Contradictions (2)

Here’s another contradiction about virtual worlds. This one is about character ownership.

The left-wing point of view is that you project some of yourself into the virtual world, you build up social capital, and you become part of a community. So the arguments go, this entitles you to ownership of your character and a say in the governance of the virtual world.

The right-wing point of view is that you spent time and effort creating your character and making it what it is, therefore by right it’s yours. So the arguments go, this entitles you to sell it on eBay or wherever.

Let's think about this.

The left-wing point of view seems to suggest that anyone who buys or sells their character has lost any claim that they own it (because they can’t sell their identity or social capital). In other words, if you buy a character it’s no longer yours!

The right-wing point of view seems to suggest that developers shouldn’t be able to sell ready-made characters because they didn’t spent time and effort making them (or, if they did, then the players shouldn’t be able to do it because it was the developers’ same time and effort that made those, too).

Can either wing be correct? If so, how?

Richard

Comments

[Craig Huber]

1.

You see the same types of contradictions in the real world: how are they handled there?

The "left-wing" perspective appears similar to the buying/selling of a privately-held business. There are tangible assets transferred in the sale, of course. However, as a current customer or vendor, you are quite likely to feel a bit uneasy... you're no longer doing business with quite the same entity (at least in your view), even if the letterhead didn't change.

The "right-wing" perspective seems to mirror the buying and selling of "used" houses, instead. The investment of materials and labor in the construction is rarely a direct result of the seller's actions, but how well the seller cared for the property may well influence the price.

I think the review of these analogous situations might somewhat clarify the seeming contradictions, but I must admit, I need to ponder it some more. More later, I hope.

[Alexander Williams]

2.

Obvious answer: You're presenting a false dichotomy. Worse, you've seperated out the least meaningful part of character possession and completely elided the meaty part, which, if present, would make the point that both sides have substance.

To wit: You've priviliged mere creation over play.

That is, the thing that ties a player to the community (note, the PLAYER not the CHARACTER) is the play of the character. It doesn't matter who creates the character or even possessed the character for months. The play of said character by a player binds them to the community by voice, experience, and continuous memory.

The right to buy/sell is a result of possession. And that's all. Its utterly orthagonal to the issue of play or community, though its fair to assume that there may be a lesser tie of experience between a new player and a long-extant character, it doesn't necessarily follow that such a character cannot, or will not, integrate with the community through ongoing play.

Have we gotten so far from understanding what is right in front of our faces that we forget that virtual worlds are for EXPERIENCING?

[Richard Bartle]

3.

Alexander Williams>Obvious answer: You're presenting a false dichotomy.

It's a dichotomy, but it's not false.

Personally, I believe that both these philosophies can be valid for virtual worlds designed for them, but that neither will necessarily work for virtual worlds that aren't. In this regard, I take a god's eye view rather than a left- or right-wing view. That said, my god's eye view allows for both these approaches, therefore I want to understand their philosophies. It seems to me that both of them have problems.

>To wit: You've priviliged mere creation over play.

Where is the play without the creation? Come to that, where is the play in either of the approaches above? One is community and one is commerce.

>That is, the thing that ties a player to the community (note, the PLAYER not the CHARACTER) is the play of the character.

If this were true, then under the left-wing point of view a virtual world developer could legitimately destroy a character for no good reason, because ultimately the social capital rests only in the player, not the player's character.

>The right to buy/sell is a result of possession. And that's all.

This is good news from my point of view, because developers possess all the characters, objects, currency and accounts. I don't think that's what you were arguing, though...

Richard

[Richard Bartle]

4.

By coincidence, here's an extract from a description of an AO character for sale on eBay at the moment:

"Im selling an amazing 220 MA char on atlantean has a very good reputation and clean record has many many ingame friends"

Wanna buy a friend?

Richard

[Mike Sellers]

5.

Yeah Richard, it is a false dichotomy, since you've described your "left wing" and "right wing" alternatives as the two mutually exclusive possibilities. Unfortunately in both you ignore the larger position that has the benefit of being real.

Somehow both of your alternatives result in players being "entitled" to ownership of their characters. This might be interesting in an abstract way if the topic hadn't already been beaten to death in multiple other discussions. But in any real, operative sense players do not own characters created on MMOGs unless and until the operators of the game hand over such ownership. To my knowledge, only one VW, Second Life, has done something like this. You can argue until you're blue in the face about this, but the operators of WoW, EQ, SWG, AC, UO, and the rest (even Second Life) can delete your character, remove your guild, or turn off the entire world at their sole discretion. This stark fact is one many players prefer to ignore; but ultimately there is nothing any player of the game can do about this (beyond senseless ranting, of course).

This means that players are entitled to nothing other than the privilege (not the right) to access the MMOG's servers so long as they abide by the EULA and pay their subscription. And this pretty much puts an end to real discussion about whether players are "entitled" to own their character. Short answer: no, they're not.

There's no contradiction here.

Now it seems you're trying another attack on RMT here given your later comments. So to follow up on what I said above, while no player owns their character, this does not mean they cannot sell (rent, lease, license, etc.) their access to the game world, which is embodied (in most cases) as a character. The player doesn't own the data comprising the character, but, unless the MMOG operator prevents it, they do maintain the ability to open their access-portal -- their character -- to others.

Of course, the ultimate owner of the world and the character, that is, the MMOG operator, retains the final right to prevent such access at their sole discretion. So no ownership has changed hands between players when someone buys a character on EBay; only the ability to access the world in a particular way -- access to which no player is entitled, but a privilege for which every player pays -- has changed hands.

[Dave]

6.

I also think your analysis is flawed.

The "left-wing" arguments are more about personal freedom and democracy than they are about ownership. A liberal would be concerned about the MMO publisher's intrusion into the personal space of the character's player (through the character, who is an extension of the player). The liberal would also want players who share a community - even one operated by a third party that they pay to participate in - to have some say in how it is run.

The "right-wing" arguments are about personal property, but not just within the game. If a person works hard to develop/create something, whether that is a video game character or just a stack of cash, then they deserve it. That person can do whatever they want with the stuff, including buying, selling, or trading it. By the property-rights argument, a character that is bought is just as much the "property" of the player as one that is created because it is bought with money which in itself was the result of hard work.

The flaw in the left-wing argument is that, without some sort of regulation of virtual spaces, MMO operators have no obligation to grant their clients either privacy or democracy. The flaw in the right-wing argument is that the same people typically also believe in the ability of consenting adults to engage in any sort of contract they want, which means that the people who play MMOs should be bound by whatever usage agreements they signed when they started playing. In both cases, players would have to negotiate a different contract - perhaps with some sort of collective bargaining - with the provider.

[darin]

7.

I find this ownership argument amusing, in that that a person/character is treated as something physical.

By using the ownwership concpet presented, I should own the whole world around me because somehow I participate it. I lease a car and upgrade the stereo, and now since I driven it around a lot and put gas in it, and wash it, now suddenly it's mine.

Or another analogy, I go on a cruise ship, meet new friends and see new sites, and particpate in new activities (scuba diving off the reef).

When I'm done on the ship crusie, I don't expect to go on living in the cabin, nor to be able to sell it on ebay. What I have is a memory. And if I meet new friends, then we can all keep in touch on land, after the journey is over. Nor to I expect the passengers to rise and take over the stewardship of the ship.

And if the items themselves in these games don't belong to you, then you can always sell the knowledge. "Become level 50 in 10 easy steps".

[darin]

8.

I find this ownership argument amusing, in that that a person/character is treated as something physical.

By using the ownwership concpet presented, I should own the whole world around me because somehow I participate it. I lease a car and upgrade the stereo, and now since I driven it around a lot and put gas in it, and wash it, now suddenly it's mine.

Or another analogy, I go on a cruise ship, meet new friends and see new sites, and particpate in new activities (scuba diving off the reef).

When I'm done on the ship crusie, I don't expect to go on living in the cabin, nor to be able to sell it on ebay. What I have is a memory. And if I meet new friends, then we can all keep in touch on land, after the journey is over. Nor to I expect the passengers to rise and take over the stewardship of the ship.

And if the items themselves in these games don't belong to you, then you can always sell the knowledge. "Become level 50 in 10 easy steps".

[magicback]

9.

Are we getting into a policial philosophy discussion with references to Hegel, Locke, and other names I can't remember?

I don't claim to well versed in this area, but I think this is where laws will put forth to draw the line on the sand. It could end like a flexible law structure or a 1,000+ pages black and white commandments.

Recall that slavery was once lawful and acceptable mode of possession. In the future, androids and even software AI will win freedom.

Whatever arguement we individual put forward is our own thoughts and idea. It's really what the society put forth in common law that counts.

Are we ready to take a step forward toward the frontier, to stake out civilization, to set the law of the land?

Frank

[Richard Bartle]

10.

Mike Sellers>Somehow both of your alternatives result in players being "entitled" to ownership of their characters.

Well yes. When I said this post was about character ownership, I kinda meant it. These two wings do have much more to them than I described, yes, of course they do; however, I was interested in this particular area because it seems to me that they both have problems when their basic points are thought through.

>in any real, operative sense players do not own characters created on MMOGs unless and until the operators of the game hand over such ownership.

The papers I cited are representative of arguments that say the current state of affairs is unsustainable for reasons I characterised as left- or right-wing. The fact that EULAs hold now is not going to stop TL or Ren or Julian from getting conference papers published on the subject.

>You can argue until you're blue in the face about this, but the operators of WoW, EQ, SWG, AC, UO, and the rest (even Second Life) can delete your character, remove your guild, or turn off the entire world at their sole discretion.

That's right, they can, and that's exactly how I'd like it to be (if that's what they want). However, this prevailing situation is under assault from two directions at the moment, as I described above. It's entirely possible that one or both of these assaults could succeed. I'd prefer that they didn't succeed without the consent of the developers of individual virtual worlds. I've raised a couple of questions concerning places where I think their arguments need further elaboration. If you're only interested in the here and now, OK, fair enough: this discussion is not for you.

>this pretty much puts an end to real discussion about whether players are "entitled" to own their character. Short answer: no, they're not.

Unfortunately, that's "no, they're not at present".

>Now it seems you're trying another attack on RMT here given your later comments.

In a way, yes. I don't see why the anti-RMT people should always be on the defensive...

>Of course, the ultimate owner of the world and the character, that is, the MMOG operator

That is, the real-world government that claims jurisdiction over the MMOG operator?

Look, I accept your arguments here that developers should have total control over their virtual worlds. What I don't accept is your argument that because Reality backs us up at the moment, that means we're always going to have the law (or the social norms, which would be just as tragic to lose) on our side. We may well find individuals or companies challenging the status quo in the courts.

Also, I'm actually interested in this at an intellectual level. If the left-wing argument is valid, then does it mean people lose their right to own characters if they buy them? Or can that philosophy be extended to account for this seeming anomaly? Similarly, does the right-wing fruits-of-own-labour argument really have problems with developers' selling of characters, or can it be finessed?

Richard

[Theo]

11.

I agree with Mike Sellers completely.

[Richard Bartle]

12.

Dave>The flaw in the left-wing argument is that, without some sort of regulation of virtual spaces, MMO operators have no obligation to grant their clients either privacy or democracy.

OK, so let's assume that there are such regulations in place. What would those regulations have to say about when a character can or can not sell a character?

>The flaw in the right-wing argument is that the same people typically also believe in the ability of consenting adults to engage in any sort of contract they want, which means that the people who play MMOs should be bound by whatever usage agreements they signed when they started playing.

So let's assume they used their friends in high places to enforce limits on EULAs such that developers can't prevent free trade. Would those new regulations also prevent developers from selling characters on a fill-in-the-web-page-and-it's-yours basis?

Richard

[Theo]

13.

I wonder what would happen if players were given true legal ownership of their virtual characters and property. How does that impact the game provider's right to shut down the servers? At some point EQLive will stop being profitable to run (heck, servers have already been merged), and Sony will pull the plug, essentially destroying ALL of the virtual characters and property in Norrath. Are they then to be liable for the real value of all those commodities? Will they be forced to keep the servers up and running at a financial loss because it's cheaper than paying tens or hundreds or thousands of dollars per player for the eBay value of their accounts?

If you give a player true ownership, don't they have a stake in the virtual world and a legitimate claim to loss of real financial assets?

Maybe I'm missing the philosophical point?

[Galrahn]

14.

Theo>At some point EQLive will stop being profitable to run (heck, servers have already been merged), and Sony will pull the plug, essentially destroying ALL of the virtual characters and property in Norrath. Are they then to be liable for the real value of all those commodities?

This is why I am one of many people looking forward to the last day of UO. How many item, account, or currency sellers in UO will have a big $0 instantly on their balance sheet when their entire inventory and asset worksheet disappears with the pull of a plug.

I have no doubt those businesses will move on, but I think it is worth noting that there are corporations built on RMT for UO, it will be interesting to watch them go from a value of several thousand dollars to absolutely nothing overnight.

[Mike Sellers]

15.

Richard said: The papers I cited are representative of arguments that say the current state of affairs is unsustainable for reasons I characterised as left- or right-wing. The fact that EULAs hold now is not going to stop TL or Ren or Julian from getting conference papers published on the subject.

True. And their ability to publish papers have little if any impact on the actual state of how real MMOGs are made and operated, much less on how the (much more slow-moving) relevant laws are changed, if they are.

It's entirely possible that someone will create a MMOG where ownership of the characters is sold to the players. I don't know of any (out of several hundred current projects) that plan to take this on, and the legal waters are probably murkier there than in the current case (e.g., who is liable if through an error a game deletes a character that you have previously bought?). So personally I'm not going to hold my breath or speculate as to the consequences if this does happen someday. It's simply too hypothetical.

This may be an instance of an academic vs. industrial divide. People write papers on issues of ownership of characters or property in virtual communities, and most developers roll their eyes. This may be interesting to you and others for intellectual reasons. Okay. For anyone actually building virtual worlds, player ownership of characters remains a non-issue.

[Flatfingers]

16.

This discussion reminds me of Heinlein's I Will Fear No Evil, published in 1970.

It's not his best story, but it's an interesting idea: what if you could transplant your brain into someone else's body?

There are legal questions: If Person A's mind is moved into Person B's body, who owns the stuff that used to belong to Person A? Who owns the stuff that used to belong to Person B?

There are ethical questions: Must promises made by Person B be honored by Person A (who now inhabits Person B's body)? Must Person A's existing promises still be honored?

There are social questions: Do Person B's friends now automatically become Person A's friends? What about Person A's old friends -- are they still Person A's friends even though Person A no longer exists in original form? (Note that these are questions that "transgendered" persons must face as realities, not abstractions.)

Maybe the question we should be asking is what really matters: form? or spirit?

Or is it impossible to separate the two? If so, how can we even talk about "transfers" of personality?

(Note: Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett offered some useful reflections on these kinds of consciousness/existence questions in their book, The Mind's I.)

--Flatfingers

[Theo]

17.

Depends. If one of my guildmates sold his account, I'd feel no obligation to the new driver of his character. Any favors I owe I owe to the player. As far as gameplay, when my group needs a tank of a certain level, I don't necessarily care who's behind the wheel. Yeah, I'd prefer the guy I know and who I'm confident can play well, but if I need a tank, I need a tank.

[Richard Bartle]

18.

Theo>I wonder what would happen if players were given true legal ownership of their virtual characters and property. How does that impact the game provider's right to shut down the servers?

I should imagine that the right wing argument would be along the lines of "Tough. If you buy land next to the sea, sure, you own it, but you can't sue anyone if falls to coastal erosion".

I should imagine that the left win argument would be along the lines of "All reasonable efforts must be made to maintain the community, possibly including giving the database and executable code to the players themselves".

Richard

[Richard Bartle]

19.

Mike Sellers>And their ability to publish papers have little if any impact on the actual state of how real MMOGs are made and operated

Until the State of Play conference, we had no idea how lawmakers were going to jump; we still can't be sure, but if Chinese and Korean courts keep handling cases of virtual theft then it may be that we find out and we don't like it.

>So personally I'm not going to hold my breath or speculate as to the consequences if this does happen someday. It's simply too hypothetical.

OK, well I suppose it doesn't need more than just me and Ted to get all paranoid about it (grin).

>People write papers on issues of ownership of characters or property in virtual communities, and most developers roll their eyes.

I'm sure that's what the US comic book industry did when people raised the ridiculous notion that they could corrupt the young.

>This may be interesting to you and others for intellectual reasons. Okay. For anyone actually building virtual worlds, player ownership of characters remains a non-issue.

Fair enough. No-one's making the pragmatists post in this thread!

Richard

[Monkeysan]

20.

I was under the impression that EULAs haven't been challenged in court yet w/r/t character ownership and closely related issues. If that's the case, I don't see how the world builders are able to so easily dismiss arguments for ownership, since they may end up facing those very arguments in courts.

[Mike Sellers]

21.

I don't see how the world builders are able to so easily dismiss arguments for ownership, since they may end up facing those very arguments in courts.

Because licensing agreements are a well-known and well-tested vehicle in product and legal circles. Despite what many think, they don't own their copies of WoW, you license it from Blizzard. And they have a license -- an ability purchased for a specified period of time under specified conditions -- to access WoW's servers. Blizzard can stop this ability whenever they like according to the terms of the license (the L in EULA). This is all pretty non-controversial, legally speaking.

Now in the US you can sue just about anyone for just about anything. But the ability to sue doesn't mean you'll win. And a suit based on something as clear-cut as an acknowledged and agreed-to license really isn't going to get very far, despite the entitlement and ownership fantasies of some gamers.

[monkeysan]

22.

I understand what you're saying, Mike. I'm not disagreeing with your analysis of licensing agreements. I'm just interested in the possibility that someone will say that because of something about the nature of virtual worlds, etc. (insert your favorite argument here), standard licensing agreements that apply in other situations do not apply in their entirety to some aspects of virtual world property.

And we can't know what that argument might be if we refuse to consider the candidates.

[Jeff Cole]

23.

Richard:

The right-wing point of view is that you spent time and effort creating your character and making it what it is, therefore by right it’s yours. So the arguments go, this entitles you to sell it on eBay or wherever.

And,

The right-wing point of view seems to suggest that developers shouldn’t be able to sell ready-made characters because they didn’t spent time and effort making them (or, if they did, then the players shouldn’t be able to do it because it was the developers’ same time and effort that made those, too).

Hmm ... isn't what you call the right-wing point of view that ownership of a character transfers from the developer to the player based upon the player's investing time and labor (i.e. time and effort vests in the player title to the character)?

How does that point of view suggest that developers should not be able to sell ready-made characters? Until a player has invested time and effort to develop further a ready-made character, the developer retains title to the character and should be able to dispose of it however the developer sees fit.

Jeff Cole

[Hellinar]

24.

A big part of the contradiction comes from ignoring the underlying reality. In a VW , The Player and The Avatar are different entities, with different and sometimes contradictory properties. Imagine a game in which this difference was explicit. Players are represented by an immortal demi-god, only intermittently interested in the affairs of the mortal world. When they wanted to adventure in the world, they would possess an Avatar. The Players history and accomplishments would be the record of the Avatars they had possessed. Designers could then explicitly code the rules for the player possession and release of an Avatar. This ingame definition of just exactly how the player owns the Avatar would I think be much more legally defensible than any EULA.

I’d say of lot of the current spiraling costs of VW are tied to making them unrealistic. That is, not true to their own reality, but forced to be a badly implemented version of this reality. This is an example. Players and their Avatars are different entities with different properties. Explicitly acknowledging that difference would remove much of the contradiction cited above. Long term social relationships would clearly be in the domain of the Player entity. Possession of objects in the world would clearly be a function of an avatar, not the insubstantial player. Explicitly coding the Player/Avatar relationship would implicitly code the player/object relationship. And remove the contradictions of the current muddled state.

[Eric Random]

25.

From reading the papers presented as examples, I do not perceive opposition or contradiction in the arguments offered. All seem skeptical of the legal claim of a company's ability to restrict the transfer of characters, and explain such skepticism in precedence.

Bartle says, "The left-wing point of view seems to suggest that anyone who buys or sells their character has lost any claim that they own it."

On the contrary, my perception from the papers is that such rights priveleged to the creative owner would then be bestowed upon the purchasing owner. Whether the creative owner is extending a freshly created zero-level character, or the purchasing owner is extending a pre-built 50th level character, a character is being extended by the player.

Bartle further says, "The right-wing point of view seems to suggest that developers shouldn’t be able to sell ready-made characters because they didn’t spent time and effort making them."

I disagree that the papers suggest that conclusion. I imagine you are reaching that conclusion because of the basis of value upon the character to be sold is labor, and as such, characters without labor should have no value, and thus ready-made characters should not be sold? Characters have value because of demand. Such demand may be created by desire to avoid labor, but it need not be so in all cases. The papers seem to agree that such rights of sale are bestowed upon players because the labor expended is their -own-, and not the developer's. Again, like the first, a character is being extended by the player.

It seems, though, the papers focus more on that which the company should not be entitled to than on what, specifically, should be entitled to the player, and, thus, allowing such open speculation and perceived opposition in conclusions.

Finally, in response to other posts, I find that such intellectual pursuits of those who write articles on virtual property law -is- important. In the U.S. and Europe, we have yet to experience real legal complication, but I believe, inevitably, we will. Such intellectual pursuits provide a path of understanding to future legal precedence.

Unfortunately, though, some of the papers largely ignore copyright, trademark, and publicity rights over content created by developers and game companies, while arguing those rights for players. Can I write a book based in Tolkien's Middle Earth and expect no legal consequence from those with legal property rights on the Middle Earth world simply because all characters created in the story are my own creation? We are ultimately discussing intellectual property rights, and the rights of companies to authorize use of culturally significant creations, which is hardly new, and hardly isolated to MMORPG's, but nonetheless deal with fictitious, and for our case, virtual, worlds.

[Michael Chui]

26.

Are we ready to take a step forward toward the frontier, to stake out civilization, to set the law of the land?

So I'm not adding anything to the discussion. *ducks* Just wanted to point out that post made me think of Chris Crawford's Dragon Speech... That is.. this one.

I wonder what would happen if players were given true legal ownership of their virtual characters and property. How does that impact the game provider's right to shut down the servers?

*points at Second Life* IANAL, so you can ignore that if you want if it's not true legal ownership... but I think it is. And I don't think it's been a problem.

This may be an instance of an academic vs. industrial divide. People write papers on issues of ownership of characters or property in virtual communities, and most developers roll their eyes. This may be interesting to you and others for intellectual reasons. Okay. For anyone actually building virtual worlds, player ownership of characters remains a non-issue.

Isn't that why Terra Nova is here? To ponder exactly these issues without the muckery of actually designing and developing them? It's not that your point is invalid; it's merely inappropriate. Developers do not, would not, and should not take their cues from Terra Nova. To predict a marketplace development, maybe. To build a VW now? No. That would be insane. Richard's scenario isn't devised to make developers ask, "Hm, should I give my players full legal ownership?" It's to make academics ask, "Should players be given full legal ownership?"

[Michael Chui]

27.

Bah, that's what I get for not refreshing before I post. Sorry.

[OneOfTheOtherNathans]

28.

Since I'm not an expert like everyone else here, I'll just simply ask some questions.

1. Is a virtual world a mechanism by which intellectually property is made. And if so, how it is different then a musical instrument, or a paint-by-numbers kit?

2. At which point does the narrative byproducts of the virtual world cease to become IP of the creator, even if the source material is owned by another person.

Mainly because I see this what the whole issue with character ownership is about. The creator of Star Wars owns everything that has to do with his universe, but a storyline develops on SW:Galaxies and all the direct ties are severed from the Universe and the plot remains, doesn't it then belong to the creator of the storyline regardless of what the EULA says. I know this may come as a shock to most law-abiding citizens, but civic laws can be wrong.

Or to tie in a more topical example, if SWG allowed for realistic playing of their musical instruments, at which point does Lucas stop owning all the ballads coming his fictional instruments.

-Nathan J

[Richard Bartle]

29.

Jeff Cole>isn't what you call the right-wing point of view that ownership of a character transfers from the developer to the player based upon the player's investing time and labor

That could indeed be the case, yes, but I'm still uneasy about it. It presupposes that the developer owns the character in the first place, which seems pretty obviously true, but what's the moral basis for that original ownership claim? If property becomes yours through the application of your time and effort, then it must be that the reason the developer owns the character is that the developer created the character.

Let's look at how this works with buying and selling characters. If player A buys a high-level character from player B, player B's right to sell the character is justified because the effort the player put into creating the character exceeds that of the developer in creating the character in the first place.

But players can sell low-level characters, too. Indeed, it would seem that merely coming out of the character generation system gives you enough of a stake in a character to acquire ownership of it. That being the case, what is it that the developer ever owns of a character?

>How does that point of view suggest that developers should not be able to sell ready-made characters?

Yes, I didn't explain that very well.

It's because from the developer's point of view, it's as easy to create a high-level character as a low-level one. If you buy a high-level character from a developer, you're buying no more effort than you did when you bought a low-level one. You own the character because you paid for it, but you're buying no more effort. When you buy a high-level character from a player, you're buying the same amount of developer effort as if you bought a low-level character, plus the player's effort.

One side of the argument says that developers who create a high-level character have added nothing to what they do in creating a low-level character. They didn't spend time and effort creating them. Because they didn't spend time and effort creating them, they don't own them, therefore they shouldn't be able to sell them.

Ah, says the other side of the argument, but developers clearly do own the characters because they only exist through their development effort. If you spend $30,000,000 creating something, well yes, of course you own it. The difference between a level 0 and a level 100 character in creation effort is zero, because all the effort went into the creative act. Yet doesn't this mean that the player's effort in raising a character from level 0 to level 100 is completely swamped by the developer's stake in the character.

That's what I was getting at.

Richard

[Richard Bartle]

30.

Monkeysan>I'm just interested in the possibility that someone will say that because of something about the nature of virtual worlds, etc. (insert your favorite argument here), standard licensing agreements that apply in other situations do not apply in their entirety to some aspects of virtual world property.

You hit the nail on the head there. That's precisely why we need to look at these things. The "left wing" and "right wing" positions I outlined above are examples of "favourite arguments", although there are others.

Richard

[OneOfTheOtherNathans]

31.

Sooo... let me get this straight. A developer owns all characters "in potentia" (if that's the correct abuse of the right word), regardless if any characters exist at all?

So the concept passes ownership to products of the application?

-Nathan J

[David Wintheiser]

32.

"One side of the argument says that developers who create a high-level character have added nothing to what they do in creating a low-level character. They didn't spend time and effort creating them. Because they didn't spend time and effort creating them, they don't own them, therefore they shouldn't be able to sell them."

Not to be an ass about it, and maybe I'm missing something titanically obvious here, but doesn't this argument also imply that developers can't sell low-level characters, either? After all, they put no more effort into making a low-level character than a high-level one, so if they're not allowed to sell a high-level character, why let them sell a low-level one? And that one logical extension of this is that the developers, in providing characters, provide nothing of tangible value?

It also seems profoundly ironic to me that this 'right-wing' argument relies on an essentially Marxist definition of value - that value accrues from an investment of labor.

Perhaps a better formulation of the 'right-wing' side of the argument would be that the money you spend for access to the world, combined with the value of the time you spend developing your character, invest your 'creation' with a certain value, and that, unless the developer charges an amount for a high-level character that takes both this monetary and time-as-money value into account, the developer is, in effect, short-changing the players who build their characters 'from scratch'? (Yes, 'time-as-money' looks an awful lot like 'labor'; I'm not sure how to really finagle that except to fall back on the appropriate jargon.)

--
David Wintheiser

[David Wintheiser]

33.

"After all, they put no more effort into making a low-level character than a high-level one, so if they're not allowed to sell a high-level character, why let them sell a low-level one? And that one logical extension of this is that the developers, in providing characters, provide nothing of tangible value?"

Another logical extention of this argument, it seems to me, is that existing players would then be able to bar a developer from accepting new accounts - since even selling a starting character to a new player might ultimately disparage the value of existing characters in the game world.

(Sorry for the self-quote - didn't see this one until after posting the last comment.)

--
David Wintheiser

[Flatfingers]

34.

Richard> what is it that the developer ever owns of a character?

Well, what is a "character?"

As a rough list, let's say a character consists of:
* attributes (species, sex, image, etc.)
* abilities (skills, whether learned or innate)
* assets (equipment, clothing, money, etc.)
* autobiography (history of the character's experiences and relationships)

If the sum of these things constitutes a "character," then which of these aspects matter most to those who want to buy or sell a character? Which of these matter most to the developer of the world in which these characters exist?

If the primary ownership interests of developers and players are different, does that offer some hope for letting each party own the aspect(s) of a character that they care most about? Or is a character an indivisible entity whose aspects exist on an all-or-none basis?

To effectively discuss characters-as-property, don't we need to pretty much agree on what a "character" is?

--Flatfingers

[Galrahn]

35.

You raise a good point Flatfingers.

I am the one and only Galrahn in MMOG, and I hope like hell to keep it that way. In every game I play I carry a reputation, a history, and a persona that is my gaming character, defined by words, actions, and what is attributed to me by name.

I have characters in multiple MMOGs, all basically carry the same reputation and in many cases, I carry with me a reputation from a character in one game to the character in the next.

Does this mean I should copyright Galrahn as an MMOG intity, or is my character the images and accounts in each individual game. Somewhere, I have ownership in the character known as Galrahn, but being that I married a lawyer instead of strive to become one, I now have no idea what I own, or if I own anything, even though I feel that I probably should.

Damn good discussion guys.

[Matt Mihaly]

36.

Flatfingers wrote:

As a rough list, let's say a character consists of:
* attributes (species, sex, image, etc.)
* abilities (skills, whether learned or innate)
* assets (equipment, clothing, money, etc.)
* autobiography (history of the character's experiences and relationships)

The first three are all the same thing: database entries. The in-game fiction pretends they're different, but there is no inherent difference between them outside of the game fiction.

--matt

[Galrahn]

37.

Oh i think autobiography goes a lot further than your giving it credit for, reputation means a lot to gamers, and means everything to role-players.

Like I said, I feel a sense of ownership with the reputation, history, experiences, and persona associated with Galrahn in MMOGs. Taking the next step, if I was somehow the owner of that, and that reputation, history, experiences, etc... extended to the games I play, wouldn't that include characters named Galrahn that I played within a game?

Rather, shouldn't it? The achievements, lore, creations, destructions, and all things attributed to my name were created and inacted by me, so why shouldn't I also own the unique character associated with this intellectual property?

I don't know the answer, just asking. As I think about it, it is probably why I have never sold any accounts for any games I have played, it would be like selling my reputation to empower someone else to do things under a name I feel I own.

[Michael Chui]

38.

The first three are all the same thing: database entries.

Depending on the MMOG design, the fourth can also be a set of database entries. This is the character, not the player, we're talking about. If some insane dev recorded (somehow) every interaction and, based on some algorithm, determined relationships between all characters, and classified them... the autobiography is also a set of database entries. For that character.

If the sum of these things constitutes a "character," then which of these aspects matter most to those who want to buy or sell a character? Which of these matter most to the developer of the world in which these characters exist?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say they all matter to both sides of the fence. Due precisely to what Matt said about game fiction, they all matter to both players and devs. Now, if you factor the socializer aspect out, then the autobiography clearly doesn't matter to either. The rest are design-dependent, I'd say.

I don't think they can be split up; if they could, I suspect it would have been done a long time ago. The problem is precisely the fact that they're all being tug-o-wared.

So while I agree that it's very important to define "character", I don't think it'll help with the resolution of this issue.

[Michael Chui]

39.

Incidentally, where would "character name" go?

I've had a friend who sold his old characters for RL money because they had last names (a mechanics blah-blah caused the devs to pull last names from all newcomers). These were newbie characters with effectively no other value to them. (Attributes were changeable, to a degree; abilities were near-zero; assets were minimal; autobiography was non-existent.)

[Richard Bartle]

40.

Flatfingers>To effectively discuss characters-as-property, don't we need to pretty much agree on what a "character" is?

In the eBay-realist world, a character is "that which is sold". When you buy a character, you "get" the data records for the character, but you don't get the reputation (not for long, anyway) and you don't get the social network at all (but you might temporarily get access to it).

Of course, on eBay you don't buy characters anyway, merely the time and effort someone spent creating it (sigh).

Richard

[Richard Bartle]

41.

David Wintheiser>Not doesn't this argument also imply that developers can't sell low-level characters, either?

Yes, it does, or at least ones that have more than 0 XP. Ones that have 0 XP are hot out of the character-generation system but haven't been played, so no effort has been invested in them. Naturally, players who feel they own characters at level 100 also feel they own characters at level 0, so it could be argued that even unplayed, virgin characters shouldn't be sold by the developer.

I was struggling for a way to describe what I meant here, which is why I went for the vague "low level" descriptor. I much prefer Nathan J's "in potentia" term, which captures the concept very well (kinda like the difference between an egg in the womb and an actual baby).

>It also seems profoundly ironic to me that this 'right-wing' argument relies on an essentially Marxist definition of value - that value accrues from an investment of labor.

It's only me who's called it "right wing"; someone more politically literate than me may indeed prefer to call it "communist". As you say, though, both this and your recouching of the right-wing perspective still come down to the same thing: time is money.

I suppose if I were being really cynical I should suggest that today's right-wing argument would be: "it's mine because God says it is"...

Richard

[lewy]

42.

I don't know if either of the arguments presented for player ownership of virtual characters are really "right wing" or "left wing" in the generally recognized political sense, but I see a couple of flaws in both arguments. First off there is the "right wing" argument, which holds that because an individual invests time and effort into building up a character then he has some stake in the character as virtual property.

The interesting thing about this argument is that it fundamentally relies on RMT. What value does a level 50 character have in comparison to a level 1? What intrinsically has "improved"? The only concrete value I can point to is that people are willing to pay more for that character on E-Bay. Similarly, a baseball card is just a worthless scrap of paper except that people are willing to pay money for it.

So far as the investment argument goes, simply making improvements to a property you rent doesn't transfer ownership rights to you. So far as the "left wing" argument goes proposing that some kind of democratic reciprocity apply to online communities is fine as a political philosophy. But a more apt comparison for MMOG's may be the relation beween cable television subscribers and providers. No one is going to seriously argue that simply because you subscribe to HBO that you should have a vote on the board of directors, save by the indirect route of taking your business elsewhere.

[Eric Random]

43.

Bartle>so it could be argued that even unplayed, virgin characters shouldn't be sold by the developer.

I still do not see the connection between the assumptions of the "right wing" opinion and the papers cited.

I think there is confusion on the difference between value bestowed upon an item by a marketplace, rights priveleged to ownership of property, and the rights of a consumer.

Buying and selling are actions applied in a marketplace, and relegated to the dynamics of supply and demand. Buying and selling can imply any price, including $0, and, in its simplest form, involves a transfer of control. Ultimately, this "character" sold is simply a transfer of control of an account - a change in account authority. The legitimacy of character sales lies in the question - does the consumer have the right to request a change in account authority?

From the consumer perspective, it is their belief they are the rightful account authority, to act upon their virtual holdings, control access to their account, discontinue payments, and even delete their account, and thus destroy virtual holdings. This is a -part- of the service provided for a fee, and may be protected under fair business practices (i.e. is the consumer getting what they payed for?). I haven't seen this resolved in the U.S. yet, (seen it filed and withdrawn, not resolved) but I'm sure we will. It is from this that we see the extension of the authority to transfer authority.

This account authority is -part- of the assumption of ownership. The second part is the ability to act upon virtual holdings, which allows for character customization and provides a vehicle for improvement, item acquisition, and trade as well as many other activities. To the company, this ability is considered part of the service, and, further, entertainment. From the consumer, it may be considered effort, and, more importantly, labor. Such virtual holdings, and the ability to act upon them, can be legally protected under legal considerations of fair business practices. Again, though, these protections do not presume the ability to transfer such authority.

Keep in mind, though, the ability to act upon virtual holdings is simply a company sanctioned ability to establish and order the attribution of characteristics, actions and items of company produced content

The conclusions reached in five of the six papers cited focus more on the potential infringement upon the rights of the player in relation to the monopolistic property rights of the company. That is, if the company has sole ownership over virtual holdings, it allows the company to change their service radically without consulting, or providing options to, their customers, and use a customer's account, in any way, such as after service cancellation, which could include sale or usage of character identity in customer service and advertising. The papers seem to question whether it should be legal for a company to be able to do so, and seem to suggest that consumers may be due some legal protection of virtual holdings on the grounds of fair account authority and the -control- of creative authorship in the ordering of actions upon their virtual holdings. Such arguments, though, still may not be applicable to the right to transfer account authority.

In the end, though, it is ultimately the rights bestowed upon the account authority. As such, the managing authority has managing rights over any character or virtual holding of the account, and, as I said earlier, the levels of the characters or market value of the holdings may be irrelevant in these rights. To the account authority, it is -their- character.

The papers, though, do not seem to separate account authority from creative authorship, though, simply, perhaps, because their focus is more on basic protections of authority, and not on transfer of authority. Such a separation, though, leads to conflicts between transferred account authorities and creative authorships; that is, players dictating terms of use of transferred characters under creative licensing. Such an argument is recursive as creative authorship is further created under such licensing. Such absurdity draws one back towards the argument of account authority.

[Matt Mihaly]

44.

Lewy wrote:

The interesting thing about this argument is that it fundamentally relies on RMT. What value does a level 50 character have in comparison to a level 1? What intrinsically has "improved"? The only concrete value I can point to is that people are willing to pay more for that character on E-Bay. Similarly, a baseball card is just a worthless scrap of paper except that people are willing to pay money for it.

I certainly agree with you but remember that the method of calculating value you're using is not universally accepted. As someone pointed out earlier, the (mislabeled) "right wing" argument that Richard mentioned is actually rather Marxist insofar as Marxist labour theory of value contends that value is a result of the expression of labour, not the expression of demand.

--matt

[OneOfTheOtherNathans]

45.

Hmmm… different angle here, correct which is blatantly wrong since I’m not a finance geek.

A share in a corporation is a concept of shared ownership of a company, such that a person may own a fraction of the assets, governing authority, and profits. Now a person doesn’t actually physically own a fraction of all the assets, just their worth. So their fractional interest in the assets are a virtual interest, it exists only within the data. And the shares are sold by the company to the public.

An avatar by contrast is a virtual asset in which is leased by the public, but is still owned by the company. The interest gained by playing the avatar is considered by the public to belong to the customer since it was the customer that invested the time and money into the avatar. But this is being contested by the various companies.

Now I may not be good at comparisons but how it different than stock shares? I understand the lack of granting of dividends. But players often assume a share into decision-making and belief that they own their avatar and virtual possessions. What if avatar was considered a share into the virtual world? Would players get similar rights as stockholders? Would avatar selling be considered form of slavery or identity trafficking?

Here is a whole bunch of what ifs for you.

-Nathan J.

[Richard Bartle]

46.

Nathan J>What if avatar was considered a share into the virtual world? Would players get similar rights as stockholders?

If they did, sports fans would be hammering on the doors of Congress demanding that they get to own a share of their team on the basis of their having been to every home game for the past 5 years.

Richard

[Richard Bartle]

47.

I'm going a bit off-topic here, but does anyone know if any eBay accounts have been sold on eBay? Those reputation stars have gotta be worth something...

Richard

[Galrahn]

48.

Richard,

I know of this happening before, but it doesn't really apply. Often an ebay account worth anything has been running ebay storefronts for awhile. Basically ebay is the means of business transaction for several companies, so the accounts are apart of the business sold.

I recall a popular UO ebay account being sold in early 2000 as apart of the sale of a popular storefront for UO RMT. I believe the site sold for $9,000 at the time and there were several UO accounts and an ebay account included in the purchase.

In the end the new site was used for scamming, and the ebay account was the means used to scam. To clear his name, the player who sold the website exposed the buyer, and as it turned out, a person who got scammed happened to live in the same county in California as the scammer, so he threatened to sue.

I remember it well, because the guy who threatened lawsuit was a guildmate of mine in UO and was also a lawyer fresh out of law school at the time and he hadn't found a job yet, making it his and one of his friends first case after passing the bar.

In the end the scammer settled out of court for $1,000 over a $250 scam. Like most people, I would have been interested to see it make court, although it would have cost the defendent a lot of money in court cost had he not settled. There used to be alot of info about this on my guilds old UO website, but that website is long gone.

[Eric Random]

49.

Nathan J.> Now I may not be good at comparisons but how it different than stock shares?

Legal rights granted to ownership in a share is explicit, and dictated by the company offering the share with specific terms mandated by Federal and State regulation which protect both investor and corporate rights. The ability to sell the share, ie. transfer authority, is explicitly granted by the corporation.

The purchase of account authority on a MMORPG is considered a service, like account authority in Internet access or email. There is no explicit grant in rights to transfer authority. There may actually be explicit terms which prohibit transfer. This is not considered ownership; it is called membership.

A business model which incorporates such an idea of the purchase of a share, and thus the vote in the future direction of a MMORPG, would be fascinating. I would contend that such a system would emerge through consumer demand, though, rather than legislative or judicial mandate. That is a good analogy of a creative commons argument as well, as such an argument supports that we all own a share in our collective culture. That is perhaps the best analogy towards what the papers cited allude to; not necessarily the ability to transfer such a share, but the ability to have some say in the future of the collective entity. But that is, perhaps, where the analogy ends.

[OneOfTheOtherNathans]

50.

Actually wouldn't the sports analogy of shareholder's rights be the players of the game, and not the spectators?

Are there any MMO Player Unions?

-Nathan J.

[Eric Random]

51.

Bartle>If they did, sports fans would be hammering on the doors of Congress demanding that they get to own a share of their team on the basis of their having been to every home game for the past 5 years.

I refer you to the many lawsuits of fans and the City of Cleveland against Art Modell in 1995-1996, then owner of the Cleveland Browns concerning the future direction of the team, specifically its move to Baltimore. It became such a problem that Ohio Representative Louis Stokes and Senator John Glenn introduced the Fans Rights Act of 1995. Although Cleveland could not keep the team from moving, through a compromise it acquired the right to keep the name "Browns" to name their future team.

[Eric Random]

52.

NathanJ>Actually wouldn't the sports analogy of shareholder's rights be the players of the game

I would agree that the analogy is not complete, in that players of MMORPGs are participants, whereas the fans of sports are spectators. I believe Richard is basing his analogy on the consumption of entertainment though. In sports, the players are payed for their participation, whereas in MMORPG's, the players are paying to participate. Further, in sports, players are considered members of s sports club and are not considered owners. Unions provide collective negotiating and legal influence and manage contractual obligations between employers and employees. This is ultimately influence, and not ownership.

[Thabor]

53.

What I don't accept is your argument that because Reality backs us up at the moment, that means we're always going to have the law (or the social norms, which would be just as tragic to lose) on our side. We may well find individuals or companies challenging the status quo in the courts.

That is exactly the point of view that may allow you to take some control over a situation with some parallels to travails in recording industry.

Trading copyrighted material online is against the "EULA" as well. That doesn't mean the industry hasn't had to make changes to deal with it.

The left-wing point of view seems to suggest that anyone who buys or sells their character has lost any claim that they own it (because they can’t sell their identity or social capital). In other words, if you buy a character it’s no longer yours!

Are you sure you can't sell identity and social captial? Walking into a social network with pre-existing links may be preferable to having no links. Similar to a web-site that undergoes a significant content change..

[magicback]

54.

Following on the tread of the conversation so far let me extend the possibility of radical government action to set the Laws of Play.

How about the concept of "nationalizing" MMO space? How about demanding everyone get a secured and fully traceable online Identify? How about taxation of avatar-hood?

I think the discussion with the polarity of right and left on a larger scale could lead to the above situation.

If not at least the mutualization of MMO space is a possibility.

Are we ready to politicize MMO space?

[splok]

55.

While thinking about this, I couldn't get an analogy to the recording industry out of my head (albeit a convoluted analogy, but still).

Let’s say a recording company invests in creating a catalog of albums. Some of these albums are hits and command a high price, and some of them can't even be given away. However, once an album is in the catalog, the hit albums and the worthless albums have an identical cost to replicate, and that cost is very small per unit. Furthermore, they can be produced quickly enough and cheaply enough that even the hit albums could easily be produced in quantities far exceeding sales, even if it were free.

Now, compare this to a game developer who invests in the creation of a virtual world. The investment allows him to create characters of very high value and practically no value with equal (and very minimal) effort. How is this different from the record company? And how much closer does the analogy get when the record companies are selling album downloads instead of physical media?

Now consider the situation if the recording company were to create a subscription based proprietary online system that allowed people to use their library to create mixes and even new music using the existing catalog as well as tools provided by the system. People would be able to create their own albums and trade them with each other, but the format would only allow playback through the record company's system (forget for a moment about being able to export sound in any number of ways).

Isn't this very much the same situation as a virtual world? Wouldn't people using this service have the logical (if not the legal) right to sell their albums to other users? They invested time into creating them, and skilled users would be able to create better albums. Isn't a person's applied time and skill a tangible asset? But at the same time, what would happen if the recording company shut the service down? Would there be the same talk of user rights? I don't think there would be.

Also, consider the left wing theory in this situation. Would a specific album that a user created actually gain its own identity and social capital? Of course not! Those things would be accumulated by the player, not the creation, and since these are attached to the user, these things cannot actually be sold (although, I suppose things such as celebrity endorsements could be considered 'renting' these things, heh).

Likewise, I think the left wing theory applies but only the actual user, not the avatar. I would propose that an avatar does not 'own' its identity or its social capital. These are owned by the user. If the user sells the avatar, depending on the situation, the user may or may not retain these attributes. In some situations a user might have sufficient identity and social capital to change avatars or stop playing entirely and still maintain his status. In others, the player might be reviled for selling an avatar. Either way, its the user's influence and status that are affected, not the avatar's. Of course, in many cases, it might not be common knowledge that an avatar has changed ownership, but even if the change is never made public, over time the extent to which the new user is undeserving of the previous user's status will erode said status to its appropriate level.

The right wing theory seems to be much more in line with considering the creation as a product. Someone invests their time and effort and skill into creating something, be it an album on the record company's system or a character in a developers virtual world, and they can logically expect to be able to sell the product of their investment. Additionally, the record company or the developer has the logical expectation of being able to do the same by selling albums or characters if they desire. Certainly, the key difference is, the recording company and the developer have the power to flood and destroy the market. The market is theirs to ruin, but it would be counterproductive for either to do so. Everyone knows what happens to the value of currency when governments decide to simply print more of it.

Of course, the ethics of the developer selling characters is highly debatable, but no one would debate the ethics of the record company in doing the same thing. I think it’s not a question of ethics though but one of gaming integrity, and issues of gaming integrity should be played out in the market.

[Richard Bartle]

56.

Thabor>Are you sure you can't sell identity and social captial? Walking into a social network with pre-existing links may be preferable to having no links. Similar to a web-site that undergoes a significant content change..

I'm not suggesting that you "can't" sell it. What I'm suggesting is that if you take the left-wing point of view, you only own it because you have a piece of your identity invested in it; selling it implies you don't have any identity component in the character, therefore you didn't own it to sell it in the first place.

Richard

[Richard Bartle]

57.

Galrahn>In the end the new site was used for scamming, and the ebay account was the means used to scam.

Well yes, scamming is the most likely reason to buy an account. Then again, people may decide that they want to set up an eBay shop, feel that it won't be successful if they don't have a high, power-seller reputation, so buy such an account from someone who could recreate their own fairly easily. More interestingly, they could approach eBay and ask to buy a brand new account that was initialised to have a high reputation.

Richard

[Richard Bartle]

58.

splok>Someone invests their time and effort and skill into creating something, be it an album on the record company's system or a character in a developers virtual world, and they can logically expect to be able to sell the product of their investment.

Not if they were told up front that they were only given access to the service on the condition they didn't sell the product of their investment.

Also, you have to own the starting materials. If I go into a farmer's field and start making hundreds of corn dollies for sale at craft fairs, do I own them because they're the fruits of my labour? Or does the farmer own them because I stole their corn to make the dollies?

>I think it’s not a question of ethics though but one of gaming integrity, and issues of gaming integrity should be played out in the market.

It is a question of gaming integrity, I agree, but how does this get played out in the market? If I had the kind of money Bill Gates has, how could I find myself a virtual world just like WoW or EQ that had no trade in characters?

Richard

[splok]

59.

Bartle>Not if they were told up front that they were only given access to the service on the condition they didn't sell the product of their investment.

Maybe my phrasing was bad there. If people are told that they can't profit from their efforts, then they can't expect to be allowed to do so. However, they know that their efforts have some value and that things with value can be sold, even if it is prohibited. I suppose it would be more correct to say that they could logically expect someone to be willing to buy, if the product were offered.

Bartle>Also, you have to own the starting materials. If I go into a farmer's field and start making hundreds of corn dollies for sale at craft fairs, do I own them because they're the fruits of my labor? Or does the farmer own them because I stole their corn to make the dollies?

I think I would view the product of your time and efforts more as a service. You may not own the corn, but you do own the time and effort invested in arranging it. To make the analogy comparable though, instead of selling the dollies at a craft fair, you would be selling them to other people who pay the farmer a fee to occupy his farm. Both you and the other people would only be able (able, as in "physically possible," not as in "given permission") to use the dollies while on the farm, and the corn would have no other purpose than to have dollies made of it. In this context it would be impossible to "steal" the dollies. Your time and efforts are your product.

Bartle>It is a question of gaming integrity, I agree, but how does this get played out in the market? If I had the kind of money Bill Gates has, how could I find myself a virtual world just like WoW or EQ that had no trade in characters?

Integrity can be hard to discuss except in extreme examples since everyone has a somewhat different point of view, but putting aside the specifics, I think everyone places some level importance on the integrity of the games they play. If a player perceives the integrity of a certain game to be sufficiently lacking, then that player won't bother playing it (although the intrinsic barriers to competition in mmo's often allows that integrity level to slide far more than it could otherwise). Of course, the willingness of players to tolerate a given level of integrity will vary significantly from person to person, so these different levels (and the accompanying abilities/restrictions) function as a marketing as well.

I'm not sure I understand the second question. Wouldn't someone with more money be more likely to want a game where money could be used for advancement?

[Nynnisiva]

60.

" Not if they were told up front that they
were only given access to the service on the
condition they didn't sell the product of
their investment. "

I think this statement is the key. You could argue left wing and right wing and this and that all night, as far as what establishes the value of a character, an avatar, a username and password, etc. The bottom line is that many MMOs will include in their user-agreements that the selling of accounts is against their policy and not selling said account is a requirement to be allowed to play the game in the first place.

Thats the rules.

Now, despite that these are the rules, people do it anyway, the ebaying of characters. If I was a game developer, and saw this sort of thing going on, I'd simply nuke the people doing it, they're breaking the terms of service, breaking the contract, a contract THEY agreed with in order to be permitted to create these characters and store them on my servers, so ...goodbye.

-------------------------------------------------
Now, the question remains, why are game developers against this? Does it damage the integrity of the game? Does it really? I mean someone, at some point, at some time, had to level that character from level 1 to whatever the maximum level was. So lets say someone decides to pay them ..example...500$ for having done the "work" for them. It doesnt mean that the work was never done. The chararacter didn't come out of a magical box at the max level. Someone put in their sweat. Just not the person controlling them now. The only real problem as far as I've seen, is that said purchaser is often a clueless newbie when it comes to the game and veteran players catch on to it immediately. And then they put said person on their ignore lists and get on with their lives, while the purchaser of the account clumsily learns the game. Or whatever. Fine. Still, no one's really being hurt by it.

But back to the identity thing -- I don't think I could bear the thought of having someone else controlling *my* character, shes my creation, and I have built her up over a period of time. I almost feel hurt when I message someone who maybe hasnt been online in a while, only to find out that this is the accounts "new owner." But we move on. You can sell the character, the items they have accumulated, and the level they have attained, but you cannot sell the driving force of personality that acquired all of these things. That doesn't get embedded into the code.

Still though, why would a game developer have an issue with this? Instead of losing a customer, the account gets reactivated and continued to be paid and played. From the standpoint of the Devs, they really don't have anything to lose by allowing it.

---- Well, the honest answer is many players ( other customers ) think of it as cheating or unfair for someone to purchase with dollars something that can be acquired by spending a lot of "time" in the game. But isnt that just economics? I mean, I don't want to clean my house, so I hire a maid. Time becomes money, money becomes time. Its a service. Id call it cheating, if the character was spat out of the noob zone being a fully equipped level 50, or 100, or whatever. But not if someone had to go through the effort. The effort is where the value is.

[Matt Mihaly]

61.

Richard wrote:

It is a question of gaming integrity, I agree, but how does this get played out in the market? If I had the kind of money Bill Gates has, how could I find myself a virtual world just like WoW or EQ that had no trade in characters?

You can't, but then, that holds true for a nearly infinite range of potential games. I find myself unable to find a virtual world just like WoW but that doesn't use the color green, for instance, or a world just like EQ but that has no dragons.
--matt

[Flatfingers]

62.

Nynnisiva> despite that these are the rules, people do it anyway, the ebaying of characters. If I was a game developer, and saw this sort of thing going on, I'd simply nuke the people doing it

There's a related point that bears repeating here: failure to enforce any individual point of a contract weakens every other point.

In other words, if you let some players slide on selling characters or gear on eBay (in direct violation of one of the terms you laid down in your End User License Agreement), why should any players respect any of the other terms of the contract? Failure to enforce any one term weakens respect for all terms.

IANAL, so there's probably a recognized legal term for this principle/effect. But I like to think of it as an application of the "Horton rule": Say only what you mean, and mean everything you say.

--Flatfingers

[Nynnisiva]

63.

Flatfinger - Exactly
Now it has been mentioned that how are they to keep from prosecuting the innocent ?
Well, as the developer of a game, if you are going to have rules like this in your code of conduct, I think you should intend to enforce them and implement a system 'at the release of the game' that would allow you to discern if an account is being sold, i.e. IP tracking cross referenced with the changing of billing information and/or password would be a pretty good indication. Not absolute proof by any means, but if you are going to say that "failure to follow the rules gets you banned"" ; you had better have a way to catch people who aren't following the rules, and if you dont, then if players dont take you seriously you have only yourself to blame.

[greglas]

64.

Richard> Also, you have to own the starting materials. If I go into a farmer's field and start making hundreds of corn dollies for sale at craft fairs, do I own them because they're the fruits of my labour? Or does the farmer own them because I stole their corn to make the dollies?

Corn dollies, huh? Neat! Since I'm feeling kind of Guam today, let's guess what might happen with those corn dollies under the law of accession as it is codified in Title 19, Chapter 33 of the Civil Code of Guam:

§33104. Uniting material and workmanship. If one makes a thing from materials belonging to another, the latter may claim the thing on reimbursing the value of the workmanship, unless the value of the workmanship exceeds the value of the materials, in which case the thing belongs to the maker, on reimbursing the value of the materials.

More here on accession in Guam (great stuff): http://www.guamattorneygeneral.com/gca/19gc033.pdf

So I guess in Guam, it comes down to the question of whether your hypothetical corn dollies are more or less expensive than the husks of corn from whence they came. Probably more expensive, I'd wager. Looks like they belong to the corn dolly maker, sans the cost of the material, which goes to the farmer.

----------

But re the larger points you're making -- I don't think there's a right wing and a left wing issue, but I do think the devs are outflanked in a way. They're outflanked not by academic papers, but by the normal power of the state to make the rules by which society operates, if it chooses to do so. Politics indeed -- but it is hard to guess which flavor of politics, if any, will be concerned with attempting to improve the way virtual worlds operate.

[OneOfTheOtherNathans]

65.

Comparing players, citizenship, and stockholders.

Players and Avatars aren’t synonymous since an Avatar is a derivative of the player. And what truly represents an avatar? Is a unique name all that is required create an avatar, or does it require a narrative background, unique playing style, or a characterization developed over a period of time.

Despite which is outlined in the various contracts and End-User Licensing Agreements, does the player input into the virtual classify as a form of social investment which could be consider a virtual asset. Virtual assets we know to have real world value, so avatars could be considered an investment which could be bought, traded, and sold. The various markets on the internet, conducting real money trades display this understanding.

In the world of sports, players are bought, traded, and sold between the various teams. This implies that players themselves are an asset that has real world value. Player unions have developed to insure that fair practices in these areas and others are enforced. The main difference between a sports player and a videogame player is that a sports player is only a participant of the game, where as the videogame player is both the audience and a participant.

So players and avatars can be considered assets, whether virtual or real, with a real world value.

A group of individuals that act together under unique identity and a set of laws or behaviors, results that group being a unique and separate entity. Each individual granted a share into the governing authority of the group. Usually the interest of membership in a society can not be transferred, sold, or bought. This allows for a level of security and equality that each individual shares.

Societies in the real world are often created under the authority of a greater power, usually the government. In a virtual world guilds are created under the authority of the game developers the ultimate authority within the virtual world. In the real world the government is held accountable by its members (define as the voting public). In a virtual world the game developers are accountable to only themselves, and the market. When members of group feel that they are being exploited by the governing powers they form unions which lobby for better treatment.

Videogame players feel that because they pay a form of taxes, and obey a set of rules that they should be allowed a voice and share in the decision making process. Subscription fees are just a form of recurring monthly taxes for the virtual world, but in real world money. Since the set of rules are for the real world player and not the avatar, the player feels that they should have part in the creation of these rules, since they are participant of the group. In the world of sports, player unions have similar powers. And I have heard of MMO guilds doing virtual protests within the game worlds.

So players currently demand some share of the decision-making authority, or at least have the game developers be held accountable to them.

Last bit is a little tricky since there are only two MMO developer groups that authorize real world transfers. The first is Second Life in which the virtual currency and the real world currency can be exchanged, thus linking the two economies. The other is Sony Online Entertainment which has set up a market to facilitate the trading of virtual assets for real money. Both open the option of allowing a player producing profit from the virtual world. Since the developer owns all the virtual assets in the game world, the sale of any could be considered in authorizing a share of the profits of the developers.

So players are allowed a share of profits created by the virtual world.

Which bring me back to my original query? Is a player considered the equivalent of a stockholder, in terms of rights, benefits, and responsibilities?

-Nathan J.

[magicback]

66.

I say: "what Greg said".

Similar to the way the issue of Video Game Violence is handled once it hits "mainstream", Avatarhood & RMT will too.

I'm still staggered by the news of PartyPoker's IPO in the London Stock Exchange. If this is real, then it would be bigger than most video game companies and half the market value of EA.

The implication is that this will attact government interest and then they will rule on this.

[Richard Bartle]

67.

splok>I think I would view the product of your time and efforts more as a service.

This is far more viable an explanation as far as I'm concerned, at least insofar as buying and selling virtual objects is concerned. If I want to buy a Hat of Doom for my character, I can do that without making any real-world claims of ownership. I pay you for the service of transferring a Hat of Doom from your character's inventory to my character's inventory. At no point in that exchange does either of us make any claim that we "own" the Hat of Doom.

This doesn't work for character transfers, though. There, I'm paying you to lie to the developers in order to get them to transfer the character from your account to my account. It's a service, but a morally inexcusable one.

>You may not own the corn, but you do own the time and effort invested in arranging it.

Well, you "spent" the time and effort to create it, but that doesn't mean you own what you spent that time and effort creating.

>I'm not sure I understand the second question. Wouldn't someone with more money be more likely to want a game where money could be used for advancement?

Not necessarily. Bill Gates might really enjoy playing DAoC and like the fact that no-one knows who he is. He might feel great going up levels and healing people or whatever. He may resent other people buying status even more, because although he can afford to buy the entire game if he wants, he prefers it to keep its integrity. He may regard RMT as cheating.

If "issues of gaming integrity should be played out in the free market", then logically someone who wants to play a game with complete gaming integrity should be able to do so. It might cost them more than a game that has no gaming integrity, but if it were just the free market making the decision it should nevertheless be possible. However, even someone as rich as Bill Gates couldn't buy a position in such a game, because some commodifier can always come along anyway. Yes, the game design can be changed to make commodification less attractive, but that might spoil the game, too.

Basically, you can't say that the free market will find a solution because it's the free market that's causing the problem.

Richard

[Richard Bartle]

68.

Nynnisiva>Now, the question remains, why are game developers against this? Does it damage the integrity of the game? Does it really?

If it didn't, developers would be happy to give players a replicator that allowed them to create any object they wanted whenever they wanted it. Why pay for it? If you want it, and it doesn't damage the integrity of the game for you to get it without having jumped through any gameplay hoops for it, why not just let them have it for free?

>I mean someone, at some point, at some time, had to level that character from level 1 to whatever the maximum level was. So lets say someone decides to pay them ..example...500$ for having done the "work" for them. It doesnt mean that the work was never done.

This brings us right back to my original question. Using this argument, does that mean developers can't sell the identical character for $500? After all, no-one has done the work for that, it's just been generated by a program from filling in a web page form. What do you think?

Richard

[Richard Bartle]

69.

greglas>So I guess in Guam, it comes down to the question of whether your hypothetical corn dollies are more or less expensive than the husks of corn from whence they came.

If those husks grew on the land where the farmer's dead wife's ashes were scattered, how much would they be worth then? To anyone but the farmer, almost nothing; to the farmer, more than anything.

It must be great being a famous artist in Guam. Is there a shack occupying land that some big corporation wants to own but the shack's owner won't sell? Just pay someone whose art sells for more than the price of a shack, and let them paint the walls in the night. Voila! An effective means for compulsory purchase.

>Probably more expensive, I'd wager. Looks like they belong to the corn dolly maker, sans the cost of the material, which goes to the farmer.

So if you made them on the stalks but didn't actually cut them, the farmer would have to be very careful driving the combine harvester otherwise they might cut the dollies down and wind up owing you a fortune - even if they didn't know you'd made them there?

Those lawyers in Guam must be busy an awaful lot of the time.

Richard

[Richard Bartle]

70.

Hmm, having now had time to read the Guam laws you pointed us at, it seems most of what we've been talking about wouldn't apply:

"§33107. Wilful trespassers. The foregoing sections of this Chapter are not applicable to cases in which one wilfully uses the materials of another without his consent; but, in such cases, the product belongs to the owner of the materials, if its identity can be traced."

Richard

[greglas]

71.

Richard> If those husks grew on the land where the farmer's dead wife's ashes were scattered, how much would they be worth then? To anyone but the farmer, almost nothing; to the farmer, more than anything.

My bet is that they'd use fair market value in Guam, so the farmer would be out of luck wrt his sentimental attachment to the corn husks.

Richard> Just pay someone whose art sells for more than the price of a shack, and let them paint the walls in the night. Voila! An effective means for compulsory purchase.

Well, okay... mea culpa... so I bent your hypo a bit. You had the corn being "stolen" from the farmer whereas I was thinking of the farmer simply possessing legal title to the material. Still, I think the non-trespassory situation is the better analogy in this case, right?

Anyway, if the corn acquisition was, as you require, criminal and trespassory, it seems in Guam that this would probably prevent the dolly maker from owning the dollies. See:

"§33107. Wilful trespassers. The foregoing sections of this Chapter are not applicable to cases in which one wilfully uses the materials of another without his consent; but, in such cases, the product belongs to the owner of the materials, if its identity can be traced."

Again, do you really think VWs present a situation where users are breaking into the homes and drawing on their walls without their permission? That sounds like hacking into a closed system to me, not paying money to participate in a social game.

Isn't the better analogy this one: If you invite a famous artist into your home and the artist, believing you won't object, draws a fabulous $1000 picture on a 2-penny page of your open notebook while waiting for you to make coffee, who has the better claim to ownership of that page, you or the artist? I think the artist has the better argument, presuming *no prior contract* exists. Of course, this makes the analogy inapplicable to the VW situation where the EULA rules, but I think it adequately explains why the people you're calling left and right both think there's something a little suspect about the way the EULA is working, in light of normal expecations. I've said it before, but I'll say it again -- the EULA and freedom to contract are the dev's best argument as to why this is okay.

However, the state is a bit bigger than the devs, so who knows what will happen in the long run. My guess, though, and it's just a guess, is that if the state were really to turn its attention to this stuff, the players and the devs would probably have more in common with each other than they would have with the state.

p.s. With regard to your wall situation--owning the wall would not mean owning the land beneath the walls, btw, so it probably isn't a good strategy for real property acquisition, even if it wasn't trespassory.

[greglas]

72.

Richard> Hmm, having now had time to read the Guam laws you pointed us at, it seems most of what we've been talking about wouldn't apply:

Ah, you beat me to it by a minute -- nice work. :-)

[splok]

73.

Bartle> I pay you for the service of transferring a Hat of Doom from your character's inventory to my character's inventory.

Bartle> This doesn't work for character transfers, though. There, I'm paying you to lie to the developers in order to get them to transfer the character from your account to my account.

The fact that it something against the rules to do something doesn't keep people from wanting to do it and even from feeling entitled to do it. Wouldn't it be the same effective situation if you paid someone to come to your house, sit at your computer, and camp the Hat of Doom or level your character for you? In that situation, I would be paid for my time and efforts, but no transfer of in game items or characters would take place. The result would be the same. (I realize that it's also probably against the rules to have someone else play your account, but I think that would be seen as much less morally inexcusable... most people wouldn't berate someone for letting a roommate finish up a raid cr because they had to go to work or whatever, and that breaks the same rule.)

Bartle> logically someone who wants to play a game with complete gaming integrity should be able to do so. ... Basically, you can't say that the free market will find a solution because it's the free market that's causing the problem.

I see your point now, and I agree, money would not be able to buy (in any reasonable sense) a particular level of integrity in a well established game, assuming the game doesn't meet that level. However, I imagine that games will eventually develop that cater to players who desire different levels of integrity. I believe there is certainly a market for games which approve of RMT, and there is also a market for games which forbid RMT (and actually mean it).

Of course, it may be impossible to completely stop RMT (for example, you can't realistically prevent me from hiring someone to come to my house and play for me), but you could certainly design the game in such a manner that it would tremendously hinder it. More stringent measures could be put in place to catch and punish those that engage in the practice as well. Would it be more of a hassle to the players? Sure, but that all plays into how much importance players place on that level of integrity.

If enough players value integrity highly enough, then games will be made to cater to this market.

[Richard Bartle]

74.

splok>Wouldn't it be the same effective situation if you paid someone to come to your house, sit at your computer, and camp the Hat of Doom or level your character for you?

Well, in the sense that you don't get to own the Hat of Doom or the character but you do get the use of a Hat of Doom or a higher-level character than you had before, yes.

>In that situation, I would be paid for my time and efforts, but no transfer of in game items or characters would take place. The result would be the same.

Almost, but not quite. If you own the Hat of Doom then the nine tenths of the law that concerns property is suddenly on your side. If your character owns the Hat of Doom, this law is on the developer's side (because they own your character).

Paying someone to level up your character is probably bad for the integrity of most games, but it's not going to lead to the developer getting sued for nerfing your character class. If you legally own your character, it could.

>I believe there is certainly a market for games which approve of RMT, and there is also a market for games which forbid RMT (and actually mean it).

Me too. The latter would have a problem, however, if the former were used as precedent to say that players of the latter had ownership title over their virtual objects, though.

>Of course, it may be impossible to completely stop RMT, but you could certainly design the game in such a manner that it would tremendously hinder it.

Yes, but I shouldn't have to, any more than a book publisher should have to publish a novel a chapter at a time to stop people from rushing off and reprinting it the moment it was published (which is what used to happen in Dickensian times before the copyright laws came in). The game design shouldn't have to be compromised just to stop people from working it instead of playing it.

>More stringent measures could be put in place to catch and punish those that engage in the practice as well.

This is where more could be done, I agree. Stopping account transfers (which is fairly easy as it requires the participation of the developer) would cut this at a stroke.

Richard

[Richard Bartle]

75.

greglas>Again, do you really think VWs present a situation where users are breaking into the homes and drawing on their walls without their permission?

It's more like inviting people into homes to draw on your walls, while telling them up front that they don't get to own the walls or the artwork, and by the way you may decide to wash their stuff off on a whim anyway.

>Isn't the better analogy this one: If you invite a famous artist into your home and the artist, believing you won't object, draws a fabulous $1000 picture on a 2-penny page of your open notebook while waiting for you to make coffee, who has the better claim to ownership of that page, you or the artist? I think the artist has the better argument, presuming *no prior contract* exists.

I'd say that I owned it. If the artist had said, "can I just have a piece of paper to draw something on?" then sure, the artist would get to keep it. If the artists didn't ask, though, I'd feel I owned the artwork even if the artist fished the paper out of my waste paper basket. If it's mine and I didn't say the artist could have it, that makes it still mine irrespective of how much it's now worth. The artist could perhaps claim copyright over the work of art, but even then I'd want to be able to override that if it prevented me from making use of the object the artist had defaced (eg. drawing in lipstick on my glasses (if I wore glasses)).

>I've said it before, but I'll say it again -- the EULA and freedom to contract are the dev's best argument as to why this is okay.

I agree, but I think the real problem is that the law doesn't recognise play spaces as being distinct from real life. There's no contract when kids play with Lego, but if anyone makes anything out of my Lego then no matter how long it took them, it's my Lego and I want those pieces back, dammit!

>With regard to your wall situation--owning the wall would not mean owning the land beneath the walls, btw, so it probably isn't a good strategy for real property acquisition, even if it wasn't trespassory.

Art is what the artist says is art. If the artist says that the ground is part of the art, then the ground is part of the art.

Richard

[greglas]

76.

Richard> I'd say that I owned it.

Yeah, but you'd be wrong (in Guam).

That's just how accession works -- and I think if you take an informal poll, most people would want to award the $1000 artwork to the artist who added value, not to the owner of the title in the two pennies worth of paper.

Richard> If the artist says that the ground is part of the art, then the ground is part of the art.

Yeah, well the artist can say all sorts of things (they usually do) but my guess is that the hypothetical reasonable judge in Guam would say the hypothetical artist still can't claim valid title to an estate in land based upon an improvement made to a fixture. In a really extreme case of real estate improvement that results in a windfall, perhaps Guam might support a forced sale based on equitable principles, but I bet that's more an abstract possibility than anything.

We ought to take a Terra Nova field trip to Guam. I've never been.

http://www.visitguam.org/main/

[Thabor]

77.

This brings us right back to my original question. Using this argument, does that mean developers can't sell the identical character for $500? After all, no-one has done the work for that, it's just been generated by a program from filling in a web page form. What do you think?

I thinks its clear that a developer wouldn't be able to sell the character for the same money. Part of the cost is the effort that went into the "creation" for the product. You wouldn't be able to preserve that kind of pricing when the article could be mass produced.

I might imagine a small market for "handcrafted" characters, but most current designs incorporate "respec" which means there aren't any factors that would allow external competetion.

[lewy]

78.

greglas wrote:

"That's just how accession works -- and I think if you take an informal poll, most people would want to award the $1000 artwork to the artist who added value, not to the owner of the title in the two pennies worth of paper."

What if the hypothetical artwork is spray painted on the side of your Porsche? Also, why should a poll of ordinary citizens matter as compared with a poll of judges?

Anyway, I think this whole discussion is probably moot unless there are any MMOG's being written in Guam.

[Richard Bartle]

79.

greglas>I think if you take an informal poll, most people would want to award the $1000 artwork to the artist who added value, not to the owner of the title in the two pennies worth of paper.

If you took an informal poll, most people would want to send anyone who parked their car across two spaces to the electric chair...

If I own something, I don't think it's right that someone else can take ownership of it by modifying it.

>We ought to take a Terra Nova field trip to Guam. I've never been.

No way am I going there. If I fell asleep, some passing artist might draw a doodle on the back of my hand.

Richard

[Richard Bartle]

80.

Thabor>I thinks its clear that a developer wouldn't be able to sell the character for the same money. Part of the cost is the effort that went into the "creation" for the product.

The developer spent 400 person-years and $30M creating software that allows the highly inexpensive creation of characters and you're saying this isn't enough of an investment to give them ownership when compared to a few hours of playing every night by some relative dilletante?

>You wouldn't be able to preserve that kind of pricing when the article could be mass produced.

That's right, but it's no defence. Do you buy hand-made furniture or mass-produced furniture? Do you buy bespoke automobiles or ones made by vast robotic assembly lines? Do you buy paper lovingly pressed from wood pulp by your friendly local paper-maker or stuff that comes from a factory where they put trees in one end and paper comes out of the other?

Just because someone wants to sell something they spent hours making, that doesn't mean they have a right to stop someone else selling something equivalent they can make in the blink of an eye.

Richard

[Flatfingers]

81.

The comments about corn got me thinking in a slightly different direction.

This analogy may already have been made, but aren't the players of most of today's MMOGs basically sharecroppers?

Publishers are saying (in effect): "I'll give you access to the virtual places and objects of my game. In return, you'll create content such as instances of objects, persistent communities, and a world history. Since I own the world, everything you create in that world is mine, but I'll pay you for your labor by calling your act of creation 'entertainment.'"

How long will it be before some publisher realizes that there's real capital that can be created in their virtual worlds using the labor of their players, and figures out a way to entice players to create that real capital for them?

Or is that exactly what SOE's Station Exchange now does?

--Flatfingers

[Mike Sellers]

82.

Sharecroppers? Let's keep things in perspective: players of MMOGs are much more like country club members. You pay a recurring fee to use the facilities (typically not owned by the members -- though actual ownership in a MMOG as in some country clubs is an interesting notion).

[Eric Random]

83.

Although there may be no difference between a 50th level character created by a player, and a 50th level character generated by the game, there is a subjective difference in its destruction. No one mourns the loss of a generated character, whereas the destruction of a player-created character encompasses the loss of time and effort. I think players have a hard time accepting the deletion of a character they've spent many, many hours on. This is the difference between the two. This subjective difference is the value (not to be confused with market value).

Why is market value not a good indicator of the value a player places on a character they've developed? The seller is paying for an account they've already made a conscious decision of abandoning, and the alternative to sale is deletion. The seller is willing to recieve a fair market price based on demand, which outweighs the effort of sale. The market value of a character is more tuned to the desire of the buyer to avoid the effort of character development, the number and types of characters sold, and the popularity, and longevity expectations, of the game.

What is the effect of developers selling ready-made characters? It dilutes the price of player-sold characters, and may be considered a feasible option in eradicating a player-based external character market. Diluting the price is obvious, as game-generated characters add to the supply, and such transactions are more trustworthy as it is game-sanctioned. Feasibility, though, is currently based on enforceability. Enforcing the prohibition of account transfers has a real cost. This expense may not be adequately justified unless the company is attempting to mitigate or avoid a real financial loss due to external markets. I would wager that game companies, in reality, experience a slight benefit from external markets. If game companies sold pre-made characters, and intended the sale at a price higher than current player market price, then the company could justify a real financial loss to the player-based character markets. Either profits from game-generated sales are used to fund the cost of enforcement, or costs of enforcement are much less than gains generated from enforcement effects, and thus, ultimately, creating a pressure towards eradicating the player-based market. Any price offered by a company on a character can easily be matched by a player selling a character, until such a point as the sale price is no longer worth the effort of sale, from the player's perspective. This will eventually drive the price of a character below any intended sale price set by the company, ultimately setting strong enforcement into action.

[Thabor]

84.

The developer spent 400 person-years and $30M creating software that allows the highly inexpensive creation of characters and you're saying this isn't enough of an investment to give them ownership when compared to a few hours of playing every night by some relative dilletante?

Ignoring the patently inflated numbers, no I didn't say that. I said they couldn't sell it for the same price.

That's right, but it's no defence.

Defense against what??

Just because someone wants to sell something they spent hours making, that doesn't mean they have a right to stop someone else selling something equivalent they can make in the blink of an eye.

Again, I didn't say that they did. Although you might want to consider the ramifications of a statement like this towards your stance on copyright.. Frankly I would expect outside markets to be hurt badly if developers marketed such a service. I would also expect any complaints by organizations like IGE to be dismissed out of hand.

[Richard Bartle]

85.

Eric Random>No one mourns the loss of a generated character, whereas the destruction of a player-created character encompasses the loss of time and effort.

I'd say there was also an identity component to that, rather than just the loss of time and effort. Then again it depends on the game: MUD1 and MUD2 both have PD, but in these it usually takes you much less time to get back to where you were than it did to get there the first time.

>The seller is paying for an account they've already made a conscious decision of abandoning, and the alternative to sale is deletion.

But some people specialise in building up characters to sell them. They have no emotional attachment to the character and are playing it purely as a money-making exercise. They have an easy alternative to deletion: don't play the character in the first place.

>The seller is willing to recieve a fair market price based on demand, which outweighs the effort of sale.

This is the same whether the seller is selling something they spent time creating or something the developer spent time creating.

>What is the effect of developers selling ready-made characters? It dilutes the price of player-sold characters

So? If you're so worried about your character being deleted when you quit, you can always give it away.

Richard

[Eric Random]

86.

I think, Richard, we largely agree with each other, but where I am thinking on a continuum, you may be operating on discrete absolutes.

Richard>I'd say there was also an identity component to that, rather than just the loss of time and effort.

I would be quick to agree identity can be apart of it, but my focus of time and effort was a consideration of minimum attachment. If they don't identify with such a character, as a human, the least they could value was the sense of time and effort invested, whether it was entertaining or not. That is the effect of persistence. They've built something up, and, like a sand castle, can be easily washed away. Further, as you pointed out, in some, it may even be a business component of loss of profit, and I'll touch on that.

This does not argue the right of transfer though, it only defines the motivations for transfer, and thus assuring the possibility of the existence of transfer. That is, instead of deleting, perhaps another would like to experience the results of my efforts. Perhaps they would like it so much as to pay, at least for my effort to provide it to them. This effort is not substantial, but it is effort nonetheless. Perhaps they want it so much as to compete for it, allowing for greater price negotiation.

Richard>But some people specialise in building up characters to sell them.

That is a crucial point, and a strong reason for prohibiting transfer. One step further, external character markets are being sold in what constitute as international markets (e.g. online websites) which trade at prices based on the cost-of-living in economically successful regions of the world. If someone lives in a region with a very low cost-of-living, such as a developing country, the minor profits made as a virtual trader can represent a substantial economic opportunity. I would wager I could support a family better selling virtual items than as a fisherman in Ecuador. Further, a regular gamer in Bolivia may find that his virtual holdings hold value better than a boliviano. The effects of a market can turn a game into a financial mechanism.

Eric>The seller is willing to recieve a fair market price based on demand, which outweighs the effort of sale.

Richard>This is the same whether the seller is selling something they spent time creating or something the developer spent time creating

The developer's motivations are different. The developer is a business, and operates in a way to cover the costs and generate profit. At a minimum, the business is pressured to sell at a price that can cover the cost of making the product, delivering the product to market, maintaining the product, and growing the product. The person selling a character is, at a minimum, pressured to cover the cost of delivering the character to market. The rest of the market value can come from price negotiation and competing demand. From the player's perspective, they were supposed to get nothing, but they're going to try to get something, because there is demand. From the business's perspective, they'll have to get something to at least cover all the costs. Certainly, though, the player can operate like a business, and have rigorous price points, but probably because they have speculated a business opportunity. All sales, though, need not be this serious.

Eric>>What is the effect of developers selling ready-made characters? It dilutes the price of player-sold characters

Richard>So? If you're so worried about your character being deleted when you quit, you can always give it away.

Giving a character away represents a transfer of authority. That is exactly what happens after a business transaction. In an earlier post, I mentioned that the price is ultimately irrelevant to the basic act of transfer. I can sell it or I can give it away. As soon as the game supports the right of transfer, it loses the ability to prohibit trade, because it cannot be certain whether an account was given away or was sold. Game companies attempt to prohibit trade through prohibiting account transfer.

On another subject, I had an older post on MUD-Dev which discussed the effects of external character markets on a virtual world. Oddly, there may be no observable difference between a guild farming items to increase their guild coffers, and a player farming items to increase their bank account. There may be no observable difference between a player gifting an item to another player and a player selling an item to another player through an external market. There may be no observable difference between a player who played a character from 1 to 50, and one who played the character from 48-50, as the time to master a high-level character is not the same time it takes to create a high-level character. There may be no observable difference between a player returning to a character after several months, and several patches, and a player who never even played the character. What, then, is the true effect of external markets? The volume of such occurences, and the perpetuation of active accounts long past abandonment. This could artificially extend the sunset phase of a virtual world. I would argue that changes in the value of the external market is an indicator of game popularity. All other things staying the same, a rapid drop in the value of virtual holdings for a game can be a strong indicator, and may be a precursor to a drop in new accounts, signaling a company to a fresh marketing campaign before it starts to see significant losses.

Further, in an article I wrote, offline, on the perception of loss on character deletion as a motivation of sale, I suggested game companies could offer rewards for character deletion after deciding upon account abandonment. As MMORPG titles are consolidated under a few major corporations, these corporations can offer discounts or credits to other games developed under the same label, to keep players playing their products while also not selling off their old accounts. For example, trade an account with 50th level character in EQII for a level 15 character in SWG, one month free, and 15% off box price, or 15% off select Sony merchandise. Unfortunately, this is something that is difficult to offer for small competitors, thus reducing their ability to compete, and further securing my reputation as an evil genius. ;) In all seriousness though, if such a mechanism was managed by retailers such as EBGames and BestBuy in the form of virtual world passports, it would increase the overall sales and repeat business of MMORPGs, but would require the difficult participation of multiple competing companies. Participation which may reward the deletion of an account to open another with a competitor. The offer is based on enticement though. That is, if you have a high-level character on another game (e.g. one of our competitors), we'll give you a discount if you come play our game.There are many possible varieties of implementation on this concept. Just a side thought in an attempt to leverage motivation.

[Jimpy]

87.

What about just "renting" a character, as this new service purports to offer?

The next IGE? Or destined for failure?

[Eric Random]

88.

Just a variation on transfer of authority, just growing in popularity. Cybercafe account renting has been around, Internet storefronts expand it. I've seen groups of students and employees swap multiple accounts to "experience" different high-level games, and watched college students trade off on schedules to power-level multiple characters.

Volume of account transfer is based on the game design, the popularity of the game, and it's estimated longevity.

Stop account transfers and one can stop all this, but how can one -stop- account transfers? Digital signatures managed by a trusted third party, like a game-authentication company or as a characteristic of a federally mandated identification system to have a public key stamped on your National I.D. card? Just to stop an account transfer? We may have to wait for the world to catch up...

My personal opinion is to mitigate it. Don't focus on market supply, focus on demand. Examine demand motivations in-game and out and develop policy on that. Policy which attempts to stop supply are policies like non-transferrable items, or double-blind markets, which complicate item trade, but just turn the account into a container for items to be sold. They also incorporate rules in-game regardless of consistency to world fiction because they are only designed to affect behavior out-of-game. These policies only complicate sale, without an effect on demand.