Sunday, August 27, 2006

Free the WoW 60,000!

Back in July (it seems so long ago...) approximately 60,000 players were banned from World of Warcraft for breaches in the Terms of Use Agreement. In addition, this was reported to have removed over 22 million gold from the economy across all of the game servers. Of course, before there was an MMORPG the size of WoW (6.5 million plus at this time) this would have represented more that a significant percentage of the games entire user base. What I found most interesting is the variety of observations and analyses that came out from the different sites reporting this news. Here are some of the different angles or "lenses" they viewed this through:

www.thisisanotherdimension.com
"Combating virtual hyperinflation."

www.boomtown.net
"Such behaviour not only negatively impacts the economy of a realm, it diminishes the achievements of those who play legitimately." - Blizzard

biz.gamedaily.com
When a player purchases in-game currency using real world money, it causes an imbalance in the economy of the game. Many of the highest priced items sold by non-player characters (NPCs) in FFXI do not exceed 600,000 gil, with a vast majority of these items selling for less than 100,000 gil. However, thanks to RMT, items sold by players typically exceed 1 million gil, with rare items selling for over 20 million gil in some cases.
The high prices of items caused by RMT have forced some players to contribute further to the problem by buying in-game currency with real world money. It also encourages players to use unlicensed third-party software to setup characters that will automatically kill enemies or collect items that can be sold to make more in-game currency. This also has a negative affect on the situation, and forces players who are not using these software programs or contributing to the RMT problem to enjoy the game less and excerpt a great deal of effort to keep up.

G4 TV's "The Feed"
Hopefully, the bannination will help improve the games economy and result in a lot less auction house usry.

So, what's your take on this? Add your comments and create a new spin!

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Charts 'R Us

Came across some nice game currency exchange charts at gameusd.com. They're only for the current month but it's interesting to see short term ups and downs. You also get to see different movement of WOW Gold in terms of USD versus the Euro. If you click on a graph, you'll get price comparisons for conducting an actual purchase of that virtual currency. Here's a WOW Gold graph as of today:

Sunday, August 20, 2006

Microshop Live!

Possibly taking a cue from Project Entropia's playbook (see yesterday's blog below), Microsoft seems to be poised to do their own "virtual consumable" thing through XBOX Live!. One difference in Microsoft's system is that you would pay full price for a game title and in addition to that, purchase consumable items or items that wear out with time for use in the game. Is that something players will accept? It could be argued that this already happend in MMORPGs like WoW where you 1) purchase the game in a box, and 2) pay a monthly online subscription fee and, while not required, many players 3) pay real-world money for in-game items or gold which they receive from other players. Since WoW is currently the biggest single MMORPG ever, maybe Microsoft should expect to thrive. To me the key will be the relevance of the items to achievement and success in the game, especially in rabid head-to-head competition, e.g. PvP or players vying for XBOX Live! status. Missing from Microsoft's plans are any "supported" ways for plays to conduct commerce among themselves. They did however mention the intention to integrate marketplace access within games, such as providing a special vendor within the context of the game world to conduct the external purchases, using money already deposited against your real-world XBOX Live! account. Is this far off? Not really. Microsoft plans to begin deploying this in their next XBOX Live! dashboard release. For more detail see this article from gamesindustry.biz.

Saturday, August 19, 2006

Gotta Give 'Em Credit

Back in May, a number of articles (like this one on gamedev.net) announced the creation of plans for an ATM cash card that can be used in real world ATM machines to extract real dollars in exchange for a player's virtual currency held in the Entropia MMOG.

One characteristic that sets Entropia apart from other MMOG economies is that they have set a fixed exchange rate between their currency and the US dollar. 10 PED (Project Entropia Dollars) are worth 1 USD.

Project Entropia also has the distinction of having players spend large amounts of USD - the current record is a single purchase of $100,000 - on land investments which the players are able to profit from by developing, selling and taxing for services on those lands.

Another interesting note about the game is how the game "charges" players for playing. Besides occasionally creating new land areas and selling the "unreal" estate, essential items in the game wear out through use and have to be repaired, repurchased or upgraded over time, which is done through purchases in dollars.

Kudos to Swedish developer MindArk for creating this innovative environment with the infrastructure and intent to provide an extension of the real world in virtual space.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Stock Trek

Let me start by saying my wife is *not* a gamer. She has played some AOL casual games and once she gets going she can lose trak of time like the rest of us. But such episodes are few and far between. I have *never* seen her get into a game the way she has gotten into G4TV's Spock Market which is a web-based virtual investment game run in conjunction with the airing of G4's "Star Trek 2.0" episodes.
Essentially, players get a starting number of Federation Credits (FDR) and invest these in different characters (e.g. Scotty, Spock, etc.) and icons (Phasers, Communicators, etc.). No more than 50,000 shares of any stock can be owned at a time. Players who know how the fortunes of each character will rise and fall with the Star Trek episodes have an edge on buying low and selling high - because this is mostly what drives the stock prices in this market. A side benefit of adding "Star Trek 2.0" as a myspace friend is that you occasionally recieve investment "tips" prior to key episodes.
Somehow this game has my wife running back and forth between the TV and her computer - logged into the Spock Market - during each episode. She even stays up late to watch the price changes from the West Coast feed. The other day I saw stock prices scribbled on the back of a magazine on the couch. She is really into this game! Maybe there's an untapped demographic for more of this kind of media fusion based economics game. Fortunately, since there is no apparent way to exchange FDR between players we won't seem them up for sale on ebay.

Friday, August 11, 2006

En-Trump-ia

Recently, MindArk revealed the sale prices from the July 2006 public real estate auction for Entropia Universe. The auction featured six newly created resource-rich land areas and ended late July with thirteen properties sold. The total amount of real world money spent on the virtual snow covered mountains, lake homes, rainforests, jungles, riverfront estates and more was $213,784.00!

"The success of the recent Entropia real estate public auction marks the beginning of the virtual property boom," said Jan Welter, CEO of MindArk, developer of Entropia Universe. "In 2005, the Entropia Universe turnover (amount of virtual Project Entropia Dollars converted back into real world currency) was estimated at $165,000,000 US dollars. With the massive virtual business development and economic growth seen in this year within the universe, we saw a need for new land openings and opportunities. Therefore, we created fertile and abundant properties for sale in hopes of facilitating business endeavors and continuing the economic prosperity of Entropia Universe."

Can a certain New York real estate investor with his own reality show be far behind? Imagine a virtual version of The Apprentice where contestants perform in-game tasks and then get to work on projects developing virtual real estate. Could happen...

(FYI, this news came to me by way of biz.gamedaily.com)

I'm baaack!

Thanks to those of you who have been subscribed to this blog! I was off developing a game testing course for Westwood College and finishing up some music projects. Also, I'm on the dev team for a volunteer MMORPG. Check out www.visionsgame.com if you'd like to get involved too. Meanwhile, *much* has been happening in virtual game economics but I won't try to go back and cover everything. However, there should be a bit of a flurry over the next two weeks with important items that I set aside to share. I hope you enjoy it and learn as much as I do.