Because It Depletes The Soil. Or Weren’t You Paying Attention?
Articles on why we should embrace RMT are like potato chips to me. Chocolate covered potato chips with crack sprinkles.
Over at Overmoderated (the blog written by people who really should know better), Tisirin makes the stunning confession that:
I don’t really understand the RMT debate.
And then goes on to support that argument.
I feel like I MUST be missing some important crux of the issue. Game companies have complete control over the virtual items in their products. Gold, ISK, swords, whatever. If it’s in the game, the company can make it. If the company can make it, and there are players that want to buy it… What’s the next logical step, Economics majors?
Ooh, pick me! The answer, of course, is disaster. It's the classic "out-farm the farmers" argument. Dan Rubenfield tried to make the same case, which I was able to show as complete folly.
The problem does in fact lie with economics. But it's not the law of Supply and Demand. It's the Law of Infinite Resources.1 No matter where you set the price of a sword or a bunch of coins, the RMTers will always be able to go lower. Always. Sell your sword for $10, and they'll do it for $5. Sell it for a dollar, and they'll sell it for fifty cents. You cannot compete with them on price. They have the manpower, they have the numbers, and they have access to a labor pool where there is no such thing as a minimum wage.
Tisirin continues
There are balance issues to be considered, the public perception to be managed, etc. But no one is even really trying. Wouldn’t it be possible to tweak a system so that rewards you get from actually playing are a tad nicer than what you could buy? Or had cool effects that buyable items didn’t?
This one is so obvious, I'm surprised it came from a community manager. If you're not selling the best items in the game, then someone else will. You haven't done anything to fix the problem, you've just created a virtual flea market. As far as the balance issues are concerned, once again Tisirin manages to nail the issue perfectly—on Bizarro World. Most virtual worlds are balanced with the assumption that players will take a certain amount of time to do a certain number of things. Virtual economies are based on this curve, and doing things like artificially injecting gold and items (whether from the game store or farmers) wrecks that balance. Of course, you could try to plan your world around RMT, and there are many successful games (mostly Asian) that do, but then those games are based completely on micro-transactions. There's no co-mingling of RMT and non-RMT players. (Insert exception that proves the rule here.)
Finally, Tisirin asks a completely different question:
How hard would it be to set a server aside with an RMT model and let people who want to advance faster in the game pay to do it?
I don't believe you can run a game effectively with RMT and non-RMT servers. Sony tried this and I think it's pretty safe to say that it did not meet expectations. Furthermore, Sony's effort did nothing to curtail RMT on the non-RMT servers, which was one of Sony's stated goals. The RMT server is also one of the least-played servers in EQ2, and I'm pretty sure it's because most people who are willing to spend money on virtual gold do so because they want an uneven playing field. They don't want to play on a server where everyone else has has the best gear, they want to be special.
I guess what I’m saying is that this issue isn’t going away and that I don’t think there are subtle answers.
True dat, Tisirin. I don't claim to know the answer, but it sure isn't a white flag.
1 Law of Infinite Resource © 2007 Amber Night Megalomedia
January 12th, 2007 at 6:37 am
Actually, I think you’ve just convinced me that RMT is a good thing. If the game companies start selling items and the RMT traders undercut them and then the companies undercut them again and so on and so forth, eventually it’ll be free (or so cheap that it might as well be free) and we’ll all be rolling in gold/ISK/melons!
Woohoo! Sign me up now.
January 12th, 2007 at 9:21 am
RMT again eh? Fine. Blah blah hurts economy blah inflation yada yada. All just translates to “We the people with time, want to continue to have the advantage that we miss out on in the real world. We don’t want balance. We want to be better than you in the virtual space. We call this our domain and we really only want you here if we can dominate you. We also will poo poo any plans to even things out.”
It’s just as much the hard core gamers farming gold as RMT professionals farming gold, that causes inflation. The economy ends up the same whether it’s the “el33t pwners” or the “Ni Hao, ma” farmers the result is the same to the economy.
The structure of “Ability = Time + Loot” is the problem, not the gold farmers or RMT.
January 12th, 2007 at 9:54 am
RMT may be the problem, but gold farmers are not the culprits, its the game designers.
The problem is that RMT doesn’t deplete the soil.
This is the game designer’s flaw. Most MMOs are based on Amusement Park Economics where there are infinite supplies of everything. Also, anything you desire can be found by taking the appropriate “ride”.
The recent Asian (and Western) MMOs that have finessed RMT have done so by going to direct Virtual Asset Purchase business models - eliminating most of the economic benefit (and all of the risk) associated with doing business with a farmer.
There are numerous ways to fight and flat out stop RMT (to paraphrase that great Senator, Joe McCarthy, “I have a list”) - but they all require action by game designers.
January 12th, 2007 at 10:32 am
Nice sweeping generalization there buddy, I’m impressed.
January 12th, 2007 at 10:53 am
Sweeping though it may be, I think there’s a lot of (but certainly not absolute) truth to it. One of the foremost arguments for RMT is the “I have more money than time” argument. So let’s look at 2 different people:
Person A has x time, but can afford to buy gold.
Person B has x time, but cannot afford to buy gold.
Person A, both in real life and in virtual life, has an advantage over Person B in terms of purchasing power. Person A can extend that advantage into the virtual world through RMT.
On the face of it, PlayNoEvil’s remark sounds (and was perhaps meant to be) cynical, but the reality is that RMT relies on people who can afford to leverage their real-world advantages into the virtual world. Even those who support RMT would have to agree.
January 12th, 2007 at 10:59 am
Dragon you get upset every time I explain it that way, but don’t follow through with why I’m wrong. Like in the last RMT thread:
“It’s not crazy to define “casual” as those gamers don’t have a lot of free time, because they work so much to have some disposable income.”
Draconian/Dragon: “Don’t. Get. Me. Started.”
I can only assume that I’m not stating the logic according to some defined intellectual argument structure. I’m not trying to say that all of the casual gamers are hard working rich guys. I unfortunately fall into the casual, but can’t affort to RMT group. Why is it a generalization, and I think you’re saying a false one, to think that the people paying for RMT have the money to spend on it, and might not have or be willing to spend the time, to get the same thing on their own.
The other side you might be against, is that I’m accusing all of the people wandering around with their epics comparing epeens of being jobless catassers. In which case I stand guilty as charged. There are people at top level with the best gear who really are nice good people. They are a minority, and I don’t think they whine about RMT. At least my friends who play a whole lot (hardcore) don’t gripe about someone else having phat loots, just because they paid for the gold. What someone else has doesn’t matter to them, they are playing the game for themselves, not to prove something to the world.
January 12th, 2007 at 11:20 am
I’m one of those players without time, but with real world resources. I could buy gold or characters or items… but I don’t want to. I’m against RMT because it removes content from me. I want to log in and go kill some monsters and maybe get some loot, but if I go anywhere worthwhile in the game, chances are someone will be farming it, and most of the time its people farming it for resale.
Of course, if the game company sold items and money generated out of nothing, that would solve my problem. But as it currently stands, RMT (or Gold Selling) hurts my game as a casual, probably more than it hurts the “hardcore”.
January 12th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
Bug, I was going to explain last comment but was waiting to catch a plane home (and was slightly nervous/stressed at flying in 120mph winds).
Of the arguments in favour of RMT, the one I despise the most is the “I don’t have time so I’ll buy my way to virtual success.” Like Jason, I’m a casual player in that I have other commitments and responsibilities that come before the game. It’s not even a case of affording because looking at the gold spammers /yells, it’s not that expensive to get a couple of 100 gold. The WoW I’m currently in is proud to be a casual and relaxed guild, made up of people who have a life outside of the game. The general opinion in that guild is that RMT is a bad thing. Likewise my old SWG guild (potential future Age of Conan guild) all “casual” players who care more about playing the game itself than the rush to max out gear and level. Yeah, I know it’s birds of a feather and all that but even so. I know that, in general, their opinion of RMT is a “what’s the point?” and “not a good thing”.
My remark was unneccessarily antagonizing and for that I apologize. And yes, as Amber says, your statement does have a lot of truth to it because the arguments in favour of RMT are the “I have money but not time”. It’s just that, to me, that argument is fucking ridiculous - would these people pay someone to play through Planescape: Torment just so that they could get to the end? Would (to use an example I’ve over used before) they pay to start a marathon at 10 miles rather than 26 just so they could finish with the winners simply because they lack the time (and skill) to train properly?
But that being said, there are still a lot of people who are “casual” players who wouldn’t ride the RMT express and who, like me, have strong feelings against it - none of which are to do with the desire for an over inflated e-peen.
January 12th, 2007 at 2:59 pm
That should have been “The WoW guild I’m currently in…” Damn these fat fingers of mine!
January 12th, 2007 at 4:09 pm
Dragon, I’m glad you got back on the ground safely. I didn’t think 120 mph winds was something an airport would still operate in.
I can totally support the “Just play the game” argument quite a bit. If you are paying to play a game that you are not enjoying, stop. If it’s not fun, don’t play it.
Are there people who run just the last mile of a marathon? yes. Why? To encourage and support someone they know who is running the whole darn thing. There is a 100 mile race in Utah. There are numerous people who run just parts of it to pace and encourage the participants. There is also often a 10k and 5k race that go along with some marathon events. Those might be for people who want to run just the fun part of a marathon (the short part).
If you join a pen and paper RPG campaign half way through, would the GM make you start your new character at level 1 or would they bring you up to the average level automatically and create a backstory?
Buying gold or characters in online games isn’t that different. They’re just paying someone to play part of a game so that they can play the part they want. I think it has merit.
The idea that RMT ruins the economy doesn’t work for me. If it were true then the hardcore goldfarmers would be condemned in the same breath, and they haven’t been. The inflated prices, the proliferation of gold, the camped spawns are just as much the hardcore as the RMT farmers (if not more so). There is an enchantment drop in WoW that comes from 6 world mobs in one tower. The tower is always camped, and as I’ve asked others of my faction that I find there, none of them are RMT gold farmers, and I’m the only enchanter, and so the only one ever there who needs it for themself. Everyone else is there to farm this one drop to sell it at outrageous prices to buy whatever (probably more mounts). So if we’re going to come down on RMT farmers for ruining the economy, let’s put the hardcore gold farmers in the same boat as we burn it down.
January 13th, 2007 at 6:12 am
Unless you’re flying small white houses out of Kansas…
January 13th, 2007 at 7:46 am
I’d say it depends on the GM. If the GM is Blizzard then it’s back to level 1 you go. If you’re playing Guild Wars, you get an option to start at level 20 straight off the bat. This probably leads to my biggest issue with RMT and that’s simply because it’s against the “rules” of the game.
To a certain extent, I agree with you about the idea that RMT ruining the economy not actually being the issue. To my mind, the economy in most MMOs is so far out of whack that it’s ruined by any real world standard regardless. Why? Because it’s run by 12 year olds! The hardcore players who have enough time to farm gold and get the best drops then inflate the prices because they whack them on whatever auctioning system is in place and some other hardcore farmer has so much gold, they don’t give a second thought about the price and just buy it, thereby creating a ridiculously high baseline which everyone else will follow.
A case in point (that I’ve taken advantage of myself) - in WoW there’s a rare cooking recipe for Savoury Deviate Delight. It’s for lvl 85 cooking, has no tangible benefit to the player and yet I can shift a recipe on the AH for 15g. Why? Not because it’s worth it but because people have more money than sense. This out of whack economy doesn’t have anything to do with RMT traders though.
The main difference between hardcore gold farmers and RMT traders, however, is that the farmers are keeping everything in the game. (Well, they might not be, but for the sake of definition, I have to assume they are). They’re not offering to sell rares and gold for your hard earned real life dollars, just your in game wealth. They’re farming hard because that’s their chosen playstyle.
The truth for me is that RMT is not in itself a bad thing, just like the use of drugs in sports is not, in itself, a bad thing. But just the use of drugs in sports are generally banned by the sports ruling bodies, so too do most MMO ruling bodies (i.e. Blizzard, SOE, NCSoft whoever) ban RMT trade. You can argue that they should allow it just like you can argue that drugs should be allowed in sport and that you should be allowed to pick up the ball and run with it in soccer. Sure, some people run the last mile of a marathon to encourage and support people they know running it - this happens at a lot of amateur marathons and the organizers permit it. Try doing it at the Olympics though, and you’ll just get the runner disqualified for cheating. Why? Because there are rules against it.
If Blizzard or SOE added some servers that permitted RMT (and not in the way that SOE did it but actually let 3rd party companies deal with it - i.e. “legalising” the IGEs of this world), it wouldn’t get rid of the problem. Gold sellers would still prevade non-RMT servers because it’s highly likely that the people who do it now to get an advantage would do it then too. Solution? Probably to make all the servers RMT enabled. In which case it would cost more to play than just a monthly subscription. I wouldn’t want to play a game like that (wasn’t Archlord going to be designed to be like that?) and I’m sure I wouldn’t be the only one - so players like me would be forced out to play something else.
Haven’t read through this to see if it makes any sense - feel free to pick up on any holes in logic (but please don’t go all Abalieno on me, I’m feeling sensitive! ;D)
January 13th, 2007 at 1:52 pm
Okay I was going to call you stupid and make you run away from this blog like a little girl, but since you asked nicely I won’t go Abalieno on you.
That’s not an out-of-whack economy, that’s simple supply and demand. What you’re describing is the real-world equivelant of an iPod. There are plenty of cheaper MP3 players out there that do as much, even more, than the iPod, but people still buy iPods in droves. In DAOC, glowy swords used to only drop from mobs in Darkness Falls. They were not near as good as crafted weapons, but people insisted on using them because they were all glowy and shit. It probably hurt crafters, but I’m pretty sure it had little impact on the economy.
Where the economy gets out-of-whack is when you start injecting more money into it than it’s designed to handle. It’s like the government printing too much money. That’s what got the US govrnment in so much trouble in the 70’s. Player farmers–that is players who farm but for their personal or guild use–are built into the system, and outside the scope of the discussion, because there are relatively few of them. But hordes of for-profit farmers who literally milk the game for money 24×7, well no system can handle that.
This seems to be a much better way to approach the RMT. Since we’re using analogies, I’ll compare RMT to the war on drugs, and hoping the analogy breaks down at the point where we’re getting our asses kicked in that war. But if you see it as a supply problem, some solutions start to present themselves, even if only for immediate dismissal. For example, if you could limit the amount of gold an account can acrue per hour (based on gradations for level). Or you could limit the number of players per day or hour that a player can trade with. These are 2 ideas off the top of my head, feel free to shred. As a bleeding heart liberal I hate to say this, but I think in the future players will have to sacrafice some freedoms in order to get rid of RMT.
One thing I believe will happen in the future is that the RMT problem will be solved through a combination of brute force transaction tracking and pattern-recognition. Right now it’s too computationally expensive, but I can see a time where each and every coin is flagged with a unique identifier, and every transaction between every player is recorded. Through pattern recognition, RMT behavior can be identified, and investigated quickly. First, the system notices farming behavior (account logged in 24×7, killing for hours in the same zone, etc), then traces that players previous transactions, notes that he always drops his gold off to the same mule where it’s then given to random players for nothing in return, and you’ve caught yourself an RMTer. Or if it’s just some guy with more time than sense, then no problem, you’ll see that even though he has red-flag farming behavior, he has normal trading behavior. It’s a system that comes very close to being totally automated. We’re not at the point where we have the CPU cycles to do this, but 3 years from now I think it’s very realistic. And if this system were implemented using bayesian filters, even as the RMTers adapted their behavior to try to game the system, the system would also adapt.
January 13th, 2007 at 8:17 pm
The basic problem with RMT is that it substitutes one set of rules for another; money-value for game-value. There is nothing inherently “wrong” or “immoral” about buying in-game items or gold or with eBaying stuff. There’s nothing inherently wrong with a system in which players are given a choice of either spending time to work their way from level 1-20 or jump right to 20.
From a gameplay and roleplay standpoint, however, it is problematic, however, when two sets of people are playing the same game using (at least) two sets of rules. Why? Because it means that every relationship in the game is complicated by a potential misunderstanding.
In a single-player game, employing “cheats” is really nothing of the sort. You can’t cheat yourself. You simply experience the product differently. If you like to read the end of a mystery novel first… knock yourself out. But the greatest differences between an MMO and a single-player game are the social elements; the cooperative, group and guilding opportunities.
RMT renders many of these social features somewhat nebulous and less valuable. Because it is unclear whether the “40th level mage” you are chatting with is actually a 40th level player… or a 3rd level player who has just written a 37th level check. RMT totally f**ks with many issues of authenticity and authority.
Now, you may say, “It’s just a game. Calm yourself, Mr. H.” I will reply, “No.”
If it is just a game, the argument cuts exactly the same in both directions. If it is just a game, put down your RMT and play the g**damn game. If it is just a game, then the fun of the game is the game, and how well you play = how well you play, and has nothing to do with how many levels you grind or how much trophy loot you score or what you wield. If it’s just a game…
You should play it like a game, and not a job.
From the point of view of the RMTers, I can’t argue. If you can make money doing it, and it’s good dough, and you ain’t getting caught… you go, girl.
But from the point of view of the gamers… I don’t care if you have more money than time, more time than sense, more sense than brains, more brains than cocaine, less time than your younger brother… whatever. In a highly-socially modulated, game-rules-organized, play-based, character-driven setting… using any means outside of those explicitly allowed by the platform to make your character seem other than what you have done on your own is, essentially, lying.
RMT allows a player to proclaim, “I created this character, with which I can now communicate and play.” Which is not true. Being on the receiving end of that lie, other players are *forced* to amend their play experience based on an assumption that is not correct.
It is something like the equivalent of putting a fake degree on a resume.
Personally, I only ever played with people based on role-playing ability; level of character rarely had much to do with it. That being said, though, in games like WoW, you often have to play with folks who are pretty near your level. And some tool who has skipped 50-75% of the play experience with daddy’s credit card is not going to be the same level of player as someone who has done the work.
Same for some tool who has skipped 50-75% of the play experience with their own credit card. If you want to play WoW for 30 minutes a day, that’s fine. But if you want to play it on an even playing field with people who play for 4 hours a day… that’ll never happen. And it shouldn’t.
January 14th, 2007 at 9:50 am
[...] Yet another discussion of the evils of RMT, this one over at Amber’s blog. [...]
January 14th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
Yes, yes, you’re right. I hang my head in shame and will go stand in the corner. What can I say? I majored in philosophy (including philosophy of sport and games I should add - the only subject that ever allowed me to discuss the philsophical issues raised by the movie Rollerball!) Economics is a black art to me - just ask my accountant.
I think you’d have to address both parts of the equation - supply by making it impossible or very difficult to effect the types of in game transactions required to carry out, for example, gold exchanges and demand by making RMT redundant. Unlike the war on drugs (assuming you meant recreational drugs rather than performance enhancing), I suspect a large part of the RMT buyers motivation is not addiction or compulsion (although I’m sure they exist too) but is just taking advantage of an oppurtunity - a “win by any means necessary” approach.
I won’t shred your ideas as there’s probably a good basis for discussion in them but suffice to say, they probably wouldn’t work by themselves.
January 14th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
@moxcamel: Interesting idea, tagging every transaction as unique. I hadn’t thought of that one. Of course, you wouldn’t end RMT, just make it much harder. You’d have to mask RMT behavior as “natural” within the game and, essentially, spoof the macro behavior rather than the micro.
I’ve often wondered what it would be like to play a game where there is no in-game money, no weapons, no armor, no objects. Where all character development is based on skills, and all skills need to be earned through unique or blended behavior. IE, if you want to be a Level 20 Warrior, you have to do *all* the “Level 20 Warrior Stuff.” Or 20 units of some mix of Warrior stuff. You wanna be a Level 20 Ranger? You need 20 units, combined, of Warrior and Archer.
And maybe all “things” are summoned, based on level. Every “Level X Warrior” gets the “Level X Kit.” Or, if you had really granular, weirdo interactions of skill-levels, you’d get a choice of kits. But all of them available at all times, based solely on your level, and no game mechanism for transfer.
It would be different, eh? Play would be based on your game skill and choice of kit, not on how much grinding you’d done or twinking you’d received or RMT you’d plunked.
You’d still have the issue of account selling. There will always be that, I think, unless a game gets so uptight as to require machine-based authentication, which would be, I think, unwise.
January 15th, 2007 at 2:06 am
Hey now. I didn’t run away. I gracefully exited. Even with the toilet paper hanging from my shoe, it was still graceful. *Graceful* goddamit!
January 15th, 2007 at 9:11 am
Account selling in SWG* was, iirc, mainly limited to unlocked Jedi rather than other characters. Other classes did get sold but not so much because of their “level” or class but because of the amount of many in the bank and the items they had which, following on from your example of an itemless/moneyless game, wouldn’t be a problem.
I have been thinking of something similar but it wasn’t item-less, it was just that items were tools and not essential and certainly didn’t give you a distinct and imbalanced advantage over another player.
*pre NGE, obviously.
January 15th, 2007 at 5:11 pm
The decent enough point of “It’s against the rules” should have been where this ended. There isn’t a good reason for it to be against the rules, but against the rules it is, and thus it’s cheating.
Saying that Dragon’s example of the rare item sales is simple supply and demand is wrong. It’s nothing like iPods. It’s like selling an iPod for $100,000 is what it is. Much fewer people will have them, and in the MMO world those people are the ones who farmed gold for 24×7 (damaging the economy for everyone else) and I don’t mean the RMT farmers. The economy is screwed up in most MMOs and it’s just as much the hardcore as it is the RMT gold farmers that are doing it. Making RMt against the rules, if you could crack down on it, would make screwing up the economy the sole domain of the hardcore. Congrats, fewer people are allowed to mess up the experience for everyone.
I can only partially agree with the thought that buying a character messes up the social dynamic. We’re playing with 12 year olds for crying out loud! We’re also playing with members of your family, who even if they did earn each of those levels, you probably don’t want to rely on them in a tough raid. They did the time, but they still can barely play their character. Some of the purchased characters know how to play way way better than some of those who “earned” their levels.
RMT is just against the rules. Doesn’t screw up the economy or make you question the ability of the player you are talking to, but it’s against the rules…that’s all. I’d hate if someone was making money off of my hard work too…hey wait a minute, let’s make being a CEO against the rules too.
January 15th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
I don’t like RMT, but I’ll be the first to say that the “it’s against the rules” defense is not satisfying in the least. I teach my kids to “question authority,” not to blindly follow the rules. But hey, if blindly following the rules keeps somebody from ruining a game that I play, then I got no problem with that.
But seriously I think it’s important to have the RMT discussion and not just place blind trust in the ToS. If I thought RMT didn’t hurt the games I play then I wouldn’t care if people did it or not, even if it were against the rules. I might even buy some for myself. But it does hurt the game.
This is really nit-picking. My point was that iPods are overpriced because people want them, not because they’re the best. You’re $100,000 number is arbitrary and meaningless with no context. If iPod doesn’t suit you as an analogy, then go with golden toilets or Ferraris. My point was that people who can afford style over functionality will do so, and that’s all part of supply and demand.
/em lifts eyebrow
Any game designer will tell you RMT screws economies up. It can’t *not* screw an economy up. Whoever is telling you otherwise is probably trying to sell you gold.
January 16th, 2007 at 9:47 am
Moxcamel, it isn’t the RMT gold farmers who are buying the golded toilet seats (I don’t really care what item we go with as long as it has an obsurd price). It is the players. The hardcore players who have been farming instances or rare drops, are the people who have the gold to pay for the rare loot that they want. It’s the hardcore farmers I find camping every important world mob, not the RMT guys.
Just because the game designers might say so (and they don’t all agree on this point), doesn’t mean RMT screws up the economy. Even if it was impossible to RMT (some made up scenario somehow), the economy would still get screwed up, because there are people playing the game for rediculously different amounts of time. This makes it so that the hardcore screw up the economy for the casual. Meanwhile the hardcore probably think the economy is just fine, because they have plenty of gold for what they want.
January 16th, 2007 at 10:31 am
I thought we’d established that.
In general, players camp boss mobs for items. RMTers don’t generally camp bosses because selling gold is much more profitable than selling items. They’re not camping the bosses, they’re out killing easier stuff 24×7.
Hmmm. When I said “question authority,” I wasn’t saying to disbelieve authority even in the face of all logic.
If you accept that MMOs have an economy, then you have to accept that the economy obeys basic economic rules, otherwise it’s not an economy. And one very basic economic rule is that when you inject vast sums of unsupported currency into an economy, inflation happens. Inflation screws up economies. You can disbelieve if you like, but it doesn’t change the facts. If you think it’s just a pretend economy and therefore not subject to real economic rules then play a game of Monopoly sometime, only instead of collecting $200 every time around the board, collect $20,000.
As for all game designers not agreeing on RMT hurting in-game economies, I’ve never heard that. I’ve heard them say they should try to get in on the fun, like with Station Exchange, but I’ve never heard of a real game designer saying that RMT is not an economy-destroying force. If you can cite, I’d love to read it. I’m not being crass, I really would like to know. But also keep in mind that there are some “scientists” who don’t yet believe in the theory of evolution or global warming.
January 16th, 2007 at 11:26 am
Mox:
“I don’t like RMT, but I’ll be the first to say that the “it’s against the rules” defense is not satisfying in the least. I teach my kids to “question authority,” not to blindly follow the rules.”
Do you teach them to keep their word? That their word has some value? If they give their word that they won’t do something that they then really shouldn’t do it? It’s not that it’s against the rules that is the ethical problem here, it’s that in order to play you state that you will follow those rules. Questioning authority is fine and all, but somewhere people also need to account for their own integrity or suffer the consequences. If your word is no good, then the consequences are much farther reaching than just screwing up games. Once you begin to lie to people - once your word is no good - it will effect every relationship in your life. The people around you will realize that you aren’t trustworthy and they will begin to deal with you as not being trustworthy. I think that this is where people pay for lacking integrity, in the relationships with people they love, or respect, or merely have to deal with on a daily basis. Saying that it’s just a game so having given your word doesn’t mean anything really just shows the value you have for your word ( little or none ) and indicates that you will be suffering for it elsewhere when this becomes apparent to those you lie to. Treating it like it doesn’t mean anything is a justification that liars use to continue with their behavior, but it doesn’t help them with the consequences. It’s not an authority issue, it’s an integrity issue.
Also, do you teach them to follow the rules in sports? On doing their chores? When writing papers for school? In short does questioning authority give them justification for cheating? Most rules are there for a reason. Cheating and chalking it up to questioning authority seems a particularly lame excuse for breaking them. I think that breaking rules before engaging in an in-depth investigation for their existence is more likely a mistake than following them untill you can judge their reason for being in an informed manner. Even after being informed, you still run up against that once you say you will be bound by a rule, breaking it now makes a liar and a cheat out of you. Blowing off the rules you’ve agreed to follow should be something very rarely done, and with great trepidation. It leads to integrity issues which lead to RL problems.
January 16th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
@Sweet:
I think you might have misunderstood me. I meant that the argument “it’s against the rules, that’s why you don’t do it” is intellectually unsatisfying to me. It has the same appeal as “the sky is blue because God made it so.” I am not inclined to cheat, but I’m also not inclined to accept simple answers to complex problems.
But just so we understand each other, no, I do not encourage my children (or myself) to cheat, lie, etc. Questioning authority does not mean to automatically reject authority. It just means that you should know why you’re following the rules that you’re following.
As to your larger point, I mostly agree with you. But there are times when the rules must be broken. Acts of civil disobedience come to mind. I’m not comparing RMT to civil disobedience, I’m just saying that there are times when breaking your word is the nobler thing to do. I don’t have an in-game example of this so maybe my point is moot.
Games are a bit different from society in that many of the decisions we make every day are made for us in the game. In WoW for example (or any other MMO) they didn’t have to write a rule into the ToS that says you may not outright kill someone in your own group, because you’re physically unable to do so. You can question that authority all you want, and even write a white paper on why that rule teh sux0rz, but it’s not so much a law as a physical property of the universe. You might as well rail against gravity. In fact I believe “FUCK GRAVITY” is Abalieno’s next blog post, right after he really really really no shit I’m totally quiting for reals this time quits this time.
But when it comes to things we can control, such as RMT, I think it’s always a good idea to question the status quo. It’s why Bughunter and I can spar over it, and quite frankly I welcome the debate. With the “it’s against the rules” argument, the debate goes away.
For what it’s worth, even if I concluded that RMT is an ok thing to do, I most likely wouldn’t do it anyway. I don’t mind experiencing the content the way it was meant to be experienced, and I’m not competitive enough to really care that other players have access to the phat loot I’ll never have. I never max my toons anyway, so meh.
January 16th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
Mox (everyone eslse: we aren’t fighting we’re just having the final definitive argument about RMT and the game economy. LOL) I think we’re actually agreeing. Look RMT is just trading real money for something in game. That doesn’t mean the in game item was injected willy nilly into the economy. The RMT portion of it doesn’t do anything to the game economy, it’s just changing the gold from one account to another. What you are doing in attaching the gold farmers who supply for RMT to the RMT transaction inseperably. Farming is different than RMT. Farming does screw up the economy. Buy farming is not just done by the RMT suppliers, it’s done by the hardcore players just as much…maybe more. If a game company decided to manufacture gold and sell it in RMT they are messing up the economy too, but it isn’t because of the RMT, it is because they are printing money.
The economy is broken. Always has been, but it isn’t RMTs fault, it is the fault of the farmers, both the hardcore gamers, and the RMT ones.
I’ll support a crusade against RMT as soon as there is some regulation placed on the hardcore players first. Maybe limit it so that they can’t sell anything for more than twice what a vendor would pay. A player may not loot more than x gold worth per day. Regulations that will keep the economy at a reasonable level. Sounds like it would drive them away, and unfortunate, but if you want to fix the economy that is where we start…not with RMT.
I think you were meant to experience phat loot. You deserve to buy epix. You’re a hero of Azeroth and should be a badass. If you don’t happen upon the best loot for your level yourself, you should have some central place to purchase it from someone who happened upon an extra, hey maybe an auction house or something. And the price should be worthy of the item. Unfortunately there is so much gold amongst the people with all the time that they can pay and demand rediculous prices, not just reasonably high ones. So, unfortunately for you and me both, we aren’t experiencing the content the way it was meant to be. We suffer a second/third class citizenship in a game where we are supposed to be the heroes!
January 28th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
First of all, I would like to point out that I was not attempting to wholly design a solution. But I do take exception to your assertion that Sony has tried anything like what I was suggesting. The Sony Exchange Servers is not SOE selling virtual items to its customers. It’s players selling virtual items to each other.
Secondly, a great many objections to company-sponsored RMT are based around how a system like that would be glommed onto existing game designs. That does present significant difficulties, I agree. However, as I stated, I believe that, just as designers always say, RMT problems are a design issue and design changes need to be made in relation to it. The progress here, though, is far too slow based on how long we have been discussing this issue.
Finally, I fail to see any catastrophic consequences to EXPERIMENTING with company-based RMT. Designated servers, etc. It’s not disputable that there is a subset of MMO players, caught up in designed grind, who are willing to pay to move faster through it. It’s not disputable that those who break Terms of Service(s) to supply that demand can be disruptive to “honest” players. It is also my contention that very little is being done on the design side to alleviate these issue. Diku-grind, over and over and over.
Company-sponsored and controlled RMT would take design and implementation adaptations, yes. But many companies could experiment TODAY if they had the willpower. One caveat, of course, being legal issues that I’m not qualified to speak to.
Finally, whether I “should know better” or not is debatable. I’ll be the last person to pretend to be a game industry expert. But I have seen what the current RMT situation does to MMO communities and the costs that companies incur because of it. And up close, too. I think there’s a better way.