Slashdot Games reports that the uber-guild The Syndicate is now sponsored by Thunderbox PC, a high-performance box maker. Like simoniker, I'm not sure exactly what this means practically or portends for the future of guilds.
It's certainly an interesting development, though.
I immediately ran to the EULA (in this case the EQ one (eqlive.station.sony.com/support/customer_service/cs_rules_of_conduct.jsp)) to see if being sponsored was breach of it. From what I can see it seems not.
There is a ‘Fraud’ clause in the Rules of Conduct (which are effectively an addendum to the body of the EULA (eqlive.station.sony.com/support/customer_service/cs_rules_of_conduct.jsp)) which states (at 7) that “Fraud is defined as falsely representing one's intentions to make a gain at another's expense.” A player who is sponsored could fall foul of this but certainly not necessarily so in virtue of being sponsored.
So for me it comes down to how one feels about being with people who are being sponsored (I would say to be in the VW but in most cases I guess they would be there anyway) to be in a VW – the extreme version of this would be an ‘advatar’ (avatar used for the purpose of advertising (someone must have used this term already)).
I guess it add yet another level – not only can we puzzle about whether the person behind the mask is really male / female, young / old etc, we might have to start to think if they are being paid to be there or paid to say what they are saying. I guess the next time some one comes up to me in a VW and straight out asks ‘are you having problems making it bigger’ I’ll know ‘spadvatars’ (spam advatars (oo this is getting ugly)) have arrived.
Ren
Posted by: Ren | Jan 30, 2004 at 12:28
evil_marketing_ren:
Mmmmm spadvatars muhahaha, an account a few macros - yay a new direct marketing channel, wonder if xbox would like to be mentioned more in SWG....
Posted by: Ren | Jan 30, 2004 at 12:31
There was a brief spat during the beta of Shadowbane when it was revealed that one of the ostensibly freelance war reporters they'd been publicizing on their web page ('Guild X's city destroyed by Guild Y!') was actually paid staff.
Games already make efforts to solicit uber guilds, building relationships that are very much quid pro quo. For example, uber guilds get invited to beta tests. And my experiences in beta tests suggest that the resulting test population is not very closely related to those who will be on the margin when the game goes live. Bartle's book suggests this as an explicit strategy - you get the insiders interested in your game, and they then seed the world during the first few weeks of live play, avoiding the empty-world problem.
As guilds become more professional, the costs of this strategy rise:
1. As the gap between uber gamer and average Joe widens, your beta ends up teaching you next to nothing about how the marginal player, the casual guy who looks into your world for a day or two, will react to your game
2. Casual players who do come in find that everything cool about the game is already known (and camped) by the uber types within 48 hours.
3. Increasingly, powergamers are fickle. They don't stick with products. They're also a major source of bad press - they exhaust the game's entertainment possibilities during six months of beta, release to the public all the interesting hidden content within one week of live, then start complaining that the game is boring.
I guess my point is, for an industry that wants to go mainstream, handing over significant portions of the QA process to powergamers is not a good idea. The fact that uber guilds are now acquiring corporate sponsorship indicates that there's a need to re-think some of these relationships. If I want to make a set of golf clubs that every Joe Saturday can play with, do I design them to Tiger Woods' specifications? Probably not.
Posted by: Edward Castronova | Jan 30, 2004 at 13:11
That EQ clause is designed to cover fraud by misrepresentation. Ie: Scamming in general. Whetever the sponsorship entails I don't see them misrepresenting facts to *gain* something at *another's* expense. They would likely be presenting themselves factually correct and making an agreed-upon gain/exchange. There may be a more appropriate clause in there, but that one doesn't seem to be it.
Hmmm... Am I being sponsored by my wife when I play from a community property state? :)
Posted by: DivineShadow | Jan 30, 2004 at 13:19
Just to play devil's advocate with Edward:
1. As the gap between uber gamer and average Joe widens, your beta ends up teaching you next to nothing about how the marginal player, the casual guy who looks into your world for a day or two, will react to your game
Why not think about them as expert players rather than just expert content consumers? A truly advanced player--if asked--should be able to predict more about casual player behavior because he's been one and observed more than most. Tiger Woods should quickly be able to tell a manufacturer the low-level flaws in their club design as well as the finer points.
2. Casual players who do come in find that everything cool about the game is already known (and camped) by the uber types within 48 hours.
Sounds like a design flaw, not implementation. If this is going to be a problem, it will exist regardless of sponsored player presence. Progressive release of content and capability might become more of a staple of MMOGs. Done well, everyone would benefit.
3. Increasingly, powergamers are fickle. They don't stick with products. They're also a major source of bad press - they exhaust the game's entertainment possibilities during six months of beta, release to the public all the interesting hidden content within one week of live, then start complaining that the game is boring.
Hmmm, this one is difficult to counterpoint. Some sort of non-disclosure agreement? Maybe the beta process will change in the future? Designers have long enjoyed free labor from testers, but maybe that won't prove to be so workable in persistent MM games for the reasons you mention...Movie producers screen films on test audiences; but that is content to be consumed. Architects don't invite people to live in their nearly-finished designs to suggest changes; space is interactive and fluid...
Posted by: Euphrosyne | Jan 30, 2004 at 13:52
DivineShadow > That EQ clause is designed to cover fraud by misrepresentation. Ie: Scamming in general. Whetever the sponsorship entails I don't see them misrepresenting facts to *gain* something at *another's* expense. They would likely be presenting themselves factually correct and making an agreed-upon gain/exchange. There may be a more appropriate clause in there, but that one doesn't seem to be it.
I was trying to find a clause that could be at issue in a sponsorship situation not one that was either intended to or likely to. The kind of situation I had in mind was one where a person presented themselves as a regular player whereas some of thier actions were motivated by their relationship with a sponsor e.g. mentioning their product in a conversation, this would be a case of a player was “falsely representing one's intentions”.
My general thrust was that sponsorship in and of itself seems to be within at least the EQ EULA.
ren
Posted by: Ren | Jan 30, 2004 at 16:20
I think this protends the future of collective action in VWs. Next level would be guild members under formal contracts and paid salaries.
Developments like this will force VW developers to gather collectively and create something like Leagues of Free Nations.
Next we'll have serious attempts by diplomats of VWs petitioning to join the United Nations.....
Ren, are there not clauses in EULA or TOS that prohibit commercial usage?
Also, you should go and patent the advatar and spamvatar system!
Frank
Posted by: magicback | Jan 30, 2004 at 21:50
Ren,
"The kind of situation I had in mind was one where a person presented themselves as a regular player whereas some of thier actions were motivated by their relationship with a sponsor e.g. mentioning their product in a conversation, this would be a case of a player was “falsely representing one's intentions”. "
I think I see where you're going...
It's about a player that goes and slays a beast then tells onlookers "Yeah, I beat the Hydo-Demon thanks to my superfast Falcon Southeast pi-muon refrigerated LAN Party box model XY27 with 98 coherent qubits. Got it real cheap at www.pricecurve.com too.." ... Misrepresentation of, or actually having, ulterior motives. That's a pretty hard one to pin down and separate, particularly when words like "Role-Playing", "Fantasy", "Fiction" or just "game" are attached to the service.
Somehow I doubt there's anything that needs to be done about it unless it hurts the service. The first thing that comes to mind is the ingame spamming of for-cash products or services, which I bet would get them booted in a nanosecond.
I'd love to know what the sponsorship entails. Perhaps it is ads on their webpages in exchange for special offers for members and sharing the hosting fees. As far as I can tell on the PC Marker's site linked from The Syndicate's website the PC maker offers discounts to those referred through The Syndicate. Not that different from a regular banner space you might have sold on any other guild's website if you think about it. Actually, the banners you get stuck with on free hosting are already doing this: Paying for your hosting and offering a "discount" to people who click-through.
I guess you can contend that the "great deeds" The Syndicate performs ingame draws people's attention to their website and thus to a commercial venture. Then again that is almost always the case. Heck, lets spin this one around 180 degrees: We can view online games as sponsoring our real-world employers by consuming our money and 'forcing' us to go back to work to pay the next month of suscription for the gaming service! It's a conspiracy, I tell you! :)
"My general thrust was that sponsorship in and of itself seems to be within at least the EQ EULA."
Agreed. I don't recall anything off the top of my head indicating to the contrary on EQ's EULA. Other EULAs are even more strongly worded (EVE and DAoC come to mind) but I still doubt this runs afoul of them. I guess it all depends on this thing generating customer support calls or not.
Posted by: DivineShadow | Jan 31, 2004 at 02:05
On January 30, 2004 06:50 Frank / magicback wrote
>Ren, are there not clauses in EULA or TOS that prohibit commercial usage?
Its probably coz its the weekend but I just can't see the clause that would prevent, say, being paid to play EQ. Maybe someone with keener eyes could point it out.
ren
Posted by: Ren | Jan 31, 2004 at 12:39
Commercial sponsorships for FPS clans has been a reality for several years. E.g., Schroet Kommando, the winners of several big Counter-Strike tournaments, are sponsored by (if memory serves) nVidia. To be sure, FPS gamers are definitely a big target market for 3D board manufacturers.
The novelty isn't that a clan is being sponsored, but that an =MMG= clan is being sponsored.
Posted by: Greg | Feb 08, 2004 at 16:39
Greg, that's right. I probably should've noted that in the original posts.
Funny how the "guild" v. "clan" terminology exists for MMO v. FPS social groups. The two words have different connotations as far as membership qualities. Interesting...
Posted by: greglas | Feb 09, 2004 at 12:30