the game pie and the RMT pie -- and at least here in America, they'll fail. Too many players don't want it legal -- it spoils the game for them. Higher subs and a smaller slice of the pie, or lower subs and more of the pie (although you'll still be competing with the CGFs since you'll have to leave open the grind path one way or another)?

Why don't governments just print more money? They own the printing presses.

$900 million? Let's stop pooling our resources to bitch about shitty games. Let's pool our resources to hire a fleet of Russian hackers to find duping exploits.

I'd like to think that governments aren't "for profit" industries.  If you're shooting for an economics answer, I'd argue that inflation is going to happen anyway.  Offering gold for profit only increases the rate slightly while generating more revenue for game development.

Inflation in games affects people's "feelings".  It doesn't have the same impact on people's lives that printing more money would in the real world.  Can we compare apples to apples?

Edit: Wouldn't a simple market analysis answer the question?  Ex: How many subscriptions are gained/lost (long-term revenue stream) vs revenue gained by selling gold/plat in game.  The availability of gold in WoW hasn't seemed to negatively impact their subscriber numbers much.  I don't know the percentage... but they must have crunched them.

I would not be surprised if organized crime was already involved in some way.

Yeah I see your point here and its a good one. On the up and up if its transparent that a company is selling items, gold, and levels it could be bad unless its for a specific sub-set of servers.  Maybe having a specialty set of servers where that is available would work, but not implement it across the whole game.

The other alternative is to keep turning a blind eye to the third party sellers, or work out a deal where you are their supplier but ensure that the business deal is confidential. That would probably leak out, so maybe the specialty sub-set servers where premium services are available is the best compromise alternative.

Guildwars is offering PVP unlock packs because they have lost a huge chunk of their PVP community. Alex Weeks's famous "Vocal Minority" statement alienated PVP from the get go, and they have paid the price for writing off their entire PVP community. Arenanet markets the hell out of the PVP events to keep their game buzz going between expansion packs, but the sad reality is that the PVP community there has dwindled so much that its the same guilds fighting over the prize almost every single ladder tournament.

PVP unlocks was their way of saying "hey, we realize we screwed up but realize what a cash cow this could be for PVPr's who won't buy our expansions for PVP content".

That is what SOE currently does. It's fairly successful, from the folks I've talked to there.

http://stationexchange.station.sony.com/


That is not an alternative. The words you're looking for are "corporate malfeasance." If a company I worked for tried to work out such a deal, I would quit rather than implement it. I am not alone in that view. I've also heard no one in the industry seriously suggest it.

Why don't governments take counterfeiters to court and prosecute them? Is it because if the government lost the case it would legitimize the illicit activity?

I think that making it no longer lucrative to farm and sell gold in a game would do more to deter RMT than trying to ban accounts who engage in said activities. Maybe currency in MMOs should be bind on pickup?

*Obligatory reference to the virtues of Puzzle Pirates’ RMT*

Yeah I wouldn't recommend that route either, but just listed it as a possible route. If word got out that a company did that, it would be horrendous for PR.  Still, I could see some niche game trying that if they got desperate.

Yep. It's well done (as is most things Three Rings). Seperate servers, free-play with non-gameplay-necessary benefits paid for by currency bought from Three Rings. I recommend anyone interested in RMT issues take a look.

http://www.puzzlepirates.com/Pricing.xhtml

Ain't that the truth.

Because that would shorten subscription life, but more importantly, it would codify rules for virtual property. And that would potentially make them liable if those virtual assets get hosed, fraud occurs, etc.

There is another can of worms on the horizon - IRS thinking about taxing mmorpg-related sales.

So now I can just pay $106 dollars to get to the end game and catch up with my no job, no life, no family friends in 5 days instead of 4 months on my own dealing with idiot PUG groups.  Won't make much difference to me.

I do like to quest for items, but I hate leveling if I'm forced to deal with PUG's because I can't keep up with my friends.

Yes!  And look at all the extra time you'll have to spend with... umm... yourself.   :?

The screams of confused stupidity over that one have been amusing as hell. I sell you "intellectual property" -- a simple concept that has no concrete existance -- I pay taxes on the money I just earned. I sell you 1000 gold pieces in WoW -- a simple concept that has no concrete existance -- and I shouldn't pay taxes on the money I just made?

It seems a few idiots thought they were going to start taxing you for earning gold in game. :)

Taxing something implies value added or created. It brings us one step closer to ‘virtual property’.

When you sell something, you earn value.  We like to call it "money".  Taxes on "money" you get is called "income tax".

I agree with the latter but wonder what your proof is of the former.  Gold/plat/etc have been available on eBay for years with no real proof that this availability shortens subscription lifetimes.  I'm advocating doing it in-house so that the game makers aren't losing a good portion of the revenue to outside sources.  I do see how this could legitimize the whole "virtual property" situation and add to game maker liability.  I also agree that this may likely be the primary reason for avoidance.

I don't know that there is proof RMT shortens sub life. But I am sure developers think anything that shortens the leveling curve shortens subscriptions, and they are very very afraid of that. Otherwise, why the fuck do they insist on making us level so much on needlessly repetitive shit?

If you have to pay taxes on selling your expertise or advice (much like a consultant, lawyer or personal shopper does), selling "poweleveling services" or "account combat enhancement (i.e. sword of leet) would be no different.

I would stay as far away from the "virtual property" line as possible; keep everything in the realm of services.

Xilren

That's the million dollar question.  Current models exist by inertia (it worked well in the past, it will work even better if we streamline it).  We all are also well aware that repetition is easier to implement than fresh content.  I still contend that a game with a rich endgame will maintain longer subscriptions than a game with a long grind to the endgame with little endgame to speak of.  Sadly, I have no data to back this statement up.  I leave it to the experts in the field to explain.  

It's not a design flaw so much as a design paradox.

The core player deomgraphic wants to feel that achievements are meaningful.  There are generally a few known solutions for "meaningful" achievement:

1) Requiring player skill.
2) Requiring long time investments.
3) Require coordination of 20+ players.
4) Spend tens of millions of dollars on what is essentially single-player content for your MMO.

The core demographic, however, strongly objects if you push #1 too far.  You have to keep in mind the always true statement that: half your players are below average.  A game that requires too much skill will leave them behind.  And when you lose half of your players, then suddenly half of the players left are below average.  It's a vicious cycle.

#2 has certain advantages for creating this meaning and the other options are not without disadvantages.  #2 pushes people to macro, to RMT, etc., however it still sort of works.  And by removing it you are not only removing your "design flaw" but you are also undercutting some of the perceived meaning of your in-game accomplishments.

The argument against it is then exactly what you said: why doesn't the US government just start printing money?  Why don't MMO's just start printing achievements.  It's the same answer: inflation and devaluation.  In one case you devalue your currency and in the other you devalue your accomplishments.

The only way for RMT to be ligitimized in house is if it avoids unfair advantage. Otherwise farmer or company sponsored its always going to cause a haves vs have nots issue among the playerbase.

As to the Tax issue Terra Nova and Raph have threads related to this issue. Basically the JEC Congressman stated no tax will be levied unless its a "taxable" event, meaning a conversion from game currency to money.

It occurred to me the other day that 2 alternatives to this company sponsored vs illegal farmers market are possible:

1. Cap the total amount that a players account can have, any excess is "taxed" and fees are paid to the game (call it king, lords etc) company, taxes are in the form of real currency or game money.

This is a punishment mechanisim but youd have people thinking twice before buying excess currency.

2. Allow players to set of banks/auction houses in game and the game company takes a cut of the transaction.


Just some thoughts

Yeah?  We've all been saying that for years.  No one is listening and I am willing to bet that whatever it is you are working on now will have some form of huge time-sink farming opportunity in it.

I hope more devs think like Lum.

Pretty sad and ironic that RMT is the one thing that gives me hope for MMO's though....But if that's to be the catalyst for change, then so be it.

The problem with that logic is that half the players also have a below-average amount of time to spend and a below-average tolerance for large group play.

No matter how you slice it, 50% of people are below average at anything. Time spent is no different from skill.

If skill becomes the limiting factor then all the people that had low skill but a lot of time might be left behind. But then again you might pick up the people that had a lot of skill but low time. A lot of people do quit games because they take too much time to accomplish anything.

Amen.

And just because the number gets bigger doesn't mean that I'm "accomplishing anything".

Lum's got it nailed---fundamentally, if you are broken into the "end game" and 'get to end game" paradigm of most MMO's today, then you're simply following a broken design that's been accepted for years because it's all that's there.

A lot of people here on f13 have danced around this idea (or come right out and said it) so it's not like the ideas are new or anything, but it literally takes years to get these thoughts and realizations refactored into future products. For example, I just had a AAA studio that has already developed a previous MMO in a boot camp this week setting up for their next project (can't give any additional information due to NDA), and while the programmers and artists were interested for sure in new design direcitions and monetization styles, in my personal opinion their ideas will be an extremely hard sell to their management, and producers, and we're talking a minimum 2 year cycle, which makes it 2008++ before even their incremental modifications to MMO design will make it to market.

Untiil the game is enjoyable and playable for it's own sake at all levels of progression, 3rd party RMT's are a severe issue, and not one that can be fixed in my opinion.

RMT *could* be great.  But as Archlord has shown if you are going to use your RMT to strong-arm players you are better off with a sub. On the other hand, if you trust that your game doesn't suck and use RMT to give significant but optional benefits, you "take all the money off the table" and players get the flexibility to play as they wish.

Once upon a time, I had a great adventure in EQ's Solusek B with people who remain my best online friends. We fought our way to the Reckless Efreeti spawn and got a couple of pairs of Golden Efreeti Boots for our characters. The conversation was awesome and the combat was intense. Everyone displayed good skill and we got out alive with plenty of XP.

Later, I saw a halfling druid I knew and saw he had new Golden Efreeti Boots. I associated this with in-game achievement and good times, so I congratulated him. Turned out he bought them on Ebay.

The game moved on. I was in a raiding guild. Golden Efreeti Boots were a long-forgotten newbie item. But that guy became a member of my guild, along with others who had fairly obviously used RMT. It became irrelevant as long as they were helping the guild and not selling us out.

But I did not enjoy grouping with those people. I had no respect for them. No matter how well they played, they were lesser players because they had cheated. I was already losing interest in EQ anyway, but as those people rose in my guild, I lost the desire to raid with them. I cancelled my subscription.

I feel the same about RMT-equipped PvP opponents or auction bidders. Gold farmers taking my spawns. RMT ad spam in the chat window. A fly in my soup. A roach on my pizza.

They all shorten the life of my subscription.

Ah, but the 50% who don't have the time do get there in the end, they just get there slower. And they can always say "I'm just as good at you, I've done half what you've done in half the time".

People still enjoy single player games even if they suck. They do them at their own pace and get there in the end. People don't often enjoy competitive games if they suck, because it's something they can never overcome.

Most if not all "Grinds" in MMORPGs are single player elements, not competitive ones. Even WoW BGs do not take skill into account.

That's the big reason why 2 is better than 1. Not because of time, but because 2 is you versus the machine, and everyone wins in the end, and 1 is your versus other players, and you can never win that if you dont have the skill.

Be sure to post here and let me know which game is yours, so that I might avoid it.  I'd hope that you would view this situation as a design deficiency instead.

Lum is strumbing on a chord thats very applicable. I am a moron, I've bought platt in eq1, I've bought isk in eve, I've bought gold in wow. I'm currently playing wow on a server I've not bought gold on, and I'm wondering why. 1) its more fun (challenging) 2) I have no idea what I should be buying with the gold. But somehow I'm compelled to buy it. It's not that expensive, I have some disposable income. We all want to succeed. Why do I keep trying to shortcut a game that I think I like? At least some of it is I will get blocked because of lack of funds and I know how to solve the prob. But its a symptom worth discussing, shouldn't a game compell you to play harder, smarter faster, rather than pay a disadvantaged person? Or, is it better in the longer sense to give that disadvantaged person an oppruntiny. In truth oppruntities are not spread equally across the globe. Is this a good thing in disguise? or am I reaching at straws because I'm really a shit. You need not feel compelled to answer that last question, it was rhetorical, really it was.

You're not a shit, but you really need to think about what you're doing when you're paying someone else to play a game for you that you're paying to play in the first place.

Think about it this way; would you pay someone to drive your brand new Ferrari? Would you pay someone else to play with your child? Would you go to an amusement park and pay someone else to ride the rides?

The only reasonable place this happens is at work, where you decide to pay someone to do some aspect of your job you don't want to do, or can't do, or don't have time to do. If you're doing it anywhere else that's not work, stop what you're doing and find something else that's fun.

Now this gets interesting. I would never consider paying someone to do anything toward my job. I would consider that criminal. No matter how repetavive. I will do my job and I will Succeed or not based on my skills. But I was talking about a game, not my career.

Criminal? What if you were a manager up to your neck in work? You'd hire some new employees to take the load off, so you can concentrate on your main tasks. Or what if you felt like relaxing on a Sunday, instead of mowing the lawn? You'd pay the kid across the street to do it for $10.

People pay other people to do their work for them all the time. It isn't criminal.

Is my carear mowing the lawn? I think in your case its not, it's mealy another thing I gotta get done. Sure, using another hired hand applies. But thats not my carear, at least if I'm not in the landscaping business.

Yes it's called preschool/a nanny/a babysitter.

No, but I might pay somebody to stand in line for me if I had to wait 4 hours under the scorching sun to ride it.

Camping Hadden in EQ for the fishbone earring is not fun. Wearing the earring and being able to explore underwater zones is fun. Paying somebody a few bucks to camp Hadden and get the earring for me makes perfect sense to me.

People pay for gold/items/levelling services/etc. because they want to skip what they consider drudgery and get to the parts of the game they think are fun.

It just gets better and better. When you got there, did you think it was fun? This is getting close to the MMorpg compulsive thing. Heres my take. In the normal course of events, A person get to make a difference rarely, like every 20 years rarely. In a MMORPG it can happen much more often. And we like it, we like doing it, we like other people seeing us do it.

Some in-game friends gave me a fishbone earring because they wanted me to have one. I helped them get stuff too. It wasn't out of obligation, it was the nature of the game. That was what the game encouraged: working together to progress.

That got you far further than lonely little fuckwits who opened their wallets for RMT gear. They were failing at a co-operative game.

It seemed like the Guild Wars random arena allowed everyone to win 25% of the time. The only people who weren't happy were the top 1% who could only win 75% of the time and not 99% of the time.

Thanks for the tip. I'll be investing in PC workshops that have already pre-ordered their Vanguard collector's editions.

The answer is simple. Make a game without "gold".

Are you daft?

It certainly appears so.

I think he me is talking about either something like Diablo2 or something like a barter system.

Diablo2 has so much gold that there might as well not be any. The items you want are not bought with gold.

I guess kind of like early UO where everyone had duped gold. You didn't care about it, you bought the piddly things and made what you needed. Or you looted a house and took what you wanted.

What a pointless distinction.  The gold is not the problem.  The grind is.

It helps to just simply offer multiple paths to advance and make cash. People might not "skip" the game so much if you gave them as many options as possible to get from point A to point B to point C and so forth. Have minigames and moneymaking opportunities scattered about that play to everyone's strengths.

You can buy influence for CoH on E-bay for chrissakes.  RMT can be mitigated by design to a point, but some people just don't get it.

You don't NEED an epic speed mount in WOW. There is no REQUIREMENT, unless it was early in the game and you wanted to jump to rooftops otherwise inaccessible and slaughter low level PCs. Not that I ever did that.

People WANT the epic mounts, though. They WANT the purple drops that are priced through the roof on the AH. Do they NEED them? No.

The need is often the sense of improvement at all. The longer someone goes without having achieved something, sometimes the more willing they are to cheat to get it.

Therefore, in my opinion, it's not about the gold, the grind, nor the piece of equipment. It's about sating the need for growth or change.

BINGO

The exchange of commodities and services.

"Gold" is the most popular item in RMT because it's so easy to move. If you take away that ease, RMT will suddenly become much less profitable. Of course you would need to make sure that there are no insanely valuable items available. Also it would be a good idea to tweak the supply/demand of different commodities at random intervals.

Example:

> LuvlyGril2218 and his team of drones decide to farm wolf hides.
> He farms until he has a large amount of hides ready to sell on ebay.
> The supply of wolf hides suddenly increases.
> LuvlyGril2218 is stuck with thousands of wolf hides he can't sell. He even loses money because nobody buys his auctions.
> LuvlyGril2218 is forced to delete all of his wolf hides. It might be months before they are valuable again, and he needs room for new items.
> Repeat

How about selling a temporary advancement rate increase to the players? For example, pay 3 € extra to Blizzard and you get one level's worth of rest exp. You'd still have to grind, but only half the amount.

Oh lordy lordy...

First things first, the collective mind needs to be made up.

Is it the exchange of money for in game advancement that we stand against?

Or is it the industry which makes money by "playing" along side us? In other words:

Are we against farmers or are we against RMT?

If we're against RMT... well, that's great, I guess. Theres ways to stop RMT through design. Theres ways to make games which are RMT resistant. In fact, almost every game made before Diablo 2 was RMT resistant! Theres quite a library of those games out there for you to look into. And there are certainly ways to bring "MMO-like" elements to games which are RMT resistant. You can add persistance and advancement, just check out Battlefield 2142. But these games will not be MMOs. They will be persistant games of other genres.

If we are simply against farmers because they ruin the "integrity" of our golden virtual worlds, or better yet, because we feel they're "unfair"... well, then we have a losing battle on our hands. You cannot and will not defeat and industry of that magnitude. It existed before China was involved, and it will continue to exist even if China is taken out of the equation. Eastern Europe, South America, there are places in this world where people just like you and me enjoy escaping to another world. But those people live an economy so upfucked that the best way they can make money is by sucking it out of richer nations who share the common love of escapism.

Personally, I would rather have a game with people of all walks of life, including those who would not be able to play if it were not their job. People who do not have recreational time to enjoy games are still people, and they still want to play. The only clear option to me is to create games which anticipate, and design for RMT. They do not need to allow it in their EULA, but they must know that it will be there and they must minimize the effects that it will have on the people who do not engage in it. Systems where people can buy their way to the top, but you can reach it just as easily with a little time investment and wisely playing the economy. Systems where farmers are players too.

But there are people in this thread calling to remove currency from games? remove the grind? remove economies?

Why? Do we hate these people so much that we're willing to throw away the systems that define the genre?

That's all fine and dandy if you're trying to invent something new... some new genre. And I'd be the first to say "go for it", because it's obvious that this one is stale. But I honestly think a lot of people go overboard on this. This genre, like every genre before it, is EVOLVING. It is destined to slowly change over time. RMT is part of our evolution, and the only thing that will work is to go with it, and find a way to make it function inside of our already existing set of systems. If you fight against this natural progression, you're either going to lead into disaster or a new genre/sub-genre. So, make up your mind. Do you want to evolve with MMOs, or make something new?

"Systems that define the genre", he says.

I'm not one of the ones advocating "no gold", but I don't see why "gold" is so integral to the "genre".

Hell, I don't even see this as a genre in the usual sense of the word. MMO's shouldn't be so clearly defined by "gameplay" as other game genres are. What defines them is the space. And any game can be grafted into that space.

Not everything has to be an RPG, let alone a Diku type of RPG, let alone one that relies on loot, economy, etc. LET ALONE a fucking grind.

I never had a problem with RMT until the farmers showed up. They take up space that could be used by real players. It's more fun to grief/kill real players.

Everything doesn't have to be an RPG, you're right. But then we're getting into sub-genres. I know I used the term MMO in my other post. Yeah, that's a bit too broad. Because that encompasses Second Life, and that encompasses Planetside. But lets get serious, when we're talking about MMOs, we're talking about RPGs, and most of the time, we're talking about something that has some resemblance to diku.

Economies are one of the key features for these games. Without money changing hands, theres a huge piece of the game missing. And something key to money changing hands is... well... money, so yes, gold defines the genre.

You can get away from that, and I fully encourage it. But if you do, then we're not talking about the same genre, so any disagreements over RMT in todays genre, in WoW, and Everquest, and Lineage, and EVE, all moot.

To LC: why are they not "real players"? And, more importantly, if it were not possible to make them "real players", would you not want that? Would you be opposed to a game where farmers party, guild, and raid with everyone else, but they sell their money and you spend yours on the latest gear? What would be so terrible about that?

The key to making this happen is to break down the things that allow players to isolate themselves. Farmers will try to stick to themselves, that's the best way for them to make money in a lot of these games. Consequently, it also makes them seem inhuman to the outside observer. They appear like something else, a creature that cant speak your language and has none of the same goals or desires. But they do have similar goals and desires, and if you play with them instead of against them, we might see a game that encourages everyone to participate together, regardless of what they do with their gold after they earn it.

Limiting it to just that genre of MMO's, then I would go far as to say that RMT and gold purchasing are almost vital to get any enjoyment out of them (you need either that, or just plain bad taste...Or maybe both). RMT is the natural conclusion of things. If you make "games" with as many bad features as those particular examples have, then you might as well include RMT as well.

Their goal is to put food on the table. My goal is to have fun. The only thing we have in common is the desire to make a mob's hp drop to zero. Farmers work in teams usually, or just monitor several bots. They don't have any need for other players usually. Even if you managed to group with a farmer they will not share loot with outsiders.

 How often do you see farmers participating in the community? How would you make them want to work with outsiders?

I'm gonna talk about a game that's not so popular on this forum, but you'll have to trust what I say is true.

Lineage 2. A game where clans must work together, and nothing of great importance can be accomplished by a single character. Now, this game does not have it perfect, it's a deeply flawed game. But when it comes to farmers, it's a game where farmer and non-farmer are often deeply attached to each other, and not just in a provider/consumer sense.

Two years ago, when L2 was just coming out, "farmer" was a new word for most players. It was a dark elf at the bottom of a dungeon 24 hours a day making it impossible for you to advance your character because he was taking your room. It was a bad word.

But as time went on, and you could no longer solo decent exp, farmers and players found themselves together in dungeons, each wanting to progress just as much as the other. Before long, players and farmers were together in parties, having fun with broken English and learning what they can about who farmers were and why they do what they do. A lot of friends were made during this time.

Eventually, as guilds separated farmer from player, the distinction returned. Farmers were once again bad... but.. not always. Farmers were people too, and because of that, they had friends and they had enemies. It didn't take long before farmers who were angry at some guild for whatever reason started showing up to castle sieges, taking 2 hours out of their work week to fight those who had pissed them off. It wasn't just that. In times of dire need, it was not uncommon for a player guild to enlist the help of a farmer guild to retain or gain power. In exchange for helping the player guild in PvP, the farmers would be protected and allowed to hunt in higher level hunting areas that they would normally be PKed out of.

Eventually the widespread use of bots made farmers seem less like people again because... well.. they no longer were people. They were automated characters. But, on almost every server there are still farmer guilds who are a part of politics, and even non-farmer guilds who have several farmers in them. They're a part of the game, not just bots that hide in the deepest darkest corner of a dungeon. They are guild powers and they will fight,just like anyone else, to play the game the way they want to. It just so happens that the way they want to play the game is to make money in real life.

Take care of the severe automation problem in L2 (significantly worse than most other games), and create a game that requires interdependence for meaningful progression, and you're on your way to a game where farmers and everyone else are all players in the same world.

I really think there is no way to make a game that some people won't want to shortcut their way to achievement. I think the problem is people are used to instant gratification and not willing to wait. Other than a few people who like to work the auction house I don't know anyone who had an epic mount the minute they turned 60, but people have expressed the desire to have it even if it means buying gold to get it. It took me a couple of months to get my epic when my first character hit 60 and I didn't mind but the way some people seem to view it, it is a huge crippling thing they are willing to pay to shortcut. I can't see any way a game could be structured to work around this need for instant gratification other than handing out all the goodies available once a character hit's 60 and I don't really think the rest of us would find that very fun.

Wait for what though? I've never heard a good excuse for it (at least not from a player's point of view). People just want to advance in an mmo the same as they would in every other game made. In order for them to replicate that experience, they have no choice but to take shortcuts.

Nobody makes action/adventure titles or single player rpgs that require players to kill a boss a dozen times or more just to advance to the next stage (which is basically how WoW raids work). Nobody makes racing games that require players to repeat the same track over and over again just to have sufficient cash earnings (i.e. they don't have to farm the track).

If MMOs didn't have grind, they would have to be fun, and fun is so much harder to code.

Not quite. (http://www.popcapgames.com)

Seriously, there are people who play Bejewelled on a daily basis. Now correct me if I'm wrong (seriously correct me, because I'm honestly curious here), but nobody would ever buy a high score at Bejewelled. There's no point to it. The only reason to play Bejewelled is because of the gameplay.

There are people who play WoW on a daily basis. What's the difference? There's more different kinds of games in WoW, and more ways to play those games. So the more complex the games, and the more kinds of games, then the greater tendency for players to RMT it.

But not quite! UO and ATITD have loads more games and gameplay than WoW. The answer to that is obvious; supply and demand. Not as many people are playing UO and ATITD, as are playing WoW. Not enough supply, not enough demand, for UO gold or flax or brix.

Streamline the gameplay in WoW, and you get a game like Bejewelled; all gameplay is immediately accessible to all players. Does that solve the problem? Do we lose players? Do we gain different kinds of players? Like we've established, people play both WoW and Bejewelled on a daily basis. I doubt we would have all the Bejewelled fans suddenly playing MMOs, but...then again, it's never been done before, so we can't say for sure.

That and to unlock the secret game modes, one of which requires grinding the timeless mode forever and ever.

People also don't NEED to play the game.  It's a fallacious arguement to say that it's perfectly acceptible to have a cockblocking grind because it's optional to the core gameplay.  In basic terms having an optional part that is not fun simply because it's optional sounds pretty stupid.

I'm not going to tell you what you enjoy but as far as I'm concerned any game that employs this style of gameplay is just one more game that doesn't get my money.  A reward for skill and organization is one thing, rewards for # of hours spent in tedium is something else all together.

Yes, but Bejeweled (and Zuma, and Magic Match and so on) are different every time you play it. It is a grind after a fashion, just like Tetris was, but it's compelling to a different player because it's never exactly the same thing twice. This is the very essence of easy to learn/hard to master. People are motivated by the challenge and reward of doing better than before.

Meanwhile, Gehenass and his two cronies (WoW raid boss) is always going to do exactly the same thing, unless Blizzard recodes them. They're designed to die so you are permitted to proceed to the next challenge, but people aren't motivated by the challenge. They're motivated by the reward, which makes it easier for them to do better next time.

Different players, different experiences, subtlely different motivations. Both are big money businesses, though there's a crapload more people in casual online games than MMOs in the West.

You lose your ecosystem and player pyramid. In casual games, the ecosystem is upselling, banner ads, and more recently community competitiveness. In MMOs, it's about the social ladder, the ingame economy, that player pyramid that reveals the sociology of balanced servers being pretty diverse. Doling out rewards in that sort of game is tricky business. Too many and you lose the top of the pyramid. Too few, the bottom. And without both, you get a game that could descend below the critical mass of paying accounts you need to keep the game going.

Casual games don't have it any easier. They still have to find right publisher/aggregator and have the sort of pull to get a higher percentage of the usual 1% in total sales. And that requires they make a game people WANT to play for more than 30min/1hr and turn into a purchase at all.

eh... you kind of cant?

You can make an MMO where there are a lot of different things to do, but if only one of them provides advancement in the way that other players value, than people are going to grind that one thing, even if theres a ton of other things you can do.

It comes down to personal choice, and in the end, people choose to grind for status among other players. You can't design that out of the game, you cant design out peoples DESIRE to grind. Anything that you do for days and weeks on end will become a grind. And, big shocker, theres a huge market for people who want to grind (and complain about it at the same time.)

I'm a pedant.  So naturally, I hate that people say that.  It's not true.

reductio ad absurdum:

set: (1,1,1,1,10)

average: 2.8

So 80% of the input values are below the average.

This matters in MMOs because there are catasses to skew every average.  If a company is watching its metrics, and says "the average number of hours people are prepared to spend to complete quests seems to be 17.5" and design quests accordingly, then they will find they are skewing towards Dougie-No-Mates (who will still find it very easy) and above the value for the lower 80% who make up the bulk of their customers.

You are correct. It's been a truism (that I've somewhat backed up with data) that, all else being equal, there will always be about 10-20% of your PvP playerbase that will dominate the remaining 80%. Thus your game design has to account for keeping the game still fun for that 80% that is consistently steamrollered by the upper 20% varsity.

Most games try to address that by making time spent part of the equation, since even the most unskilled player can eventually invest time. Thus, grinding.

I personally like how CoV/H handled this part of the equation. Firstly, your starting base powers are your some of the most powerful powers you can get, and secondly, you can obtain a lot of very good common-pool buffs that give you an enormous edge over others. The good thing about these secondary buffs is that one can't tell who's got them.

My girlfriend, a die-hard CoV/H player, isn't uber at all, but she's been a wise player. She mostly plays a CoV defender type (corrupter? I forget) and she's invested a lot of her levels in the secondary background running buffs and resistances. She's not into PVP at all, but sometimes the game forces you into PVP zones. Whenever some l33t dude tries to come do the typical one-shot kill on her, he's faced with a toon that takes damage like a tank. She never fights back, just heals herself to full HP and shrugs.

One dude just kept on trying to off her, hoping she'd run out of power to heal herself, but of course, she's got power regen buffs too. He eventually gave up.

Tan:

Endie's post has me puzzling this.
I thought when calculating for an average you threw-out the high and low values and then calculated.  It's been years since I really needed to know anything beyond geometry and simple math, so I've forgotten.

That worked so well for Asheron's Call 2.

Also, MMOG's are NOT A GENRE. They are a medium. It's the idea that MMOG's are a genre (i.e. they are a roleplaying game online) that keeps holding it back. It's a fucking medium, in which there SHOULD BE many genres. There isn't because everyone is too busy lumping MMOG's into a genre. It's an important semantic distinction.

That was one of the 2-3 cool things that slipped through the cracks and made it into AC2. No uber raid gear. Any shithead monster that you could kill solo had the same chance of dropping a badass weapon as... a gigantic dragon that got stuck on a rock 2 pixels high and you could kill solo.

The only problem with the barter system is that you have to have actual players to trade with. AC2 had so many problems nobody played more than 2 months.

"Think about it this way; would you pay someone to drive your brand new Ferrari?"

That depends on what she looked like......

paying to play your game for you?

On pebble beach you pay your caddy to select the right club for you based upon his expertise on the course and experiance. The caddy in essence has spent the time it takes to master the course and gets paid 80k a year + tips to tell you how to play your game.

People pay people to play games for them all the time, or provide them with advice and expertise and yes, even items to allow for better game play.

How is this wrong in a VW?

Admittedly I'm against RMT unless its sanctioned by the game company, at least then there are mechanisims in place to provide for fairness, Im against gold farming because its works on the backs of people who are economically disadvantaged in the first place, its fundamentally exploitative.

Fact is for every real world expample someone can cite about how bad it is from a populist perspective I'll cite another from a libertarian/free market perspective.

So that gets us no where.

Whats required is to acknowledge it exists and figure out mechanisims to ensure its fair, ligitimized and doesnt exploit people. Anything else is playing a game of hide the ball, where no ball actually exists.

I'm against RMT also, but that is the worst reason I've ever heard to oppose it.  From that perspective, all labor is fundamentally exploitative.  Or at least all unskilled labor.

"I'm against RMT also, but that is the worst reason I've ever heard to oppose it.  From that perspective, all labor is fundamentally exploitative.  Or at least all unskilled labor."

Hows is that a bad reason to oppose RMT? From a sociopolitical perspective chinese sweat shops are exploitative (dosent matter if theyre making Nikes or farming GP in WOW) and often at the business end of a rifle barrel or at least under duress.

If you think Im equating unskilled labor in a western country (with its accompanying liberalized democracies and free markets)  with unskilled labor in the peoples republic of China your mistaken.

Wait a minute, you're saying that gold farmers are forced at gunpoint to play WOW?

People aren't forced to work in China any more than they are forced to work here.

That's what I thought.

Although $250/month or $100/month or $75/month or whatever might sound horribly exploitative by U.S. standards, it is not horribly low pay (from what I understand) by Chinese standards.  If these guys weren't being exploited, as you call it, by RMT companies, then what are their alternatives?  From what I've read, those would be working the family farm, waiting tables or maybe not having a job at all.

I've yet to read a quote from a Chinese farmer that said, "my job totally sucks, I'm chained to this desk and forced to play WoW for low pay."

As I said, there are reasons to oppose RMT, but imagining that Chinese farmers are working at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory is not one of them.

I always go by the Player Pyramid (http://www.mxac.com.au/drt/PlayerPyramid.htm). It's more inclusive of the breadth of playstyles than the 80/20 rule.

While true, when you talk to generic business people about MMOs, they're thinking of Maplestory or WoW, not Eve or ATITD. Currently, "MMOG" means "MMORPG".

Semantically, "MMORPG" does include everything, because by nature we're all playing a role, be it a robot, super hero, elf, or some wierd mandelbrot abstract in Spore. Where the medium can be subcategorized is on theme and playstyle; however, even that gets ugly.

What's the difference between an RPG and an FPS? One's a stats-based narrative motivator and the other is a control scheme sometimes with narration. Those aren't genres. The idea that an RPG can have an FPS control scheme is both "innovative" and stupid for being considered as such. And yet we've got two decades of business breaking things down along those lines. Blame technology or planogramming, but there it is. The resultant preference for one or the other is because of the arbitrary split, not one that was formed by it.

If we really wanted to sub-categorize games, it wouldn't be on how they are played, but on what their motivations are. RTS games, Sim games, those are different.

People aren't forced to eat or breathe either  :roll:

Deleted & Edited for clarity

I like Fruit Loops

Here's hoping the next wave of F13 registrants gets off on a better start.


I liked the Engels/Morat/Lantyssa period myself. SWG inspired though it was.

Holy Ideologue Batman.

Politics forum is that-a-way.

I coudln't even be bothered to read that....sorry.

You know what, I just don't care.  I'm not going to boycott the world while I wait for every single worker in rural Bumfuckistan to somehow magically achieve First World income and conditions.

Your first version was better.

Who cares if only a few read it? You raised some good points, even if I don't necessarily agree with them all. MMORPGs are not just games. They've spawned a billion-dollar side-business for some of the reasons you mentioned. Some may still want to bracket MMORPGs into some sort of time-filler passtime activity, but that's old school thinking inappropriate for reality.

Sorry, they're still games. Simply games.

Eh, nevermind.

I'd imagine the "Work as long as I say or you won't get your ID back" is pretty close to being exploitative. The ID being the only way these citizens can get anything.

You do know the Chinese government has a little more, err, "pull" with what their citizenry says right?

I wouldn't ever expect to read, "my job totally sucks, I'm {adverb} to {noun} and forced to {do something} for low pay" from anyone over there who actually is.

Now you are suggesting that the Chinese government forces people to work for gold farmers?  What exactly are you saying?

We should be against RMT because of the exploitative nature of the gold farming employment culture. 

Prove that it is exploitative - not by the standards of the types of jobs that exist in the United States, but by their real alternatives in China.  Are Chinese gold farmers exploited more than Chinese textile workers or Chinese factory workers or Chinese agricultural farmers or any of the myriad other products that are exported to the United States? 

If not, then I expect that you fully boycott and rail against these things as well.

The stories I've read have tended to be along these lines:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14871320/site/newsweek/page/2/ (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14871320/site/newsweek/page/2/)


I haven't read any about employers who enslave their farmers or keep their ID cards.  Maybe you have.  If so, show them to me.

I feel the burden of proof rests on the industry that chooses to operate in a closed society with tight media controls. 

As for the exploitiveness, my issue isn't that Chinese people are being exploited.  That's tragic, sure, but not exactly news. 

My issue is that gamers and developers are being exploited by practices that require RMT.  Companies running the games in question haven't set up an acceptable model to tap that market directly.  I'd rather pay Blizzard $5 than pay IGE $50: at least that way I would have fewer suspicions about RMT fees going into untaxed, if not potentially criminal-front, overseas companies. 

Generally speaking, one can no longer boycott Chinese-made goods unless they are well off, in which case you wouldn't be buying Chinese made goods anyway. I rail against the corporate systems that fucked their own pooches so badly they HAD to use Chinese labor to make their products cheaply.

But no, RMT sweat shops are no better than other Chinese sweat shops, and no more or less exploitative. That makes them better how exactly? It's still exploitation.


I have no source I can remember, so will concede that part of the argument to you. Can I just boycott RMT chinese farming operations because they are sleazy as Wal-Mart execs?

The Chinese Government does control the media still, it's true. But it's not like it was 20 years ago. The internet has changed things in China, I've talked to farmers about things like Tienamen Square, democracy, their government... I'm even close friends with a farmer who is a college graduate and reads books published by a well known socialist from Taiwan.

If farmers hated their jobs, you wouldn't have to look too far to hear about it. The fact is, most of them do this because it is easy work, it's an easier job, it's a funner job, it's better than what their parents did at their age. But, I too have heard about the ID card thing, though I cant cite it and I only heard it second hand via translation from a German clan mate because it was in the German media. I wish I could find the article...

But even still, I suspect those are more isolated incidents. If it were something widespread we would hear more about it. China isn't as tight lipped as it used to be.


Why so much hate for emerging industry! :(
Do you get up in the morning and say "How can I murder capitalism today?"

(just fucking with you, but seriously, do you only want blizzard to be in control so that it will be cheaper? DataGod really did bring up some good points. Globalization isn't just some fancy word people throw around when referencing the future. It's real, it's now. If you can come up with a way to kill an industry that is apparently $900 million strong after about 4 years of existence... well... GL m8)

I'm suggesting that one reason you might not hear any complaints is because the Chinese government controls the flow of information within and outside of their country. I have no idea who's forced to gold farm or not. I do know though that gold farming is not restricted to that country, which is why I haven't bothered commenting on that.

As to your other comments, they're based on the premise that I somehow strongly am for or against RMT, which is false. I don't care either way. It's more an academic curiosity to me, a form of emergent behavior people have collectively turned into big business.

But others have covered this better in subsequent (and earlier) posts.

Just to reiterate, my point is that exploitation is a poor reason to be against RMT.   There are good reasons to be against it - I'm against it, in fact - but that's not one of them.

As far as globalization is concerned, I'm far from convinced that it's an evil thing.  I like being able to pay the same price for a pair of jeans for my kids that I paid when I was in high school 30 years ago.  And being able to buy good bath towels for the same price I paid 20 years ago.  And I bet the people making those things are better off than their parents were 20 and 30 years ago - who were probably engaged in food production or some other government enterprise.

People certainly could boycott Chinese goods, if they like.  Of course, it means not shopping at Walmart and probably means paying ten times what one would for an import, but American made goods can be found, even if handcrafted.  But for a premium.  I'm hardpressed to think of an item that can't be found without buying a Chinese import, in fact.

Are there problems due to globalization? Sure.  Were there problems before globalization? Yes, mostly worse.  It's not a choice between this thing here that's bad and that thing over there that's good.  It's a choice between these problems or those problems.  I think things are better now than they've ever been.

Yes, you got a problem with that? Capitalism is fine. Unfettered, assraping capitalism like my country is deifying is not. I'd murder that shit on a daily basis if I could.


Don't know about you, but I want Blizzard to be in charge of it because: 1) they are a responsible business. They will back up the transactions and protect against fraud as best they can because they can't disappear when they fuck too many people over. They can't dodge a lawsuit. 2) They made the game, they deserve the scratch. Shut-in fucktards and internet mogul wannabe pricks do not deserve it. These fuckers are one step above criminality and they have already fucked one industry almost beyond recognition (the dot bombers). I don't need them to do that to MMOG's.

Emerging industry my ass. They are simply parasites. Barnacles on the underside of a boat. Leeches.

Fuck their "industry."

Man, the US government printing money bugs me. Blizzard printing money bugs me even more. They don't even have to print it out, just whip up a script real quick.

^sup

I'm fine with Blizzard printing their own money, so long as the RMT-servers are segregated from the non-RMT servers, like EQ2. If I as a customer can choose not to have that shit on my servers, I will.

This kind of economic "parasite" is everywhere in our economy, from used car salesmen to ebayers of out of print books. They all serve a need that isn't being filled by someone else for whatever reason. For some reason, this particular kind of parasite gets many gamers up in arms. Actually, the used car salesmen is a good analogy. I could scan the classifieds and spend several weekends test driving a dozen cars being sold by people I don't know or I can spend one afternoon at a car lot. The car salesmen saves me time even if he is a bit shady.

My gameplay has never been impacted by gold farmers (other than maybe in inflated item prices but that is unidentifiable). I have occasionally bought and sold items and currency in UO, EQ1 and EQ2 over the years. Buying things to save play time and selling things when I quit a game. The selling has always returned more than the monthly fees spent playing the game and you cannot have sellers without buyers so I happily take my money and move on.

IMy wife recently met a nanny who used to be a public school first grade teacher.  A friend of the teacher saw the teacher's W2 a few years ago and said "you could make triple as a full time nanny" and the friend was, in fact, correct. The higher one's earning power (in this case the nanny's employer) the more one will pay to save a unit of time.

I would love to see a study on value creation in real terms some day.  What is the $/hour someone can actually earn playing these games? What is the time actually worth?

What I am trying to demonstrate is that the animosity that RMT generates is out of whack with the fact that the same economic realities driving RMT are at play in economic life everywhere.

Read that again. The truth points to itself.

But if you still don't understand it, many of us play games to ESCAPE real-life economic realiities. That's why it's called escapist entertainment. Injecting that sort of mercantile douchebaggery into our game is like turning the page of a Bible only to have a giant penis shoved into your mouth. 

Point well made, but is the expectation that the rules of the universe (excessive characterization, I admit) be suspended for this particular entertainment niche realistic? How many anti-RMT ranters use Kazaa or BitTorrent to avoid paying for product freely available in the marketplace? It is the same economic phenomenon at work.

Yes. However, like any emergent parasitic industry, emotion about it is largely irrelevant.

RMTers don't bother me because, as a business, they above anyone else need to play by the rules. If they piss off enough people with their farming ways, they get turned in and shut down. Meanwhile, if they just go blithely about their business, few are the wiser.

The people that piss me off are generally just other players trying to cheat because they can advance faster that way. They aren't investing in a character to sell. They're just playing this game like they play any other, and aggravate people along the way.

While the expectation may not be realist, it is certainly an expectation that SHOULD be made.

Look, there's two types of folks in the world. Those who cheat at Monopoly and those who don't. Those who don't hate RMT as a concept.

Thanks Haemish. Personally, I thought the analogies using used books and used cars just didn't work. There's a difference between used goods and new goods in the marketplace. There is no functional difference between gold earned the "right' way, and gold that someone buys in a RMT.

Not really. The gold someone buys through RMT was originally earned the "right" way. The real problem here isn't RMTing. It's farming itself, an activity that is almost necessary for a certain type of player. RMTing allows players to cheat the farming sub-game, not the larger game itself.

That's the noise I hate, that need to sit at Tyr's Hand (in the old days) farming alongside all the other Farmers. Some of them were Farming to RMT. The rest were Farming just to be able to buy stuff they couldn't invest the five hours a day to go get.

Mitigate RMTing by mitigating Farming by mitigatng the need to invest a serious amount of sequential hours to a task in one sitting.

Or turn it into a business model the company itself can collect revenue on. Or said another way: build a game on microtransactions.

Which is already happening.

You missed the point. I was simply shooting down the analogy between RMT and used books/cars. In the later, the new products have adavantages over the used product (condition, etc). Wheras in RMT, gold is gold. For the person buying, there's practically no reason NOT to buy, especially in a Diku game where gear is king.

Also, I don't think building a game based on microtransactions is any sort of solution. I thought the idea was that we just want to pay our sub and play the game, not get nickel and dimed for all kinds of silly shit.

(http://www.livejournal.com/userpic/44434292/966213)

I am not going to defend my analogies as accurate proxies for RMT but they do work to demonstrate that middle men serve an economic need.

Speaking to farming, what if every mob in a game had the same HUGE loot table regardless of "level"? How would people react to that? This would work better in a level-less system, certainly, but try and evaluate the concept independent of the class/advancement system.

What if players went to certain zones because they were fun and not because Vartex's Armor of Invulnerble Cunning dropped there?

Oh. On that I agree.

Funny how these conversations tend to pop up in different threads and then run together :) Making a game based on microtransactions wouldn't be the smart thing to do for us. Making a game on microtransactions is certainly feasible though, as many exist. They're just not for us. And it's been proven by those companies that make such games that the average revenue generated per player is far higher than it is in a flat-monthly-fee game. So what company wouldn't want to chase the extra bling?

If you make a flat-tax game, you're going up against WoW and hoping to grab some for yourself. If you try something different (ingame ad support, microtransactions, whatever), you get to define new rules. Maybe they'll work. Morat20 doesn't think so, but that's in the "who does Blizzard need to fear" thread...

Second Life is already making a decent bit of paper on microtransactions and RMT. The difference? They are making it by making virtual money and letting their customers buy things that other customers make. THAT'S the kind of RMT that works for Americans.

That I can see. :) Even then, don't they offer a tiered pricing plan? X per month gets you access plus + Y Second Life cash per month? I didn't think it was a swipe your card and convert real cash to fake cash when you're low thing.

Also, I note that there is a grindy way to achieve the same thing -- make things others want, and sell them. Or wait and slowly build up the small stipend free accounts get. You don't have to be rich to make it big.

I'd be rather be nickel and dimed, if I am only using a few dimes worth of content.  For example CoV, I'd love to play a couple hours a month, but I sure in hell ain't going to spend 15 bucks for that.  The current model is like a Chinese Buffet that you pay 60 bucks for a month pass.  Great Fracking Deal if you want eat Chinese every day. Me, I want variety and RMT gives you freedom to choose what you want and not force you to commit.  As people for who want to eat Chinese everyday?  Luckily there are plenty of who will pay for dinner every so often. So its not as expensive as you would think.

(Que Analogy Complaints)

Or the Spelling Salamander (a cousin of the Grammar Snake).

Again, Puzzle Pirates.  Mr. Money Bags doesn't just buy a bad ass cleaver.  He buys Doubloons from 3rings. He trades some of doubloons for in game cash with Mr. Pillager.  He then goes to Mr. Blacksmith and orders a cleaver with the rest of the Doubloons and the cash. Mr. Blacksmith then build the resources purchased from Ms. Pillager and Mrs. Trader and labor from Mr. Labor.  Mr. Money Bags gets his cleaver, and everyone got to play along.  So  much more interesting than just buying it from 3 rings.

Not a fan of systems that let people pull money out.  I have no interest in Second Job or playing with people who treat it as such.

I come to accept that he and I are mortal enemies.

Actually, they are violating the EULA in nearly every game they harvest on. 

And I'm willing to bet that their actual earnings aren't being taxed, let alone reported. 

They ARE criminals.  There just hasn't been a decent court case to say so yet. 


It's not about capitalism.  It's about regulating industry.  Let business do whatever it wants, and eventually it will take over government. 

The way to 'kill' RMT (in its current form) is for companies to bite the bullet and start offering RMT themselves.  If I can push a button and do the work of a million man-hours from a sweatshop labor, I should.  If I have a product that morons are willing to pay money for that I can generate for free, I would be a fool not to generate those products myself.

You know what's really fucking ironic?  Even when that happens, RMT _still_ won't go away.  Because when that happens, you won't be paying for a powerleveler: you'll be paying for 'escorts' and 'mercenaries'.  I find it a lot more socially acceptable (and a lot more interesting) to hire a pair of chinese mercs to help me through an instance then to pay them to run the instance for me. 

They don't run instances. They know thats a suckers path (its fun thus not approbate) They grind mobs.

One thing that I've mused on - but I don't think I've seen much discussion on  - is this.  When a friend starts playing the game that their friend has been playing for a year, it's quite typical for the veteran to give the newbie startup cash.  I mean, who doesn't do that?  At least enough to attempt to mitigate the headaches of inventory juggling and scraping by for cash for the first levels, anyway.

But the newbie getting geared up by the vet is similar (not the same, granted - but similar) to someone paying a gold outfit cash for startup money, isn't it?  Some of the arguments against RMT apply to this as well - although one never sees them applied.

Discuss?

That's exactly why some of us continually unravel RMT to it's more basic component. It's not about the transaction of real cash for ingame money or good. It's about games that measure Time and how people try to get around that. RMT = farming = powerleveling = the ugly side of things like trains and ninjalooting. It's all wrapped up neatly into "cheating".

Some are light forms of cheating, others are more overt. We all did this crap in solo RPGs, but nobody was the wiser. In MMORPGs though, everyone's a voyeur. Complicating this is how time itself is measured.

Scenario: WoW. Molten Core. Player A and Player B. Player A plays 2 hours a day. Player B plays 12. Player A sees Player B on day one. By day five, Player A has spent about 10 hours in game to Player Bs 60. Player A has cleared MC to Rags. Player B has cleared MC, ZG, AQ40 (raidID timers prevent multiple MC clears in one week). Player A sees Player B on day six. Player A has his one, maybe two, drops from MC. Player B is decked out with all sorts of crazy gear.

Now, both players think five days have passed. In reality though, that's an inappropriate measure of time. Everyone knows this, but few people actively accept it because its not intuitive. So Player A thinks they're "behind" Player B. They are, but not because of days.

It's because there's no governance on progress. Nobody's forced to play the same amount of time. The only people that do are going out of there way to try. That's a good thing for a group of friends. It's not for a bunch of random people.

Lady X's example, the reason why your example isn't an issue is because your veteran is probably doing raids and quests and other high-end stuff to get the money to twink their friend, you know "playing" the game.  Your pro-farmer isn't playing. He's monitoring his little army of bots for 80 hours a week.

One of the reasons I am pro-RMT is because I am anti-farmer.  Selling stuff through 3rd party sites just isn't profitable in Puzzle Pirate's RMT there is no way to make living at.  And if for a second farming is profitable the whole economy readjusts. When farmers have compete against the whole server, they don't stand a chance.  Efficient markets conquers all.  Paided labor can't compete with free labor.

There are tiered plans that give you Linden (SL cash) per month, but mostly the tiered accounts are about how much land you can own and how much stuff you can put on that land. Also, you can create anything you want from textures to scripts and such, but uploading them cost 10 Linden. So the more you tinker and create, the more you end up paying. You can buy Linden from Linden by a straight "swipe your card to convert real cash to fake" thing as well, and there are also brokers out there who sell cash for a lower exchange rate, as well as those who will rent or sell you land for cheaper than Linden Labs charges. You'd be amazed at the amount of mercantilism that goes on in that game.

Once you have cash in the game, you can spend it on tons of shit. Penises for your avatar, clothes, houses, eyes, gadgets that do shit, movies that are played in virtual theaters in the game (including first run movies and pr0n), etc. etc. etc. You can very quickly spend (or make) some serious money in the game, but it's also the kind of thing where you really don't have to spend a lot to enjoy much of what the game has to offer.

It's not voyeurism so much as it is competition, whether unconscious or not. It's the ultimate primate game of comparing plumage as a sign of virility. In a solo RPG, you don't have to compete against Baron Poopypants, and the only one you are beholden to is you. In MMOG's, Baron Poopypants is not only showing you his magnificent, if overexaggerated plumage, he's showing you that he'll get better mates. Read mates as loots, experience, or overall game enjoyment. He's BEATING YOU. Something in our little monkey brains doesn't want that.

This is absolutely true in my experience.

Well at least HaemishM admitted he has monkey brains, but he's also right on the money with that statement.

I never realized this needed debating.

(http://www.indianajones.com/temple/bts/news/f20051123/img/gwb_sm.jpg)

And the rub is, it's a competition you cannot ever win.  No matter who you are and how much you play, there will always be someone more advanced, better loot, more guildmates, whatever.  Some get their "as intended" by playing the game, others buy theres, but even if you were the first on your server to do SOMETHING, very shortly, you won't be number one anymore.  The center cannot hold and all that b/c even if you were lord high marshall of pvp'dom, sooner or later if the players don't unseat you an expansion will.

Did we learn nothing from War Games?

Actually, i think the process of recognizing this unwinnable game and thereby freeing yourself from it's mental shackles is the begining of online wisdom...

Or really making you a really jaded cynical bastard.  Or both.

Xilren

For the 18-34 male part of things I totally agree (based on some studies). But voyeurism is a level above the competition. To your exact point: this doesn't happen in solo RPGs because there's nobody else to watch, therefore to care about, therefore to compete against.