MMO Gaming

There is a great read that I completely missed when it was first posted. Probably because, like so many other blogs I never got a chance to add it to my blogroll before I completely forgot.

The blog is written by Dana Baldwin, the Senior Producer for WWII Online (note to self: you need to try this game out). I bring this up only to point out that this person is (if you’ll excuse the pun) on the front lines.

I’ll quote the part that I found particularly interesting.

I really can’t get designers or players who have an issue with the concept that my best friend Kevin wants to give me some gold because I need to buy a mount and since I play a hell of a lot less than he does so he’s got the scratch among his 7 alts.

Does it really make any difference if the above scenario is altered to a worse case and I don’t know Kevin and his name isn’t Kevin and I used my lunch money so he could buy lunch and pay his light bill? “Others” might think so.

I thought that was an interesting take on the topic. For the record I’m not against RMT; at all. I don’t actively pursue it, and I do find the act of spamming a person, in or out of game, to be wrong, but the actual buying and selling of virtual items…sounds good to me. I would go so far as to say that the sellers are just proving capitalism works. They saw a need and they filled it…and now they are raking in the cash for playing games all day. Come on, who wouldn’t do that job, right? More importantly though, as Dana brings out should it matter whether a player buys in-game currency with his real world cash? Obviously the main issue, from the point of view of the company, is one of ownership. Who owns the avatars we play as? Do we, or do they? If we do then we can buy, trade and sell, if we don’t than the designers must dictate what control we have over them. This, though, is better left to a different topic, one specifically dealing with ownership of avatars…I’ll have to write that one later.

In the meantime though, back to this topic and another quote from the post that I thought was interesting:

Here’s a thought for an AGC talk: “If you don’t want people doing RMT in your game, design it out of the economy.”

From what I know of economics, which is decidedly little, these people selling the virtual goods would, in effect, bring down prices (in-game) rather than increase them, as opponents of RMT tend to say. Often, though, this isn’t the case. Why? Because the economy is not robust enough to handle things. It is not a fully blown economy as exists in the real world, it’s just one building where people can go to sell a good and stick a price tag on it. That’s not an accurate representation of an economy so it should be no wonder that it doesn’t work out right. If you want to make economics work within your economy then you need to spend the time to make sure you really have in place systems that allow for that type of transaction to take place.

That, or you just admit that RMT is a part of life in the game and get over it.