This Week’s “RMT Is Rilly Cool” Story
…is here. Apparently, done with the help of IGE for fact checking.
“Twenty to 30 percent of gamers out there in the world object to the buying and selling of assets in the virtual world. … They don’t feel it’s fair. They think it’s cheating,” said Thomas Morelli, a spokesman for IGE, a major broker of online items.
Many gaming companies, such as Blizzard Entertainment, developer of the globe’s most popular game, World of Warcraft, ban the resale of virtual assets. The company has shut tens of thousands of players’ accounts, but can’t seem to halt the trade.
Millions of gamers think the trade is fine. A thriving business has popped up on auction giant eBay and other sites selling virtual assets. Buyers say they want to enjoy the games without spending hundreds of hours working up to levels where it gets fun and frisky.
You hear that? MILLIONS. You cranky curmudgeons tired of monopolized content and spam in your virtual emails are just blips in the New Millenium!
The article does have a lot of interesting anecdotes about life in Fujian’s newest growth industry, something I suspect IGE has much source material on.
Now you’ve changed arguments. Before your argument was that RMT was inherently bad. Now you’re just saying RMT is only bad because it’s against the rules. So you should have no problem with games that allow RMT… right? Right?
Lawrence Kohlberg created a theory of moral development that has been widely use is developmental psychology for years. Right now, you’re discussing stage 4, which is the “Law and Order” stage. Most of the rest of us are past that in stage 5 or 6, because we realize that rules are not always right. We’re talking about what the rules SHOULD be.
–”Hookers don\’e2\’80\’99t respawn, so you\’e2\’80\’99ve ruined the camp for everyone else.”
Well it coule be said that for each customer the spawn gets progressively worse for subsequent customers.
No, just because you like to argue against what you want me to be saying rather than what I am saying doesn’t mean I changed my argument.
And your condecending moral development bullshit is laughable. This is not a society, its a game. A game is nothing but a set of arbitrary rules, trying to pretend real world ethics and morals have anything to do with it at all is ridiculous. Why can’t I use steroids in powerlifting? Because its against the rules. The game is to see who can lift the most within the confines of the arbitrary rules. If you don’t like that game, don’t play.
Why can’t you buy gear/characters/etc? Because its against the rules. The rules establish what is and is not allowed, they create a fair playing field. There is no point to a game if you don’t follow the rules. If you want to play a game of buying virtual items, then go play that game. I do believe there are a few out there. But expecting to be able to play “spend time for no reason game” using the rules of “spend money for no reason game” is like expecting to be able to ride a motorcycle in the tour de france. Play the game by the rules. If you want different rules, then find a different game.
Or maybe you should go to a different game. There’s no reason why the “spend time for no reason” games can’t allow “spend money for no reason” as well, since that’s what a large portion of the MMOG public seems to think is fine now. You’re a shrinking minority, just like those people who want unrestricted PvP.
I wonder how these people derive their ’statistics’. It seems a no-brainer to me that the population of objectors could be higher and that they don’t vote the way you’d expect them to because they don’t care too much about the issue since there are so many games on the market to choose from. Such people can just move to a game which has mechanics they like. Or, more likely.. they just keep switching from one to another, never fully satisfied with the one they are playing.
“Or maybe you should go to a different game.”
Are you seriously this dumb? Maybe those idiots who waste time training and then using bicycles should “go to a different game” and let the guys on motorcycles play the cycling game right? You are the one who wants to play a different game. You want to play “spend money to make a number bigger”, and yet you insist on doing so in a game defined as “spend time to make a number bigger”. You are the one who does not like the rules of the game, so YOU are the one who should find a different game. You know, one where you do like the rules. You don’t get to go to the olympic committee and tell them “I want to use a forklift in the powerlifting competition, so you guys that don’t like that need to go find a different competition”. If you want to play “lift weights with a forklift”, then go make your own forklift competition.
“There\’e2\’80\’99s no reason why the \’e2\’80\’9cspend time for no reason\’e2\’80\’9d games can\’e2\’80\’99t allow \’e2\’80\’9cspend money for no reason\’e2\’80\’9d”
There’s no reason motorcycles can’t race with bicycles. So if someone makes a mixed motorcycle and bicycle race, then both can feel free to be in it. But that doesn’t mean its ok for people to use motorcycles in bicycle races. The arbitrary rules are the game, that is what defines it. Choose a set of arbitrary rules you like and follow them. Don’t choose a set of arbitrary rules you dislike and then pretend its ok to break them because you don’t like them.
Trying to justify your cheating with red herrings and strawmen doesn’t work. They made the game, and the rules. You either follow their rules, or you are a cheater. End of story. If you do not want to follow their rules, then do not play. Go play a game with rules you agree with.
“The game is designed such that you spend time to get better.”
No it’s not. If this were the case every item, including gold and everything else would be no trade/no drop. Every. Single. Thing. If this were true you wouldn’t be able to ‘twink’ new toons. You would have to actually play your new toon.
The reality of game design is ‘the more total time played = more total items/money/crap in game’.
There is no ‘you’.
“That\’e2\’80\’99s not really correct, weasel – anything where goods & services are exchanged, consumed, and distributed functions as an economy. That is all that is needed.”
Absolutely incorrect. Game economies are missing a critical component of an economy. Resource scarcity. It doesn’t exist.
“I would also argue that the only ones that have failed are the ones which no longer exist.”
A more accurate statement is that every attempt to creat an economy has failed.
“There\’e2\’80\’99s no reason why the \’e2\’80\’9cspend time for no reason\’e2\’80\’9d games can\’e2\’80\’99t allow \’e2\’80\’9cspend money for no reason\’e2\’80\’9d as well, since that\’e2\’80\’99s what a large portion of the MMOG public seems to think is fine now. You\’e2\’80\’99re a shrinking minority, just like those people who want unrestricted PvP.”
This is partly true. The number of people who want to play the game as a game is increasing, but the number of people who are playing the money game is growing much more quickly.
There’s plenty of room in the market for plain fun yet.
I’ve taken your advice, Bruce. My favorite game is not one where farmers control the economy and the lifecycle of the game. Not surprisingly, it’s also a small speck on your current charts.
Speaking of those … I would *love* to see a breakdown by game of subscribers by country. I know it’s not possible, but that would be VERY enlightening.
“If you want to play \’e2\’80\’9clift weights with a forklift\’e2\’80\’9d, then go make your own forklift competition.”
Hey, don’t blame the players for doing this in a game system that was designed by the game developer’s that actually [i]promotes[/i] people to use forklifts in human weight lifting competition.
You should really be getting mad at the game designers.
“Hey, don\’e2\’80\’99t blame the players for doing this in a game system that was designed by the game developer\’e2\’80\’99s that actually [i]promotes[/i] people to use forklifts in human weight lifting competition.”
Based on what? Yes, buying stuff will get your number higher in less time. But they said you aren’t allowed. That is not promoting it. Using a forklift will let you lift more too, but its also not allowed. In both cases the system says “no you may not do that”, even though in both cases, doing it would give you an advantage. Games are sets of arbitrary rules. Follow the rules or do not play.
“Based on what? Yes, buying stuff will get your number higher in less time. But they said you aren\’e2\’80\’99t allowed. That is not promoting it.”
Wow. They design a game system that promotes farming and selling then try to absolve themselves of that decision by making a rule. Every single game has done this. Every single game will be designed to do this in the future. How many games does it take before designers take the hint and make a systemic change? I don’t care how many rules you make, if the code allows players to do it, IT WILL BE DONE.
“Using a forklift will let you lift more too, but its also not allowed. In both cases the system says \’e2\’80\’9cno you may not do that\’e2\’80\’9d, even though in both cases, doing it would give you an advantage. Games are sets of arbitrary rules. Follow the rules or do not play.”
Games are not ’sets of arbitrary rules’. Games are are code and numbers. This is akin to a game developer stating ‘We want to control inflation. Therefore we are making a rule that states you cannot farm more than 1000 monetary units a day’. Then code a game where you can make that amount of money in an hour. You want change, right? Then start making noise where it will actually affect a change.
Hmm, and what part in these ToS which explicitely forbid RMT do you actually construe as promoting it?
In other words, if enough people for RMT bully their way accross, the rest should just curl up and die, never mind the ToS and EULA. Hey, if crime rises, you certainly won’t object to your car getting stolen, right, since that’s what the public seems to think is fine now.
“Hmm, and what part in these ToS which explicitely forbid RMT do you actually construe as promoting it?”
ToS? Who gives a shit about the ToS?
THE GAME DESIGN PROMOTES IT.
” Hey, if crime rises, you certainly won\’e2\’80\’99t object to your car getting stolen, right, since that\’e2\’80\’99s what the public seems to think is fine now.”
Reading comprehension difficult for you?
My posts, using your analogy, states that IF CRIME GOES UP, YOU SHOULD LOOK AT THE REASONS WHY CRIME IS GOING UP SO YOU CAN STOP IT.
The sheep heard attitude that PLAYERS are bad as opposed to the DEV’S CAN DO NO WRONG WITH THEIR GAME DESIGN/VISION is sickening.
What the RMT people want is for game designers to keep RMT bannable inorder to maintain the value of RMT. Does anyone think for a second that a game designers could maintian the RMT values of in game currency? It\\’s too much to ask of a game design.
The problem is it so far has only been bannable on the sellers side.
As I understand it the coding for anti-RMT is a real difficult problem but it is getting closer to functional. Sooner rather than later this is going to be a bitch storm from RMT buyers as they start getting banned enmass.
I find it funny that people want to get the the dead end of content as fast as possible and will actually spend thousands of dollars doing it.
I admit, I\\’ve done it. It ruins the game. So you buy your way to the top, then what?
What is sickening is the mentality that any design which isn’t 110% idiot-proof against any kind of exploiting, griefing and abusing makes it OK to abuse it.
Actually, you appear to have cognitive dissonance with your own mind, because what you actually condone in your posts is getting rid of laws and law enforcement and instead blaming car theft on the car manufacturer who don’t sell 100% unstealable cars. Because, by your logic (or lack thereof), a car which can be jacked by any means whatsoever PROMOTES THEFT.
“Why should we accept that \’e2\’80\’9ctime played\’e2\’80\’9d is the core mechanic that we should all agree on? Of course YOU like it\’e2\’80\’a6 especially if you\’e2\’80\’99re someone who has a lot of time to play. Other people can\’e2\’80\’99t play 40 hours a week on a MMOG, and yet still want to feel like they\’e2\’80\’99re making faster progress. RMT lets them do that, and doesn\’e2\’80\’99t lessen your ability to advance by simply playing more.” SirBruce
Part of the idea of any game is that there is a set of rules which define how you play it. You are playing the game then you have agreed to follow the rules. I have no problem with RMT in games which were designed to support it as a core mechanic. However, most games weren’t designed for huge influxes of in game currency. The devaluation of in game currency can become so bad that the only way anyone can afford items is to buy currency from farmers.
I’m personally against RMT in games since I’ve seen it time and time again used to boost someone to an higher level without any knowledge of how to play the game at that level. I am a programmer myself and only see about 15-20hrs a week to play. However I make smart auction house sales, save my money, and tend to avoid virtual bankruptcy. I’m also an American and I will say that RMT seems to be gaining strength mostly because of USA gamers. Just because we have money doesn’t give us the right to break rules and try to ruin what developers have spent years designing.
All in All I really wish someone would bring the virtual goods debate to the courts so we could get a decision on it.
relmstein.blogspot.com
Weasel is right.
The current MMOG designs intentionally try to retain customers through a design model that requires long hours of repetitive play.
As part of the incentive to endure this process, players receive not only the larger numbers of levels, statistics, and items, but also access to more interesting areas of the game. We get done with bats and rats and move on to orcs, and finally to dragons (or whatever).
There are sound reasons for this design. One, a player should grow accustomed to the game so as to be an asset to his team later (because it’s fun to play well, and frustrating to self and others to be over one’s head). Two, no design team can possibly produce new quality content fast enough to compete with thousands or millions of players, and the business model of MMOGs requires that players at least stick around for X months to make the business profitable. Three, it provides a continuity of story; as in the archetypal Campbellian hero story, people start as the wide-eyed fool and end as the wise, strong hero-king.
However this, to use the chess analogy that’s been floating around, is like being asked to learn chess by starting with only a couple pawns, and then after some time being given more pawns, then a knight … and only after months of play then being allowed a queen.
This annoys people, who want to get to the game they paid for in less than forever; so they shorten the process, EULA be —-ed.
EULAs are toothless; accounts galore can be tracked and banned, but if farmers are making millions, what’s a few $40 boxes? Besides, no matter how earnest the enforcement, every farmer caught and banned probably means nothing more than a bit more money for the game company. Analogies could be drawn to other enforcement efforts in the real world, which I won’t write about for fear of derailing the thread.
Now despite being firmly on the “game should be a game” side, I hardly blame the players (who don’t like treadmills); the designers (who are trying to make a game which shows a profit, and does not have reviewers and players squawking about ‘finishing’ in days or weeks). Even the farmers I only blame *because* their effort gets in the way of other players’ gaming; other than that they’re providing a service somebody wants.
As a stopgap I actually like SOE’s method; give the people who want to buy their way in their own sandbox to play in, and let the people who want to play the ordinary way do so. (It’s partially effective from what I’ve seen; on regular servers farming is not gone, but it’s much reduced).
The real issue is that nobody has really tackled the baseline design of MMOGs (that Campbellian hero’s journey thing) and truly answer the question of what the Hero does once he’s a Hero.
Some designs answer with PvP. Once you’re a Hero, beat the snot out of other Heroes. This just feeds right back into the treadmill, because Hero+ beats Hero, and Hero++ beats Hero+, and so forth. Whether you enjoy PvP or not, this is *not* an answer to the question of farming.
Others just up the ante; in expansion XLIII the heroes, having already destroyed the known pantheon of deities and overthrown time and space, now find themselves faced with … pirates! (by a remarkable concidence, these pirates are just tough enough to challenge god-slayers and universe-rulers, but for whatever reason have elected to sit around on their pirate ships). Back on the treadmill!
IMO a solution which truly stops the treadmill will, as players near the end of the existing content, starts turning them from content consumers into content providers. When you’ve amassed a million gold pieces, your life is no longer one of a carefree adventurer. You could buy a small hamlet, and maybe you have! Or you’ve constructed a wizard’s tower … and being like most wizards, a dungeon underneath. Are you a merchant? Then you need a shop, and employees, and have less and less time to go hunt dragons.
(You’ll find this theme in many fantasy and SF novels; the hero of the first novel becomes the guide, the mentor, the villain of a subsequent novel while someone else takes the limelight).
In short, start giving players responsibility, which gives them something to do AND gets them producing content. The trick, of course, is to keep that content creation in line with your game theme and outside of areas which would bring a shower of lawsuits down upon your company…
Solve this and you’ll not only have a robust, dynamic, world instead of a treadmill, you’ll also have the content creation nightmare alleviated and the farming problem under control.
Popping in to say that I agree with weasel on most counts and Joe + D-One are kind of out in the “conservative MMO commentary” field.
I understand what both of you guys are talking about, but it’s just… too utopian. I loved the fact that MMOs let the have-nots dominate the haves if only for a little while in some corner of the internet. But utopia can only last for so long, right?
The thing is, games still and always will exist that allow players to compete in a virtually RMT-free environment. Smaller niche MMOs, many MUDs, and non-MMO online games will provide you with this type of play. The mainstream MMOs, however, will not be as they once were ever again.
Now is the time to accept RMT for what it is and understand WHY players take part in it. Incorporate these findings into your design to either maximize profit or minimize RMT’s corruption of the system. Banning is not a viable solution. It is a tool in a solution, but not one in and of itself.
And to Joe-
Rules are only words unless they are enforced. Do not take EULAs and ToS so seriously, or you might find a very dark version of the real world when you notice that people actually jaywalk when they’re not supposed to!
My last point. I\\’m repeating myself now.
If RMT was not a bannable offense and was allowed to go on unchecked, in short order there would be no game left. The farmers wouldn\\’t have anything profitable to sell and the gameplayers who function on greed wouldn\\’t have anything left to crave.
I still can’t believe people have come to think that breaking the rules of a game is OK.
Not every rule can be put into code and automatically enforced, and so they have to be put into agreements. RMT falls into this category along with things like exploits. “If duping wasn’t allowed then it wouldn’t be possible! It’s encouraged by the game design!”
Until the legal definitions of virtual property are hashed out in U.S. courts, the EULA’s legal basis isn’t worth the bytes that it’s transmitted on.
There’s a legal leg and precedent to stand on for the people who believe as I do. Domain names are “virtual property” just as much as gold is, on a much larger scale.
They are produced by a single company that derives its income from their sale, and that is contingent on a handful of companies that hold up the Internet’s infrastructure doing their job. You pay for the service of the company, they legally now have a host of restrictions about what they can do with your “property” and its transfer or denial of use by the host company. You can also assign a dollar value to it, and it is not created until your actions cause it to exist. Although, when the rubber meets the road, it is still owned by the company – you caused it to exist, though you are now only renting it (i.e., once it expires, it remits back to the originating company.) It can be transferred to another owner freely and for profit, though you are only the renter.
In broad terms, there’s very little different in the legal basis for ownership of MMO virtual property. I too look very forward to the day when this is finally settled by the court system, No. 6, although I anticipate you’ll hear a much, much different answer than the one you’re hoping for.
-Rip
When you were young and trick or treating, did you ever come to a house that had a bowl of candy outside the door that said ‘Take one’? Did you take just one or did you loot the whole bowl for the kinds of candy that you like?
Making someone click through a ToS is almost exactly the same. If the system is set up so that people can abuse it, it will be abused. As imweasel is saying, the solution isn’t to try and catch the offenders, it’s to change the system to prevent such abuses.
In WoW, a good (but incredibly unpopular) solution would be to make all blues and purples BoE, dramatically increase the drop rate of blue/purple items levels 1-45, make item enchants item-level dependent, and reduce the cost of epic mounts. This would reduce the desire to buy lots of gold to twink out lowbies, since twinking beyond level-appropriate greens is no longer possible. Twinking and the path to 60 are why most people (imo) utilize RMT, so if the benefit of RMT in that aspect is nerfed, people will utilize it less. The blues/purples drop change will reward people who actually play the game from 1-60 as opposed to powergaming RMTers who just grind the path to 60, upgrading greens as he goes.
Ignoring the simple reality of the situation will not make cheating ok.
“Rules are only words unless they are enforced. Do not take EULAs and ToS so seriously, or you might find a very dark version of the real world when you notice that people actually jaywalk when they\’e2\’80\’99re not supposed to!”
Crossing roads is not a game. You can debate the moral and ethical reasons for having laws against jaywalking, and wether or not such laws should exist. A game is not like this. A game is an arbitrary set of rules that all participants must follow. There is no moral or ethical reason for any of the rules, they are simply there to define the game. There is no moral or ethical reason not to use steroids, its an arbitrary rule that all participants must follow. Yes, its a totally unenforcable rule, and many people think it is stupid. But that’s still the rules, and breaking them is cheating. This will not change no matter how often you trot out the same strawmen. Its not about ToS or EULA compliance, its about following the rules of the game. Why is it ok for you to cheat at “spend time to make numbers bigger”, but its not ok to cheat at chess, or cycling, or powerlifting?
“Until the legal definitions of virtual property are hashed out in U.S. courts, the EULA\’e2\’80\’99s legal basis isn\’e2\’80\’99t worth the bytes that it\’e2\’80\’99s transmitted on.”
The EULA has nothing to do with it. Chess does not come with a EULA at all. Does that mean if I suddenly claim I can buy new queens whenever I want, its not cheating? Just because the supreme court hasn’t handed down a verdict declaring something illegal, doesn’t mean its ok. You pro-RMT nuts sure do like to confuse laws in the real world with rules in games don’t you?
“Games are not \’e2\’80\’99sets of arbitrary rules\’e2\’80\’99. Games are are code and numbers.”
Wow! I am impressed that you managed to come up with a statement so stupid that it is actually shocking. Yes, games are sets of arbitrary rules. That is exactly what they are. Video games happen to have “code and numbers” that enable you to play. That doesn’t change the fact that the game itself is a set of arbitrary rules. Cycling is a set of arbitrary rules too, even though you can also say “its bikes and roads”. The bikes and roads allow you to play the game, the game is still defined by its arbitrary set of rules.
“Crossing roads is not a game.”
Frogger.
“\’e2\’80\’9cCrossing roads is not a game.\’e2\’80\’9d
Frogger. “
pwn3d
Frogger is not crossing roads. Frogger is a game, defined by rules like “you can jump this far” and “you can jump this often”, and “you need to get to the other side without dying”.
You can make a game out of crossing the road (real roads, or pretend ones like in frogger), and that game can include whatever arbitrary rules you want. That has nothing to do with jaywalking though. That is a law, theoretically in place to protect people. You can debate wether or not that law is needed, and wether or not it is moral to break that law if you feel it doesn’t harm anyone. Arbitrary rules can’t be judged in the same way by their very definition. They are arbitrary, there is no moral or ethical reasoning for the rules of a game. The only moral/ethical question is wether cheating at games is ethical or not.
Joe, we get the point. You like rules. Enough already.
Have you ever let someone else use your account? A family member or a friend visiting your house perhaps? If you have, chances are you violated your game’s ToS and are as much a cheater as anyone engaging in RMT.
Face it, quite a lot of ToS’s these days contain way too much garbage that doesn’t belong in them. It looks like the majority of people these days think RMT prohibition doesn’t belong with the rest of the other ridiculous ‘rules’.
To loosely paraphrase Pirates of the Caribbean, [TOS's] aren’t so much rules as guidelines.
“What is sickening is the mentality that any design which isn\’e2\’80\’99t 110% idiot-proof against any kind of exploiting, griefing and abusing makes it OK to abuse it.”
Once again, completely incorrect. I am not breaking any game mechanics. I am simply farming like every one else. I make tons of gold. If I was using a bot program or some super sekret haxxors to dupe tons of loot, then that would be bad.
I am playing the game within the confines of the game mechanics.
EULA’S DO NOT EQUAL GAME MECHANICS.
People like this are prime examples of why intelligence is no longer a survival trait.
Damijin and No. 6 actually get it.
Don’t blame players for BAD GAME DESIGN.
You can blame them for duping, haxxoring and using racial slurs in a game.
But if you actually want to fix something INSTEAD OF BITCHING ABOUT IT?
Talk to the game designers.
“Ignoring the simple reality of the situation will not make cheating ok.”
The only person around here that appears to be ignoring the simple reality of the situation is you joe.
“If I was using a bot program or some super sekret haxxors to dupe tons of loot, then that would be bad.”
“I am playing the game within the confines of the game mechanics.”
Using a bot program is playing within the confines of the game mechanics too. So you admit that botting is cheating, even though its possible within the game mechanics, but you insist that RMT is different? Sounds like you are ignoring reality doesn’t it?
Bot programs interact with the program, possibly even changing the packet stream. So does sekret haxxor stuff.
Now if the interface allows macros (such as uoassist), then yep, bot it all you want within the confines of the program.
The reality you seem to be ignoring is that game designers actually design their games to promote rmt. Then they try to absolve themselves of any responsibility by simply making a rule OUTSIDE of the game to ‘fix’ their unwillingness/inability to…ummm…actually design a solid (not even a good) game. Then sheep…err…folks come along and say ‘PLAYERS ARE BAD MONKEYS’ so game designers can wipe their brow and tell themselves that they dodged a bullet thanks to the loyal flock.
Or in other words…
EULA’S do not game mechanics make.
The best way to make RMT disappear is to make possessions ephemeral and very situational. Of course, this defeats much of the “cumulative character” model, but that model needs serious defeating anyway.
I would imagine that people who are the most bent out of shape about RMT, though, tend to be not terribly interested in cumulative character in the first place. If you let players accumulate possessions, to assume they will not trade them for money, sex, or funny jokes is folly. You could go for a “central planning” model where everything has a value and something can only be traded for equals, but you tell me if that’s any fun.
Oh, and fuck you, I always just took one piece of candy.
imweasel’s entire argument to support RMT is based on not liking the mechanics and rules of current MMOs.
This is not a valid debate point. This is called “holding a grudge”.
“imweasel\’e2\’80\’99s entire argument to support RMT is based on not liking the mechanics and rules of current MMOs.
This is not a valid debate point. This is called \’e2\’80\’9cholding a grudge\’e2\’80\’9d.”
Support? Why shouldn’t I support rmt. The dev’s create the system! Or even better yet, why shouldn’t I point out the flaw of blaming the player’s for playing the game the way game developer’s designed it?
Folks want to go around complaining about a symptom without addressing the problem.
And to be frank, I could care less whether rmt existed or not.
Perian: “You could go for a \’e2\’80\’9ccentral planning\’e2\’80\’9d model”
No thank you! We have enough of that insanity out in Arr Ell (RL).
Well, actually, the whole economy of every MMOG is centrally planned; wealth enters the game at points designated by the designers (usually mobs) and leaves through necessary expenditure points (money sinks) also designated by designers.
However, you’re talking about what happens after that.
My point of view is just that in so far as outside sales affect my gaming, I care. Here are some ways it does in various games:
- Organized loot collection (farming) inflates the as-designed rate of influx of items and money; therefore prices of key items inflate, and generally characters are more powerful than designed; therefore designers account for this in later content, with the result that players must participate in the DRM or be unable to play later content;
- Content intended for and appropriate for my character is monopolized by farming concerns;
- Expectations of the player base include that characters will be equipped in a fashion only possible for people buying their equipment, resulting in lost opportunities or scorn if one doesn’t choose to participate in that routine.
(Probably more, but I’m mostly through a good quantity of Sapporo and, well…)
Anyway as my earlier post asserted these are all consequences of the design. It’s a matter of opinion as to whether this is BAD design; certainly it’s successful commercially and popular. It’s bad for *me* because I want to play within a self-contained economy. Frankly, if my interests lay in buying and selling for profit, I’d spend my spare time on ScottTrade or something. I really don’t know why the other people who *do* enjoy mucking around with MMOG economies don’t play the stock game instead; maybe the competition’s too tough there :p
I’m having a very hard time sorting out exactly what the “pro-RMT” camp believes.
Here’s what I’ve gathered so far.
-In general, they actually do believe that RMT is bad, and that it hurts people who don’t participate in RMT.
-However, they believe that it should be condoned because
-They believe that games designed around mechanical character progression are bad?
If anyone could give me a clarification on this, I’d be most obliged.
Banning RMT is banning Human nature. When you do that, bad shit happens.
This dosn’t mean you tolerate farmers.
Ebay is not IGE.
Shrug, the ONLY MMO to crush the value of its RMT market without causing massive inflation is Eve-Online. How? Allowing people to buy gametime from them and sell it for in-game currency.
The real answer is to figure out what is undesirable about RMT, and what doesn’t have a huge impact on your game, or rather, what you can live with.
Online games don’t tend to work really well without interaction with other players. A large part of that interaction comes from trading “stuff” for other “stuff”. Typically speaking, cutting that part out in order to “save” the game from RMT is a poor idea at best.
So what has impact on someone’s playstyle?
* Is it the guy who buys a few hundred gold so that he can continue to play with his guild because his job keeps him too busy to play as often as he might like?
* Is it the father who buys a new horse for his kid’s birthday? (This is kind of weird anyway, but the kid would probably be pretty stoked with that kind of gift.)
* Is it the son of the retired father who pays a few bucks to a power-level service so that he can play with his dad who’s passed him up?
Where do these impact other people’s playstyle?
The real answer is not these small transactions, but when any of these people run into someone who negatively effects their playing session. This negative influence may be in the form of a bot or a farming ring, but that’s little different than the griefer they may run across during their evening play session.
We know that people will mostly attempt to take the path of least resistance. Perhaps the answer lies not in getting rid of RMT – a natural progression of a free market that exchanges goods for services, but rather in finding ways to eliminate the unsavory aspects brought on by RMT – namely bot farming and griefing.
Food for thought.
Excuse me while I derail -
Wrt Lum’s original post – (I can’t believe you missed this).
From the article – “Millions of gamers think the trade is fine.”
Also from the article (the headline) – “For millions of Chinese, playing computer games is a livelihood”
That’s where the millions come from – Duh!
-However, they believe that it should be condoned because
It seems you forgot to finish this line. So.
RMT shouldn’t be condoned, it should be “accepted”. It is something that exists. No amount of forum whining can take it away.
Perhaps in days of yore when it was a sweaty guy selling 50 plat on ebay for a few bucks, it was possible to stop it. However, with so many jobs and lives depending on this industry… it will not stop. Anything short of a flat communist world where there are no poor and there are no rich will fail to end RMT.
So the question that us RMT proponents raise is “How do we incoporate this, to allow those who want to take part to do so, and allow the rest to be relatively unaffected?”
Most of us agree that design has a large role to play in how RMT manifests in individual games. I am not against the classic model of character advancement. I am simply proposing the question: Can farmers, buyers, sellers, and purists exist in a game together? Can we see a farmer and regard him as a player? Can a farming guild be considered competition, just as much as any other guild?
I think what anti-RMT really comes down to is jealousy over the amount of time that someone else can spend on the game, if they are playing it as a job. And then of course jealousy over those who have money and advance themselves by giving jobs to farmers (buying). A large cry of “UNFAIR!” comes to mind. But you know people who buy money often cry “unfair” at those who are well enough off in life to sit at a PC for 15 hours a day grinding.
So what does it come down to?
Deal with it.
(and maybe lobby for design that is “RMT-aware” so that dumb decisions aren’t made in the economy that will lead to a slippery slope of bots and inflation)
“So what does it come down to?”
Games that initially support RMT, and I mean in every way, I think are acceptable. What has gotten us into a mad fit was several people’s insistance that current MMOs, which have rules against RMT, should just accept RMT.
However, in any market, there should be variety. Games are no exception. Some MMOs might want RMT, but most do not support it right now. What RMT supporters should be doing is encouraging new MMOs into allowing RMT, instead of attacking current MMOs.
and
In soccer, the pitch is marked out by a set of lines. According to the rules of the game, if the ball goes over these lines, it is out of play and a restart follows. Of course, it’s possible that a ball may go out of bounds and continue to be played if the referee or linesmen don’t call the rule infringement. (Let’s assume, for this example, that the ball fully, obviously and unquestionably goes over the line).
Would you say that the player who kicks the ball out of bounds but then carries on playing is cheating or just doing what the “game mechanics” enable him to do (the game mechanics in this case being that the pitch line is representative of a boundary rather than a physical barrier)?
“This is simple proof that game companies are idiots.
No game or game company manages to learn from the prior mistakes made from previous games and game companies. “
What he said
except there isn’t a lesson to be learned here other than this type of game format is super-broke in the long term. It is nothing but an endless stretch of e-penis waving, regardless of if the subject matter is fairplay or munchkin-ism. Most people tend to be munchkins in some way; even if only because the more aggressive playerbase leaves them with a player /ecology/ that is nonexistant at lower levels; and yet they also want to define how other munchkins play.
This isn’t necessarily a double-standard. Most players have a good bit of fun to lose with inflation, so their issue apparently lies with how much inflation they are comfortable with, and where it is coming from.
As weasel has hinted, RMT is fairly easy to scapegoat, and IT IS HARMFUL, but it is still the sympton of a much bigger problem, which is an infinitely flawed game format.
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