I ran a roundtable session at IMGDC last weekend on the subject of "Government Interference: How Much Can you Take?". The way it worked, I presented a number of scenarios in turn, ramping up each one of them to see when (if ever) the situation would become so intolerable that it would stop the attendees from ever wanting to develop an MMORPG.
Some things were irritating, but not so irritating that they'd cause the assembled developers and designers to give up. For example, government requirements for tracking every single transaction to prevent fraud fell into this category: it adds a huge overhead, but it's something people can just about live with.
There were two proposals, however, which hit the abandon ship button for everyone. Both of these are ones I've seen advocated a number of times, included here on TerraNova.
The first issue was player power. If a real-world government decreed that players had to be elected to the live team, and that the recommendations of these players had by law to be implemented, then that was a step too far. Developers simply could not operate MMORPGs under those circumstances.
The second issue was object ownership. If players were given real-life ownership of their characters or their characters' in-world inventory, then developers would draw the line. They'd be so hamstrung by such a law that they wouldn't be able to create MMORPGs if it applied.
Interestingly, many of the people at the roundtable (who, because of the nature of the conference, tended to have an indie viewpoint) were completely unaware that there was even the possibility of either of these two situations becoming a reality. This contrasts with the views of the players, academics and lawyers who have promoted the enactment of such laws, but who seem oblivious to the effects they would have on designers and developers.
Are we heading for trouble, here?
Call it a ridiculous question, but isn't Second Life to some extent striving for this latter state? What's Linden Labs' take on this?
Posted by: Peter Landwehr | Apr 04, 2008 at 13:29
This was a great talk. Scary, but an interesting (I hope) intellectual exercise.
MMO developers have to be at least part masochist in order to thrive in the unique challenges of our chosen environments: business, technical, operational, and across nearly every other axis related to MMO development.
Devs are sometimes perceived as simply not wanting to give up any amount of control, or as people who enjoy screwing with others' experiences as little tin gods of their own worlds, and so on, which is a view that's both unfortunate and simplistic.
The big threshhold for me wasn't related to anything like that. Bring on new ways of thinking, as long as the net effect is an added value to the customer experience as a whole.
However, in the hypothetical world where:
I might as well be in the business of making securities trading software on Wall St. or slot machine software in Nevada, both of which when taken individually, are regulated far less than the Worst Of Both Worlds hypothetical above.
Practically speaking, there are plenty of places in which a developer can build either of those, make quite a bit more money in the process, and work far more sane hours.
Of course, in our spare time, I imagine many of us would still make online games, just because the act of making them remains fun.
We just couldn't let anyone else play them.
Yeah. Let's not go there.
Posted by: Scott Hartsman | Apr 04, 2008 at 13:46
I greatly enjoyed the talk.
So much so that I got a synopsis put on Gamasutra:
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=18091
More colorful notes:
http://www.mmognation.com/2008/04/03/bartles-good-bad-and-ugly/
Hope that's helpful for context.
Posted by: Michael | Apr 04, 2008 at 14:17
Scott>Of course, in our spare time, I imagine many of us would still make online games, just because the act of making them remains fun.
>We just couldn't let anyone else play them.
Damn, but I wish I'd said that!
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Apr 04, 2008 at 14:21
Michael>More colorful notes:
My children were very amused to see the headline "Bartle’s Good, Bad, And Ugly". They said yes, I am.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Apr 04, 2008 at 14:23
Not to beat a dead horse or anything, but it bears mentioning (again) that ownership *is* a bundle of property rights and that, even more importantly, those rights (for all kinds of familiar kinds of "offline" property) are often restricted in a number of ways. That is, "ownership" is not necessarily an "all or nothing" proposition (in fact, my understanding is that it is *rarely* that, if ever). It's important to remember this in order to avoid a discussion based upon, essentially, an alarmist characterization.
Similarly, "player power" does not boil down only to the arrangement as characterized by Richard above (RL laws mandating players elected to an MMOs live team, and with effective veto power to boot). We can imagine any of a number of ways in which users can be involved in (world or even world-maker) governance, some of which are being tried (or at least floated as necessary to the world makers' legitimacy).
I hope that any discussion of this issue (and I think it's an important one) of under what conditions virtual worlds will continue to be made needs to bear this in mind.
Posted by: Thomas Malaby | Apr 04, 2008 at 19:12
Erk. Should be "will bear this in mind."
Posted by: Thomas Malaby | Apr 05, 2008 at 01:33
Dr. Bartle,
To get to the heart of my comment, MMO profitability- the foundation of developer incentive to invest in new MMO design- quite simply boils down to what gamers want and are willing to pay for, less the cost of doing so, not what game gods fear and are unwilling to investigate: consumer demand. That said, I don't believe the costs of government intervention or player "input" will ever significantly tip the balance as long as you and Julian are the leading defenders of play. You both must be there to maintain balance in the synthetic brawl ;) However, that is not to say that government intervention, legislation, and overzelous litigation that claims to be undertaken to protect the sanctity of play do not have a detrimental effect on the MMO market offering, eliminate innovation and introduce significant inefficiecies to an overall booming video game industry, that becomes a little more Hollywoodien everyday. But I digress. Perhaps you are right on target: too much external governance is disastrous for the state of play. I am reminded of the primary lesson of Habitat: WORK WITHIN THE SYSTEM! Yet the Great Debate has among its origins Habitatian avatars, guns and weapons, designed to "materially" effect the social fabric in ways that went beyond mere consumption.
On the non-economic side and as a gamer, I fear developers becoming so power-crazed that they no longer care about the sanctity of play: control. MMOs were born a communication medium of control- and that control is the ability to escape everyuday life to enter the desert of the real or the heros journey, depending on your preference- a journey that unfortunately begins and ends with one's wallet.
I'm headed towards the Profky word limit so I'll wind up here: If anyone in the MMO sphere knows what gamers want, it is you--- FUN!!!. Fun games, fun design, fun input, fun conferences, fun Terra Nova arguments ;) But what is fun for gamers and profitable for developers? I think player governance, couched here as "input" is worth exploring, experimenting, investigating and not relying on real life courts to intimidate and exploit (See MMO Glider case).
I really think you are on to something when you mentioned that even if MMOS were completely cost-prohibitive due to legislative intervention they would still be developed: "...in our spare time, I imagine many of us would still make online games, just because the act of making them remains fun." The act of making a game is fun, which is at the heart of player input. So I have a question, why not experiment and investigate to see if gamers truely want these features, and then provide the innovation, rather than lobbying for complete supply side control?
Posted by: Lavant | Apr 05, 2008 at 03:54
Richard --
Aren't you being just a tad alarmist here? Let's flip your concern around and envision a world of unlimited designer power and designer ownership. A world where, if you signed up for a virtual world, designers would be free to appropriate all the files on your PC, put any charge they like on your credit card, defraud and libel you within the game, etc., etc. That would also be unworkable.
Luckily, we have existing laws that prevent designers from doing those things. But the point is that if we didn't have *some* player powers and *some* rights, the MMOG industry would not work.
The courts and legislatures will need to take some position on disputes occurring in virtual worlds, just as they take some position on any new technology that impacts society. That's actually why I'm somewhat concerned about how Second Life dominated the recent US Congressional hearings. The sentiment there seemed to be that Second Life is/will be typical of future virtual worlds. But if the most popular future worlds turn out to look more like games and less like the metaverse, those hearings missed the mark.
Ideally there would be approaches that settle disputes between players, designers, and the state within each virtual environment with flexibility. I don't think "player ownership" or "player power" is the biggest legal threat to the industry here, even if that is the sense of the designers you spoke with. The biggest threat might be legislation that ignores the different ways simulated space is being used.
Posted by: greglas | Apr 05, 2008 at 11:22
Thomas Malaby>That is, "ownership" is not necessarily an "all or nothing" proposition
I agree. It would have been interesting, if I'd had time, to relax what it was that players could "own", and see when the developers would buy into it. From what was being said, though, I'd say developers felt they would be unable to operate if players could stop nerfs, or demand the return of property lost in an in-game context, or demand the right to import items from other virtual worlds, or insist that virtual worlds containing their objects were not closed down. The RMT and use-of-IP consequences of real ownership of virtual objects were also troubling for many of them.
>Similarly, "player power" does not boil down only to the arrangement as characterized by Richard above
That's true: the above is where they drew the line, though. If players (or their representatives) had rights like the British monarch (ie. to be consulted, to encourage and to warn), that would probably be OK, although even then I can see some designers being unhappy about losing the ability to spring surprises on players (and some players being unhappy about having official spoilers in advance of the release of every new feature).
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Apr 05, 2008 at 15:35
Greg>Aren't you being just a tad alarmist here?
I was certainly alarmed that the vast majority of people in the room were unaware that discussion on this subject were going on behind their backs between academics, lawyers and a few outlying game designers.
>A world where, if you signed up for a virtual world, designers would be free to appropriate all the files on your PC, put any charge they like on your credit card, defraud and libel you within the game, etc., etc. That would also be unworkable.
It would indeed. That's why people who don't want their players to have this degree of consumer protection don't make virtual worlds. Likewise, if we got laws that said players had all kinds of major property rights in their characters' inventories, people who wanted them not to have those rights wouldn't create virtual worlds either. However, there wouldn't be many virtual worlds left as a result if that happened.
>the point is that if we didn't have *some* player powers and *some* rights, the MMOG industry would not work.
I agree. However, if they have too many, again, the MMO industry would not work.
>That's actually why I'm somewhat concerned about how Second Life dominated the recent US Congressional hearings.
Me too. There is room for a wide spectrum of virtual worlds, of which Second Life is just one, small part. If legislation is enacted based on Second Life but applied to the whole range of virtual worlds, that's going to be bad for all of them except those in the immediate vicinity of SL.
>I don't think "player ownership" or "player power" is the biggest legal threat to the industry here, even if that is the sense of the designers you spoke with.
No, those were just two of the scenarios I put forward. It was my choice what we got to talk about; the people at the round table just riffed off that.
>The biggest threat might be legislation that ignores the different ways simulated space is being used.
Yes, I agree. Legislation framed for game worlds could hurt social worlds just as much as legislation framed for game worlds could hurt social worlds. Issues such as player governance, which might be less contentious in a social world, are examples of where friction would arise.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Apr 05, 2008 at 15:48
Lavant>the foundation of developer incentive to invest in new MMO design- quite simply boils down to what gamers want and are willing to pay for
Yes indeed. However, sometimes governments will step in if they believe there's an injustice being done (or tax money not being declared). This is why many countries have a minimum wage as part of their employment law, for example.
>that is not to say that government intervention, legislation, and overzelous litigation that claims to be undertaken to protect the sanctity of play do not have a detrimental effect on the MMO market offering
I agree. Over-protecting play can hurt non-play worlds (and even play worlds) just as much as can under-protecting it, or over-protecting non-play.
>too much external governance is disastrous for the state of play.
It is indeed, but "too much" is a relative term, and it varies between virtual worlds. What might be too much for Project Entropia, with its RMT ethos, might be inconsequentual for LotRO; what might be too much for LotRO, with its unified IP, might be inconsequential for Project Entropia. What we need is for virtual worlds to be able to state what kind of world they are, and operate within those boundaries. Currently, this is done in a rather paranoid fashion through the EULA.
>But what is fun for gamers and profitable for developers?
We had a round of this back in the early 1990s when indies were willing to create text MUDs that were able to push at the boundaries - we got the DikuMUD paradigm (used by most of today's MMOs) out of it. When it becomes feasible once again for indies to create bespoke virtual worlds - and we're on the cusp of that right now - we should see some more freshness and originality appear. We're unlikely to see that from someone looking at a $100m loss if things go wrong, though...
>I really think you are on to something when you mentioned that even if MMOS were completely cost-prohibitive due to legislative intervention they would still be developed: "...in our spare time, I imagine many of us would still make online games, just because the act of making them remains fun."
Sadly, those fine words were Scott Hartsman's, not mine!
>why not experiment and investigate to see if gamers truely want these features, and then provide the innovation, rather than lobbying for complete supply side control?
Well, it's because gamers don't know what they want, or they think they know what they want but they don't want it, or they all want different things. They'll say they want a PvP world, then not play it. They'll say they want photorealism, then play the cartoony world. Some will say they want RMT and some will say they don't and people from both groups will do the opposite of what they advocate.
Designers would be foolish not to listen to players. However, they would be even more foolish to listen to them uncritically.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Apr 05, 2008 at 16:11
Richard wrote:
Wow, so they were okay with laws mandating players on live teams? It was the veto power that crossed the line?!?
;-)
Posted by: Thomas Malaby | Apr 05, 2008 at 17:23
Again, I don't see how games are "differently different" than other media. Let's substitute "producer" for "game dev" and "viewer" for "player."
Would a producer be willing to make a movie where the viewers had some "rights" to it? Well, s/he would if the viewers ponied up an investment stake to a level where it enabled to production of the movie and only limited certain aspects of the creation. You see this with the mad desire of fans to invest and bring back "Firefly." There's no problem with fans/viewers/players owning part of a product... as long as they understand the rights *and* responsibilities inherent therein.
The problem with the above scenarios is that they seem to cast players as shallow, naive gangbangers who only want to play the game their way and who cry when they miss a point, etc. Ownership, if you look at publicly traded co's in the US, for example, often has little to do with day to day control.
What about a scenario where you buy shares in a game, same as for an IPO. 1 share gives you the right to play. Let's say that costs (for argument sake) $150. You also get the right to post on the bb's and vote your share on issues that the definition of the world has defined as "shareholder issues." Those might include number of players per shard (more = better profit, less = better performance, let the players decide); when (or if) to release updates; the need for new classes or balance.
Many companies have decisions that fall only to the management team (in this case, the devs), and the only recourse to shareholders is to oust management or decide on really major issues like a merger or take-over. Owning a share doesn't mean you get to pick the brand of soap in the men's room or tell the VP of finance how to balance his spreadsheets.
Let's further imagine that $150/share world has an initial limit of (let's say) 10,000 players. At any point, any one of them can sell their share for whatever the market will allow. So if the players whine and moan and generally bung up the game, nobody will want to buy their share when they're bored/tired/dead; that game sucks! Keep your share. Whereas if they help to make the game awesome, the price/share will go up. At which point a majority of the shareholders could vote for a stock split which would allow for more players -- the game is now SOOO f'in good, that people are bangin' at the doors to get in and you've got 10,000 pre-sign-ups for after a split. So you split at, say, 3-to-1, and every player gets their initial investment back, the co' gets more dough, and there are now twice the players.
I don't want a bunch of ham-handed players (like myself) telling Richard and his team what to do on a day-to-day basis. I don't want the right to "own" my virtual loot outside the magic circle. But I can certainly envision games where some part of the price-of-entry provided an economic incentive to making the game better, and a way for me to engage my fellow players and the devs in meaningful dialog that had a meaningful vote attached to my opinion.
Posted by: Andy Havens | Apr 05, 2008 at 17:59
I think it may lead to more interesting virtual worlds (in some cases) if developers provide more player governance (e.g. EVE). However, on the point of mandated player rights I can't help but think of that great quotable from Clay Shirkey ("A Group is its Own Worst Enemy"):
Because lo and behold, no matter who came onto the Clairol chat boards, they sometimes wanted to talk about things that weren't Clairol products.
"But we paid for this! This is the Clairol site!" Doesn't matter. The users are there for one another. They may be there on hardware and software paid for by you, but the users are there for one another.
Some players may think so, but that doesn't mean that they are right.
Posted by: nate_combs | Apr 05, 2008 at 18:18
@nate: but if they're wrong, and leave because you piss them off, they're not players anymore, either.
It's better to be wrong and rich than right and poor.
Posted by: Andy Havens | Apr 05, 2008 at 23:02
Thomas>Wow, so they were okay with laws mandating players on live teams? It was the veto power that crossed the line?!?
There was some dissent at the mandating of players on the live teams, but it was indeed the point at which these players' views had to be implemented which was the last straw.
Aside: the reason I chose a scenario-based approach to the roundtable was because the company that organised IMGDC was Last Straw Productions. I didn't actually mention that at the time.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Apr 06, 2008 at 05:57
Andy Havens>I can certainly envision games where some part of the price-of-entry provided an economic incentive to making the game better, and a way for me to engage my fellow players and the devs in meaningful dialog that had a meaningful vote attached to my opinion.
The scenario you describe would indeed work, and is pretty much how things often are nowadays anyway (except that the investors aren't players). Pressure to change can often come from the business side of the company rather than the player base, eg. SW:G's new game enhancement (which lost a ton of players but now seems to be picking up new players who like the new gameplay).
However, even in your players-as-shareholders system, there would still be calls for "player governance". After all, not every player can afford to buy a share, and some players might accumulate larger numbers of shares by buying up the shares of players who quit. This would make the game less "democratic", and therefore not address the concerns of those who advocate a democratic approach to virtual world governance.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Apr 06, 2008 at 06:05
Richard wrote:
Hmmm, well I guess my reaction to this is that, contrary to the spirit of your post, virtual world designers may be more *open* to player participation in governance than many might have expected.
Also, it's only fair to mention that your suggestion that this (legally-mandated player involvement to that degree) has been advocated here on TN is off-base, at least if you're referring to the TN authorship, and not the comments. (And, if you're talking about the comments, too, hasn't pretty much *everything* been advocated in them at one point or another?)
Posted by: Thomas Malaby | Apr 06, 2008 at 09:36
"The second issue was object ownership. If players were given real-life ownership of their characters or their characters' in-world inventory, then developers would draw the line. They'd be so hamstrung by such a law that they wouldn't be able to create MMORPGs if it applied."
First, I think this is a bit of an emotional reaction. There's a bunch of successful mmos with different degrees of RMT built in, so it doesn't seem to me that it could really be such a huge cataclysm if some precedent was established that a character's inventory constituted some sort of property that a player had a right to.
Out of curiosity, do you think this would change if there were several factors on the table? For example, taxation of virtual property comes to mind -- if the government decided that virtual property was taxable as an income, and decided that in-game items had intrinsic monetary value (because of Ebay, RMT, etc.) -- do you think the developers would hld to their convictions as being the owners of all the gold pieces and magic swords, or do you think they may see the wisdom in letting the virtual masses own (and therefore pay the taxes on) the phat lewtz they acquire?
I'm in total agreement with #1 though. Even if someone developed a game with some sort of meta-democracy, I wouldn't play it. SWG was absolutely destroyed by fan complaints ("crafting isn't fun, wahh!"), in my estimation the game was already so broken from the original conception that it was already doomed, never mind the later dramas.
Posted by: Peter Hanley | Apr 06, 2008 at 16:37
Thomas>Hmmm, well I guess my reaction to this is that, contrary to the spirit of your post, virtual world designers may be more *open* to player participation in governance than many might have expected.
Well, if by "open" you mean "will be dragged, kicking and screaming", I guess so. They don't, in general, want any legislation enacted that gives players representation on live teams, believing it's up to the individual developer to decide what's best for their virtual world. If CMP want EVE Online to have a player council, that's their business; if the government want them to have it, that's something else.
>And, if you're talking about the comments, too, hasn't pretty much *everything* been advocated in them at one point or another?
I was talking about the comments, too, although I haven't actually looked through them all so may be proved wrong.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Apr 07, 2008 at 03:24
Peter Hanley>it doesn't seem to me that it could really be such a huge cataclysm if some precedent was established that a character's inventory constituted some sort of property that a player had a right to.
If it were a very minor "right", like the "ownership" you have of the deck chair you're using on a cruise ship (ie. you don't own it at all, but it's somehow "yours") then perhaps. Even then, though, this could be too much for some people. Should the right of people to get up really early to sit in the best deck chairs that they then "sell" to people who get up laterreally be protected in law, or is it a matter for the cruise company?
What people were mainly worried about was the immense body of law that comes with property. The kind of property rights players want tend to be of the "if I own it, I can do this" variety, where the developers don't want the "this" to happen. Predicting what rights can safely be held by players is a) not easy, and b) dependent on your virtual world. Are you allowed to write books about your in-world characters, for example? That may be OK with Blizzard for Wow, but if you have a hobbit in LotRO then the Tolkien Estate would perhaps not want its IP diluted by allowing it.
>do you think the developers would hld to their convictions as being the owners of all the gold pieces and magic swords, or do you think they may see the wisdom in letting the virtual masses own (and therefore pay the taxes on) the phat lewtz they acquire?
The developers would be fine with owning it all. You don't pay taxes on the reallocation of things you own. I got a filing cabinet in my office because someone else wanted to make space in their office. It's now "my" filing cabinet, in that it's in my keeping, but it nevertheless belongs to the university, and I didn't have to pay a gift tax for the receipt of it. If an MMO developer owns the gold and the characters, then there would be no tax question; you only get the tax question if the players own it.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Apr 07, 2008 at 03:44
Scott Hartsman wrote:
However, in the hypothetical world where:
Virtual goods have real world value.
A point: That's not hypothetical. Virtual goods have real world value and nothing the developers or government can do short of shutting down the game/world can change that.
If a single person anywhere on the planet wants something, it has real-world value whether it's an apple or a Sword of Fantabulousness in an MMO.
--matt
Posted by: Matt Mihaly | Apr 07, 2008 at 16:44
"A point: That's not hypothetical. Virtual goods have real world value and nothing the developers or government can do short of shutting down the game/world can change that."
Get real. Even a lick on the face from a cute puppy has value to some people. In this context "real world value" is being looked at in terms of real assets; the kind of assets that you can list on your tax forms or your business ballance sheet. Virtual items are not assigned legal value. If you try to use a "sword of fantabulousness" as collateral on a loan you'll quickly find out how much value it has. Only after you convert that "item" into real world currency does it become valued in the sense they are talking about, where courts and property laws come into play.
Posted by: SVgr | Apr 08, 2008 at 08:46
@SVgr: That's a pretty selective way to look at it. If we're talking about *market* value (to eliminate the face-licking from the pup), then Matt is absolutely right -- something has market value at the moment that someone is willing to pay currency (or trade a commodity) for it. Whether that value is recognized by an institution such as a bank or a government is a secondary (though important) question. The essential point is that it is trade that determines market value, not such institutional imprimaturs.
Posted by: Thomas Malaby | Apr 08, 2008 at 08:58
SVgr said: Only after you convert that "item" into real world currency does it become valued in the sense they are talking about, where courts and property laws come into play.
I think that's the whole point of the OP. Richard is aware that some people are writing things like this. Many people, including those he spoke to, are a little surprised that virtual property interests might be subject to tax laws.
Posted by: greglas | Apr 08, 2008 at 09:08
Yeah, and hopefully virtual property will remain virtual and not ever be used on a loan application. Only time will tell, but I seriously hope that reason and common sense will prevail.
Posted by: SVgr | Apr 08, 2008 at 09:32
Richard's original point that there's a difference between how designers and lawyers see things is interresting, but not surprising. How many examples can we point out where lawyers and lawmakers (two largely coincidental groups of people) have arranged for things to be in their best interrest. It's a dangerous thing when you have people making money from the practice of law and writing the laws too. I've heard that one draft of the US constitution had a provision that limited or prevented people from being both lawyers and politicians. Would have been a good idea I think. :)
Posted by: SVgr | Apr 08, 2008 at 09:58
@SVgr: Common sense is *exactly* what makes virtual items become desirable in trade, which generates real incomes, which raises all of these issues. The common sense of an everyday joe, trying to acquire something (whether a new bicycyle, a flying mount in WoW, or whatever) and looking around at how to go about it. If he has cash or credit, and prefers to spend that over other resources (his time, for example), then he's going to do so, and from that moment the value is not "virtual." It matters not a jot to the realness of that value what banks and governments think about it.
This is a bit off-topic, but one thing you said caught my eye:
I find nested ironies here. After all, do we think that game designers are so enlightened in their control over the conditions for large economies that they aren't vulnerable to the same failings? More than one MMO has been likened to an unregulated casino, after all.
Posted by: Thomas Malaby | Apr 08, 2008 at 12:25
While I agree that these are important issues to discuss and debate, I remain unconvinced that these doom scenarios will actually play out as we think they will due to the simple fact that any laws proposed must be enforceable.
The volume of transactions alone would mandate significant changes to the way agencies collect, process, and act on the data.
Then consider the multiple, international jurisdictions with an interest in tracking and acting on participant activities. And the co-operation that entails.
In an era in which knowledge work - virtual work - is perceived as "the future" for many nations, whether that interferes with other nations' laws or not.
Personally, I believe that by the time these institutionalised structural flaws are actually amenable to enacting such laws, the industry itself will have plowed ahead well beyond them.
After all, here we are 35 years after Pong, and regulators are still trying to determine whether games are a positive developmental influence or not.
Posted by: Dave | Apr 08, 2008 at 12:25
@Thomas: The original post was talking about a scenario that would/could damage or destroy the gaming industry or at least MMO's. That scenario is for the government and financial institutions to recognized property value and ownership of 'virtual goods'. The self-assigned value you give something on E-bay isn't going to hurt MMO business. The scenario Richard was talking about is when you start telling an MMO company that the items in the game are 'legally' valuable, and can be regulated, owned, taxed, etc... The situation you are talking about, Thomas, isn't really what Richard seemed to have been talking about. He was proposing a 'what if', and as long as the government and business world don't recognize virtual items, then the MMO industry is safe from outside interference in regard to how they run their business in this context. If you think I'm arguing that virtual goods don't have value, then let me make it clear that they do have value. Otherwise I couldn't buy a WoW sword on Ebay. However, that doesn't kill the MMO industry.
My comment about lawyers seeing a potential to make money from law suits regarding virtual items was intended as a serious comment about possible dangers to the MMO industry. I merely wanted to point out that right now the MMO industry is okay where the law in concerned, but Hillary Clinton and her trial lawyer buddies never miss a chance to make money, so watch out. Notice that there's been a virtual outbreak of law suits over the past year regarding RMT, gold farming, bots, etc...
Posted by: SVgr | Apr 08, 2008 at 13:14
@SVgr: That's fine -- then there's no disagreement, as long as we don't confuse institutionally-recognized (whether by legal institutions, or banks [your other example, and one quite aside from Richard's scenario]) with "real."
Posted by: Thomas Malaby | Apr 08, 2008 at 15:29
i have to take issue with the nature of the original point of the discussion, government control would most likely not change the landscape of an MMO beyond the measures required to police them.
i rather tend to think that the idea of governing bodies intervening on virtual communities and as a whole, the internet, are still absurd propositions, and that the gaming developers would have little more control than they currently have, seeing as they already place their demense's under stricter tariffs, stricter policies and stricter policing of their citizens.
i don't believe "federalizing" MMO's , i.e. applying "real" laws above and beyond the traditional terms of agreement for access, is going to really count as a positive or negative attribute, unless that "MMO state" is also being governed by a larger body, i.e. some weird kind of meta-state cyber-administration, where a social body over a certain size would be taxed, governed and policed like big business e.g. like finance companies, medical companies dealing with people, schools and other such social bodies.
of course that defies any current administrative or legal structure to even contemplate such a position, but it would also encompass the requisite nature of government to encroach and punish citizens to curb their action, as well as secure and mediate their actions. it would also allow items to be taxed and ratified as real assets, and perform all the notary functions of the federal government, i.e. taxing, monitoring, policing, denaturing, etc.
as for self-contained communities like MMO's, the guardianship and control is tacit and defined by the rules of the game, let alone agreements to legal terms of contract, legal conditions of access, etc.
players acknowledge that they don't have full access when they enter the game, since that is not the objective of the game. the challenge and purpose is to follow simple rules, purposeful roles, and have the players self-govern the environment on an individual basis, without falling into anarchic power-struggles, player-led dominions and despotic rules created and enforced by the cadre of elite players. sure, the creators require a certain elitist interaction with the players, but it shouldn't interfere or redirect players from trying to defeat an entrenched foe, that's quite often the whole purpose of the game in an MMO environment.
however, often enough the only tacit human experience comes from opposing the developers and arbiters of the environment, to subvert the roles and rules given to players. i don't consider that a bad thing in the game environment, since it comprises the entire scope of many MMO's, i.e. fighting the insanity of repetitive missions and absurd restrictions to achieve limited rewards, requires some kind of rebellion and an outlet for that rebellion is usually the figurehead designer and/or the enforcers of that control. creating a punishment, i.e. imprisonment / execution of that player should be up to that "MMO state", and not subject to peculiar federal laws and statutes on the nature of that relative punishment.
as to addressing the OP finally, accounting has it's role in business, but is the MMO environment necessarily aware of that accounting, or does it fulfill a role for others? if not why would it intervene in the activity of players ?
and as for title and ownership that occurs in virtual items, unless the MMO grants real title to the owner, i can't see it acting as a licensable, tradeable or agreed asset of that player, instead belonging entirely to the company, much like academic papers or research belong to the university or corporation hiring that person, sic. in the instance of property, doesn't the state also owns the land and the assets from which people purchase it ?
and perhaps, rewards also fall into that leased/owned relationship, it is attached to the agreement and the account is your connection to that IP and virtual property. it would be nice for MMO companies to grant physical reward i.e. profits, acclaim, notoriety, etc. but unnecessary too.
if players were to own their IP and VP outright, the MMO developer/corporation would just have to force people to contract their products or IP into the MMO in order to use it within the active MMO environment. or they could try becoming a 3rd party developer, trading their items outside the domain of the MMO, as many players do. trying to do this while inside the domain of the MMO, would likely become quite infeasible with the current state of property and IP laws, plus the burden of trying to compensate or pay IP owners.
in some ways, there should be some kind of legal and physical "threshold" for the sale or trade of goods for tax and control purposes, having this within the MMO corporation's environment in the case of Second Life, enables some kind of incipent control over the trading and consensual transaction of approved goods. but, as always, why would that be necessary ? if it turns out that virtual goods carry some actual weight in the larger national or international economy, i suppose it will be up to the federal government to implement it's own idea of taxing and relating IP ownership to actual ownership of property, i.e. further inflating the already plenipotentiary and highly absurd valuation of virtual assets of companies like blizzard who "own" the IP of 52 million "Flying Steeds (various)" est. @ $29.85 each.
Posted by: Michael Guy | Apr 09, 2008 at 08:31
I found this interview with the attorney from the player law suit against IGE: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/interviews/1220-Plaintiff-s-Attorney-in-Player-IGE-Lawsuit-Speaks-to-The-Escapis
This should probably be in another topic, but it kinda ties into this discussion as well. I'd really be interrested to get comment from Castronova about this one, if he's allowed to speak about another case related to IGE.
This is exactly the law suit that should have been filed all along. As they lawyer says in the interview, they are not attacking copy right or tax law, and cash penalties are only secondary to the injunction. I haven't seen a statement from IGE about it yet, but the plaintiff's side seem to have their ducks in a row.
Posted by: SVgr | Apr 09, 2008 at 11:35
I'm not sure that SL is relevant to the debate. In SL, the virtual "assets" are actually created almost entirely by the participants, the customers, the "players". In WoW, the Amazing Sword of Shiny epic weapon was made by Blizzard artists and programmers, and placed into a player's control either as a simple reward for acheiving something in the game, or by some random lottery.
Even EVE titans aren't anything more than the consequence of a bunch of people clicking on game interface stuff.
There isn't any player creativity in the gathering of either WoW or EVE assets. So ownership arguments are just around the value of prizes awarded. In SL, the ownership argument extends to intellectual property, and genuinely "player-created" content. Real government and laws are already in SL for that reason, not so with WoW or EVE.
The place to be looking might be those MMOs where you can pay real money to get better stuff. There may be a case for player-ownership there, because the ownership wasn't acheived from inside the magic circle, but from a real world exchange of money for assets.
In that sense, the original scenario presented at the round table may well be seen as a straw man that ultimately wouldn't be relevant except to people building RMT into their games.
Posted by: Ace Albion | Apr 10, 2008 at 05:14
To Ace Albion: Even if a player pays extra to the game company for bonus content, as in a free to play game, there still isn't an implied ownership of said 'item'. If the TOU and EULA says explicitely that all content is property of the developer then it is. Think of it like cable TV, which is also a subscription service. Just because a customer pays extra for a pay per view movie, that doesn't give them any ownership rights to resell their copy of that movie. In fact you can get in big trouble if you attempted to sell your pay per view movie on ebay. Why should digital property in an MMO be any different than digital property in another subscription service. As long as the service contract is written well, there should be no question about ownership or user rights and privledges. If the service agreement says that you don't own anything, and that there are rules about how you can and cannot use the service, then you are bound by those rules when you agree to the service contract. If the government ever decides to set into law some mechanism that makes video game services different than other services in terms of contract law, then it would be overturned immediately on the grounds of equal protection under the law as guaranteed by the US Constitution.
Posted by: SVgr | Apr 10, 2008 at 09:33
Of course, the example of frequent flyer miles complicates that picture a bit... :)
Posted by: Thomas Malaby | Apr 10, 2008 at 09:49
Not really. FFM's are an incentive, not part of the service you are paying for, and again the written terms of the incentive offer will say whether they are transferrable or not. Some airline tickets themselves are non-transferrable. If you sell a non-transferrable ticket to someone else then it's void because you broke your part of the service agreement. Airline service is actually a great comparrison because as you can see from current American Airlines flight cancellations, they don't even have to reimburse customers for failing to deliver the service because the service agreement that you make when you buy a ticket says that they don't.
Posted by: SVgr | Apr 10, 2008 at 11:19
Ace Albion>I'm not sure that SL is relevant to the debate.
It's relevant in that to a non-gamer judge out in the wilds, SL might look very much like WoW. We may get precedents set for game worlds based on what happens in non-game worlds (or in game worlds with commodification). Or, of course, vice versa: decisions aimed to protecting players in WoW could have a detrimental effect on virtual worlds like SL.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Apr 10, 2008 at 12:02
Richard Bartle: Are we heading for trouble, here?
No, because it hasn't happened in other comparable areas, so why should it happen with fictional play-pretend multi-user applications? It won't happen until after you get democracy in the building where you rent your flat...
But, I can see why non-fictional databases are regulated in some European countries, and why they should be regulated. As in: having the right to demand personal information to be deleted no matter what the database owner wants.
I can see why companies that pose as hosting companies should be regulated too. They aren't authors and authors that use them should have control over how their works are presented.
I think virtual worlds creators are shooting themselves in the foot by posing as service providers rather than publishers of artistic works. If they consistently insist on the latter they would get away with more...
Ola.
Posted by: Ola Fosheim Grøstad | Apr 10, 2008 at 12:49
@SVgr: The point was that FFM are pieces of code created by companies and tied to user accounts in a manner quite analogous to the accumulation of virtual stuff in MMOs, and more importantly that despite the fact that they were created by the airlines, the US government saw fit to recognize certain property rights in them for their holders independent of the contract between those users and the airlines.
Posted by: Thomas Malaby | Apr 10, 2008 at 14:05
Ola Fosheim Grøstad>I think virtual worlds creators are shooting themselves in the foot by posing as service providers rather than publishers of artistic works. If they consistently insist on the latter they would get away with more...
They are creators of artistic works, but for people to experience that work they have to operate a service. I agree that more should be made of the art involved in virtual world design, but then as a designer I would say that...
A naval architect puts art into the design of a cruise liner. The shipyards build to the specification and that involves art too, at the component level, although the emphasis is more on craft. However, when the customers start showing up for cruises, the emphasis shifts once more, to that of being a service.
Perhaps developers ought just to build virtual worlds, and sell them to other people to operate as services?
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Apr 10, 2008 at 17:11
I have no idea if those can be re-sold or not. I mean they can be sold by their owners, just like people can sell virtual gold. But I don't know if the Courts would protect those tickets as property with all the normal property rights associated.
I asked Benjamin Duranske about it a while ago in a comment on his blog, but he didn't respond.
My contention is that the Tolkien Estate is not the only stakeholder to worry about, especially in the case of fan re-writing of media texts. In the first place, I think that when something is experienced, an individual should be free to write about that experience. Virtual World/Possible World theory is really in its infancy and apparently not just with virtual worlds (I just read Punday's Creative Accounting, which gives some good pointers to literary thinking about this), and one thing that hasn't really been turned over much at all is the question of ownership of experience when in a virtual environment/virtual world (to my knowlege, please let me know if there's some work that has done so).The Tolkien Estate makes a business of selling Imaginary Entertainment Environments (Mackay) now that they've moved into RPGs and MMORPGs, and as such they make money off of their customers experience in the world they sell access to -- if I buy entrance to Disney World, can I write about my experience later? It's one thing certainly to read LotR and learn entish and decide you're going to continue JRRT's legacy -- but isn't it another to live in the Shire? I think for IP holders who wish for total control, there is a serious problem with the immersive/experiential qualities of the interaction. Even though there is a good case that fans don't consume media texts so much as actively engange them, a virtual world is more complicated by far, because it's lived -- to propose a world where people can't write about their lives (at least the virtual parts) because they place the lived and their neighbors are someone else's intellectual property seems dystopic at best.
I guess to a certain extent, it's a problem of desires at cross purposes -- the game designer wants to sell tickets to a carnival, but it's such a long and fun carnival that people end up living there. Who owns the carnival? Who owns the pleasure? Who owns the memories, and who has the right to tell them?
I realize that this is a tangent from your original concern, but it is important nonetheless - and it's a part of all this that seems legally murky to me, but obviously I'm not a lawyer... I'm aware of a couple things that are similar, but they mostly seem to be activist re-writing of pop culture icons (e.g. the Karen Carpenter movie made with Barbie dolls), so I'm not sure where it all stands.
Many are even more like those horrid housing developments where the Owner's Association assumes the right to be able to tell you what color curtains you're allowed to hang in a house that you own (and there's no question about that ownership being "real").This is the root of my problem with the Sovereign World assertion that so many games and designers of games cling to.
Posted by: Peter Hanley | Apr 11, 2008 at 16:55
1. I don't think it's fair to bag on lawyers (or law professors) for the idea of virtual property.
Players were and are the ones who wanted to buy and sell virtual world objects. Thus, players were and are the ones asserting the right to buy and sell virtual world objects. Sure some (or many) players and developers are against RMT, but to artificially set this up as an argument with players and developers on one side and lawyers on the other side is wrong, IMHO.
2. Please pay attention to Greg's comment about what the application of property law to virtual world objects would actually result in. I'm fairly conversant with most of the legal academic literature on virtual property out there, and I cannot think of any articles that advocate the type of absolute all or nothing rights system that Richard's hypo and most people seem to assume. Property rights almost always have limits and restrictions, and more than one entity can own rights in a single object. The same would be true of property rights in virtual world objects.
Posted by: Scott Boone | Apr 11, 2008 at 19:55
Peter Hanley>I think a better analogy would be the tickets you get when you play skee-ball or the ball-bearings you get from pachinko
The analogy I was making was with the strength of the "right" that players might have to virtual property, not the nature of the right itself. If the right was as weak as it is with people and deckchairs, that might be OK for some developers, but others would still be unhappy with it.
>In the first place, I think that when something is experienced, an individual should be free to write about that experience.
They are. Whether they are free to sell what they wrote, or otherwise to publish it, is another matter. Also, they don't necessarily write just about what they experienced, but add fictional elements to it, too. It's one thing for me to keep an online diary about LotRO which makes frequent mention of hobbits, but writing a novel that makes frequent mention of hobbits is using the Tolkien Estate's IP without permission.
>if I buy entrance to Disney World, can I write about my experience later?
Sure, but you can't use your visit to write fiction about Micky Mouse. Thanks to insane extensions to copyright law, Disney still owns that particular piece of IP.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Apr 12, 2008 at 10:52
Scott Boone>Property rights almost always have limits and restrictions, and more than one entity can own rights in a single object. The same would be true of property rights in virtual world objects.
OK, so can you tell me what are the minimum property rights that you'd like players to have? Then, I can tell you the likelihood that these rights would be acceptable to designers and developers.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Apr 12, 2008 at 10:57
This discussion is going in circles because it is impossible to assign "minimum property rights" that would be sustainable in every type of virtual economy/environment. As noted in previous posts, an environment with no user rights is a fallacy, as there are existing legal regulatory regimes in place, whereas absolute user rule would be wholly unworkable for developers. The definition of the "middle area" depends on the specific scenario posed by each world, or cluster of worlds.
Of course the legal rights (if any) to frequent flyer miles implicate different concerns than those to tickets yielded from playing Skee Ball. The considerations such as the user investment, user expectation, vendor investment and expectation, the contractual terms (if any), the context, the type of value (i.e. sentimental vs. real currency) in the toke, and so on, are different. We can find existing examples (like frequent flyer miles or Skee Ball tickets) that may match the scenario created by one or some virtual worlds, but the examples do not apply to all. Thus, it is quite easy to shoot holes in any grand brush stroke generalization about how "it should be" for every participant in every virtual world or how all players/developers may perceive the workability of a proposed property right.
It would be more constructive to draw the needed distinctions between the different environments and then discuss "minimum property rights" — especially since some virtual world developers already explicitly acknowledge some minimum player rights and others do not. Otherwise, the discussion is reminiscent of the crowds in the infamous Miller Lite commercials shouting "Tastes Great!" and "Less Filling!" back at each other :)
Posted by: Candy | Apr 12, 2008 at 18:07
Candy>it is impossible to assign "minimum property rights" that would be sustainable in every type of virtual economy/environment.
So, we have two things to be wary of, then:
1) Legislators might not be aware of this impossibility, and legislate on the basis of an overly-narrow view of what a virtual world is.
2) Legislators may be aware of this impossibility, but figure that it's worth losing a few outlying virtual worlds in order to increase the protection of players in the remaining virtual worlds.
>As noted in previous posts, an environment with no user rights is a fallacy, as there are existing legal regulatory regimes in place
I wouldn't say it's a fallacy. Players do have rights, yes, for example the right to quit, but these aren't necessarily property rights. If all the virtual property belongs to the developer, that can work just fine.
>It would be more constructive to draw the needed distinctions between the different environments and then discuss "minimum property rights"
I agree, but we'd still need to be wary of 1) above. It's not use our discussing these various nuances if legislators or judges are neither aware nor persuaded that different virtual worlds have different needs.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Apr 13, 2008 at 05:03
I agree that it's a fallacy to think that rights in every specific game world can be reasonably regulated by Government, however I think what Government can encourage is self-regulation (and if that fails, governmental regulation) along the lines of a reasonable framework of rights that consumers have when they buy access to virtual worlds.
This does not necessarily have to carry with it a "right" of RMT or any other game mechanic-related right; but many big game developers either have had or currently have policies that, while they may make things easier on the developers and in game employees, are essentially anti-consumer and/or violate basic civic/social rights or expectations.
I'm not an expert on this kind of policy or area of law, so I don't believe I could begin to draft it, but some basic things I'm talking about:
1) Right of basic but real arbitration.
That took longer than I wanted, but I wanted a good example that stresses how an ethic "developers own everything and get to do what they want" does not work when virtual worlds are as important for people as they've become. When you make a living selling community and social spaces, you have ethical (and probably legal) obligations that go beyond utility bills and checking the mail box for your rent checks.
I'm not arguing that developers shouldn't be able to ban or suspend accounts, or that there can't be reasonable limits on in-world behavior, just that there should also be the recognition that bans/suspensions can be more damaging than "not being able to play my game," and that developers should not have final, arbitrary, sovereign right to simply terminate accounts at their pleasure.
2) Basic rights need to be enumerated. Again, not a "right" to RMT or "phat lewtz" or trolling a chat channel with lewd trash talk but rather a common document describing the limits of developer/gm ability to prohibit behavior.
Incidents like Lambda v. Vivendi (right to disclose personal identification with real world groups -- ethnic, social, etc.) or the lawsuits against the sellers of "unauthorized" play guides are a good enough reference for why this is necessary, I think. Again, there can be reasonable expectations, but I think also GMs should not be able to feel that they can arbitrarily punish people simply because they don't personally like something about them.
Actually, that may be all that's really necessary.
I personally think that as long as it's possible in-world to trade items (and especially currency) there will be problems with black-market RMT, because people have an expectation of being able to make economic arrangements on their own behalf (and no matter what developers want, people tend to see wealth as wealth, and are not concerned about the ontological source of it's value (as long as they trust the value will maintain, of course)).
I personally believe that it is inevitable that someone will successfully sue a game developer over in-game currency resulting in the monetary value of virtual currency and goods being established via precedent; more importantly, I believe that game developers should be preparing for this eventuality by designing economies that are either resistant to or fully embrace RMT...but I've been wrong before, and I currently don't have anything beyond an ideological stake in the outcome, so...
So I guess I should stop there. =P
Posted by: Peter Hanley | Apr 14, 2008 at 09:59
Peter Hanley>I think what Government can encourage is self-regulation (and if that fails, governmental regulation) along the lines of a reasonable framework of rights that consumers have when they buy access to virtual worlds.
There's been talk for some years of having some trade body that represents virtual worlds developers, although we've yet to get one. If we did get one (and it could take a "put your house in order or we'll do it for you" threat from government to do so) then there would be a possibility of having some industry-standard set of best practices that member developers sign up to. However, I wouldn't expect this set of best practices to go anywhere near as far as some people want.
>1) Right of basic but real arbitration.
Yes, this is something that any wise developer would go along with anyway. However, as MMORPGs are played by gamers, you can expect them to try and game it. If banning 5,000 players means that you immediately get back 5,000 requests for arbitration - even from people who know they're guilty - then arbitration as a solution is no longer viable.
>I don't think on this site it's necessary to enumerate all the ways in which him losing his account would have been a real loss
Indeed. However, would things have been better if he'd had to stand in line with hundreds of actual gold farmers who were going to arbitration just to snarl up the system so it would be harder to ban their other accounts?
There are solutions to this, but they all have problems of one sort or another.
>I wanted a good example that stresses how an ethic "developers own everything and get to do what they want" does not work when virtual worlds are as important for people as they've become.
They were always that important to people, of course.
I don't believe that your friend's problem stems from the fact that developers are gods, though. They stemmed from a false positive in the developers' farmer-detection software. Unless banning people who break the game rules is not allowed, it doesn't matter who owns the character, it has to be banned.
Likewise, when the mistake is discovered, the wise developer would immediately restore the character, and perhaps award some form of compensation (so long as this effective admittance of error didn't open them up to a huge lawsuit). This is true irrespective of whether the developer or the player owns the character.
>developers should not have final, arbitrary, sovereign right to simply terminate accounts at their pleasure.
So if they want to close their virtual world down, how would that work? Do they have the final, arbitrary, sovereign right to do that? Or do they have to have a good reason acceptable to the courts?
>I think also GMs should not be able to feel that they can arbitrarily punish people simply because they don't personally like something about them.
They already can't do this in some countries. For example, if you created a virtual world in England and kicked people out of it for being Irish, you'd be breaking a bunch of anti-discrimination laws. That said, if you kicked someone out simply because you didn't like the cut of their jib, well, that's your right as a developer. You'd be stupid to do it, but there's no law against stupidity.
>I personally believe that it is inevitable that someone will successfully sue a game developer over in-game currency resulting in the monetary value of virtual currency and goods being established via precedent
When that happens, you can kiss goodbye to MMORPGs as you currently know them.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Apr 14, 2008 at 11:56
> I have no idea if those can be re-sold or not. I mean they can be sold by their owners, just like people can sell virtual gold. But I don't know if the Courts would protect those tickets as property with all the normal property rights associated.
> I asked Benjamin Duranske about it a while ago in a comment on his blog, but he didn't respond.
Sorry I missed the question - it's been a busy few months for me and I haven't been as attentive to comments as I sometimes am.
The answer is, basically, no, at least assuming that there's a contract between the buyer and the seller that says they're not transferable. You can contract away a right you'd otherwise have, and that, currently, is how courts would see this.
That's the crux of this question though -- whether courts or legislators will step out of that model in relation to virtual property eventually, truly breaking new ground. Joshua Fairfield has argued that they should, and there's good reason to think that will ultimately happen eventually, but I believe that will only happen in conjunction with something like Castronova's "interration" protecting play and social spaces that want to avoid the legal impact of "virtual property" from that impact. Otherwise, like Richard says above, games (and virtual worlds that want to reject RMT to encourage social experimentation, etc.) will simply disappear -- designers simply can't do their work if every gold piece and skill point represents potential legal liability.
Posted by: Benjamin Duranske | Apr 14, 2008 at 14:54
Laws could go all sorts of different ways and I suspect Blizzard is big enough to create a safe haven for the Gaming/entertainment product which is very different from the virtual world platform that is Second life. While it seems tedious to have the law involved, precedent might be found in "game show" regulations vs those for "reality entertainment" (Survivor and American Idol don't need to meet game show standards of competition).
Its possible that you could have the permissibility of RMT forced without creating property rights in the game items. Sales of accounts and in-game items could be seen as a service, not property.
Items and levels could be defined as "game position", an ephemeral and contextual state that will inherently be in flux as part of the product design.
Developers could maintain the rights to change items, drops, or shut down their game, but lose the right to treat players differently based on transactions outside the game.
I'm not saying that this would be good but a RMT doesn't need to mean all that Scott implies.
Posted by: shander | Apr 14, 2008 at 15:24
shander>I suspect Blizzard is big enough to create a safe haven for the Gaming/entertainment product
Perhaps, but is Second Life big enough to create a safe haven for the social world product? And what about intermediate products such as Project Entropia and Puzzle Pirates?
>Sales of accounts and in-game items could be seen as a service, not property.
I agree. If X "buys" virtual property from Y, then "buys" can be seen as just a shorthand for performing the service of issuing commands that effect a change of location of an object from one inventory to another.
>Developers could maintain the rights to change items, drops, or shut down their game, but lose the right to treat players differently based on transactions outside the game.
But what if players want to give up their right not to be treated differently, in order to get a better playing experience? After all, they do it in plenty of other games - bribing a boxer not to try too hard is going to land you in jail.
>I'm not saying that this would be good but a RMT doesn't need to mean all that Scott implies.
You're right, however then we're back to the question I posed the other Scott: what are the minimum property rights that you'd like players to have? Even a small subset might be unpalatable, too.
My own position, by the way, is that different virtual worlds have different needs, and what is necessary for one could be harmful to another. There's no need for a one-size-fits-all solution. If players want to run virtual worlds as a democracy, say, then sooner or later someone will create a virtual world that allows them to do just that. With tools such as Metaplace coming on stream, you might even be able to do it yourself. If other players prefer to have a feudal guild-and-gods system, fair enough, they should be allowed to play in such a world. There's no requirement that we have either one or the other, or any of the things in between.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Apr 14, 2008 at 16:08
Richard Bartle: I wouldn't say it's a fallacy. Players do have rights, yes, for example the right to quit, but these aren't necessarily property rights. If all the virtual property belongs to the developer, that can work just fine.
I was referring to "rights" in the generic sense, not property rights. I had Greg's "alarmist" post in mind (i.e. fraud, etc). My point was that users are not without any legal protections or rights, as in totally at the mercy of developers, and the same extreme is equally as unworkable if users had ultimate control. My apologies for not being clearer.
As far as your #1 and #2, I agree. With the greatest of respect (as I really enjoy reading your comments), it seems like this discussion is guilty of being overly broad if the goal is to achieve properly-tailored results.
Assuming they are not already aware, legislators and judges will not become aware or persuaded, unless they are educated. At the present time, the lawyers appearing to litigate these issues (sorry lawyer-haters) are the ones primarily educating judges. The lawyers are being educated by their clients, academics/hired experts, roundtables/working groups, personal experience and blogs like this one. Thus, I think it is important to keep drawing those distinctions to make them clear.
In order to get a recognized trade body, to avoid a draconian measure from the state or court, to address a solution that is not "one size fits all"…the discussions have to stop being "one size fits all."
That said, from a property right prospective, I would probably lump all MMORPGs together and advocate for no property rights period. I find the arguments otherwise unpersuasive, which is sort of why I am interested in how you draw your distinctions.
My breakdown of "one size fits all" would be at a higher level. Some of the examples, at least in my opinion, apply to virtual economies that I would not classify as MMORPGs, hence my comment re drawing distinctions.
Incidentally, the acronyms make me dizzy, so perhaps I am missing your meaning.
Peter Hanley: I agree that it's a fallacy to think that rights in every specific game world can be reasonably regulated by Government, however I think what Government can encourage is self-regulation (and if that fails, governmental regulation) along the lines of a reasonable framework of rights that consumers have when they buy access to virtual worlds.
I think the encouragement will need to come in the form of state regulation. Without some market pressure, there is no incentive for developers to make a change.
Posted by: Candy | Apr 15, 2008 at 01:00
Candy>My point was that users are not without any legal protections or rights, as in totally at the mercy of developers
OK, well I think we're in agreement there.
>it seems like this discussion is guilty of being overly broad if the goal is to achieve properly-tailored results.
I wasn't expecting any results per se, I just wanted to highlight the difference between what some people (players, academics, legal scholars) say should be (or is) the case and what developers believe the effects would be if those views held sway.
>I think it is important to keep drawing those distinctions to make them clear.
Me too. As interest in the field grows, we're getting a steady stream of lawyers (both practising and academic) taking an interest. On the whole, my experience of practising lawyers who specialise in this area has been that they have a very sound understanding of the issues (I was very impressed by Larry Walters at IMGDC, for example). However, that doesn't mean that newly-arriving lawyers necessarily have the full picture, and they do indeed need to do some reading first.
>That said, from a property right prospective, I would probably lump all MMORPGs together and advocate for no property rights period.
There are always property rights; the question is whether the players get them or the developers. Assuming by "no property rights" you mean "no property rights for the players", your solution is a reasonable one - although I'd maintain that developers should be able to opt out of it. Who knows what MMORPGs we may get in future, with different business models? I wouldn't want to restrain designer creativity by decreeing that you can't ever have a game world with player property rights.
In other words, let the developers draw the distinctions themselves - they're the one who know what their world was designed to support. We have this right now, but the distinctions are wrapped up in EULAs that aren't directly comparable with one another so it's hard to see which world allows what.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Apr 15, 2008 at 03:22
Peter Hanley>I think the encouragement will need to come in the form of state regulation. Without some market pressure, there is no incentive for developers to make a change.
Developers would counter that the lack of market pressure shows there is no need for change.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Apr 15, 2008 at 03:24
@SVgr- I don't disagree, but I think that any legal investigation into virtual property rights maybe would start with virtual property that was explicitly paid for (the +2 Sword of Shiny you can buy for $2.00 from the official game website to boost your game) than for random loot. It seems a more obvious place to begin.
@Richard Bartle, absolutely there needs to be a better understanding that virtual worlds are not necessarily closed gaming spaces, in much the same way that documentaries look like docudramas on TV, but aren't.
Posted by: Ace Albion | Apr 15, 2008 at 04:19
@Richard:
If they claim that, then they are only showing their ignorance of the limits of the market. It sure would be nice if the people who like to invoke market forces would actually *read* Adam Smith. The invisible hand doesn't (re)build levees (as he noted).
Posted by: Thomas Malaby | Apr 15, 2008 at 10:51
If you see the "+2 Sword of Shiny" as an object then you can start talking about property rights. Unfortunately, the thing you see as a sword is actually just computer code and artwork created by the game company. That particular sword is probably composed of several code objects that overlap with other objects in the game. For example the 3-d model may be shared with several other swords and the logical object that defines a 'sword' may be common to all 'swords' in the game. In the end, all you really purchased for $2.00 are database entries that tell the game engine that your account should display a +2 sword of shiney. I fail to see how you can own that database entry when you didn't create the code and you don't own the servers. The game company didn't even promise you that you could use the +2 sword of shiney for any specific period of time. They could even delete or change all +2 swords of shiney in the game at their discression. However that's where you start to get into the gray area where consumers protection laws take over. Not property ownership laws, just consumer laws that get into things like good faith, due dillagence, and reasonable effort (gray areas one and all). In Eve, when ships get blown up there isn't actually anything 'blown up' of course. The code and artwork that represented that ship still exists in its entirety, you just no longer have a database entry in your account saying that you can use one. Whether you paid $2 on Ebay or directly to the developer, you still never owned any of that code. Strictly speaking, you didn't even have a lease of that code.
Posted by: SVgr | Apr 15, 2008 at 11:10
After posting my last comment it occured to me that it may be more interresting or more useful to discuss what makes for a good TOS or EULA? Really it's the agreement between customers and the service provider that are really being questioned here, and it's the way those agreements are worded that we should scrutinize.
Posted by: SVgr | Apr 15, 2008 at 11:37
Richard Bartle:There are always property rights; the question is whether the players get them or the developers. Assuming by "no property rights" you mean "no property rights for the players", your solution is a reasonable one - although I'd maintain that developers should be able to opt out of it. Who knows what MMORPGs we may get in future, with different business models? I wouldn't want to restrain designer creativity by decreeing that you can't ever have a game world with player property rights.
Yes, I meant no legally cognizable right (i.e. something a user can sue over) beyond that which is contractually allocated by the developers via EULA. [Look, I wish someone would burn the bundle of sticks in the old-reliable property rights analogy :/]
Things change entirely if a developer does recognize an "ownership right" in the virtual objects, allows users to extensively generate original content or acknowledges RMT. Thus, I would categorize on that basis/the economy created by the developer — regardless of the type of environment. (In other words, the "property" might end up being a virtual sword worth $2.00.) I think the law should only intervene to protect the interests of the users over the protest of developers in those scenarios where the developers have already consented by way of their business model.
I am a "programmer gone lawyer," so my sympathies tend to lie with the developers. However, many of the complaints herein seem to come down to bad customer service, as you pointed out, not something screaming for a legal solution.
I guess if I were a MMORPG developer, I would be spending my time distinguishing my product from, for example, Second Life, so that I did not get swept up in state regulation.
Posted by: Candy | Apr 15, 2008 at 11:43
Hello everyone. I've been a lurker on this site (and many others regarding gaming) for some time. While I don't work directly in gaming, I have been working in software development for some 25 years.
I think many of you really underestimate just how much differently the users/gamers think on this topic than those on the developer side. Not a single one of my friends/co-workers/people that live down the street, think that RMT is wrong. Now I know that there are many haredcore gamers that consider it cheating, but mostly I've never met one of those in person. All the people I've met in person are going to continue to consider that their character is just that, their character. And one day they are going to be real ticked off when some developer tells them otherwise.
This is probably going to happen sooner rather than later too. When windows Vista starts turning peoples computers off, because it thinks they don't own the OS, people are going to start demanding that they be protected from this type of behavior.
They went to the store and bought the OS in a box. They installed it on their computer and now it says that they can just use it, but they don't own it. People will not be happy.
I love watching product managers now trying this line of reasoning out with some of our customers with new products that we have coming out. Customers just don't like it when buying turns out to be renting.
Gamers don't have the same ability to negotiate as big corporate customers do, but once enough of them are mad enough they will demand that something be done and in big enough numbers, they will find someone to listen.
Posted by: Scott | Apr 15, 2008 at 11:55
Scott>Not a single one of my friends/co-workers/people that live down the street, think that RMT is wrong.
So if a new MMO started up, and it had servers where RMT was specifically allowed and others where it was not allowed, then supposing you and your friends wanted to play this MMO, would you all go to the RMT-enabled servers? What, if anything, should happen to the people who engage in RMT on the servers that didn't enable RMT?
>They went to the store and bought the OS in a box. They installed it on their computer and now it says that they can just use it, but they don't own it. People will not be happy.
This is the way operating systems used to be sold in the old days, of course, where it could cost you tens of thousands of dollars a year to keep TOPS-10 on your mainframe. It died as a business model when companies broke ranks and started offering software (mainly Unix) for a one-off purchase price. If people do start complaining as you say, then the first thing we should see is the start of an exodus to Linux.
Likewise, if people do want RMT, then the first half-decent MMO that comes out which legitimises RMT will attract them in droves. If what you say about RMT acceptance among your friends is true, there's a huge business opportunity here for someone.
Given the current anti-game nature of many governments, I expect this is what would happen first, rather than some general protest to which they actually listened.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Apr 15, 2008 at 12:42
Richard> So if a new MMO started up, and it had servers where RMT was specifically allowed and others where it was not allowed, then supposing you and your friends wanted to play this MMO, would you all go to the RMT-enabled servers? What, if anything, should happen to the people who engage in RMT on the servers that didn't enable RMT?
I'm not entirely sure how to answer your question here. I think there would be a variety of responses; some would try them out just to find out what they are like, some of them wouldn't consider it a factor at all in making their choice, and some wouldn't because they would want to play on the 'regular' servers.
The second part of your question is a little easier. They wouldn't think that there should be any punishment for engaging in the RMT on the 'regular' servers. One reason for this is because they seem to have very little interest in how others outside of their various play groups, play the game. Personally, I've always been amazed at how many game players seem to care so intensely about how other game players, play a game. Overall, I believe that they consider RMT a legit seperate business and don't necessarily want it tied directly into the game. In almost all cases they use it as a service. Most of them have the skills necessary to try and exploit games if they wanted, but they would consider that cheating and too work like.
In every case I think the reason people use it is time based. One guy just wants to keep up with his wife, he travels a lot, she sits at home. So he pays a service to keep his character caught up. As I think about it more, pretty much every example for using RMT would be to make up for time that couldn't be spent playing the game.
I think that maybe the first decent MMO that comes along that doesn't use time as main focus of advancing will probably put a dent in the RMT business.
The OS example was just an example, although I think the move away from windows is already out there, it's just going to take the average consumer a while to catch on to the fact that their computer isn't actually their computer. It was probably a bad example to use because it is a much larger topic.
Posted by: Scott | Apr 15, 2008 at 13:27
>what are the minimum property rights that you'd like players to have?
No outright "property" rights. (and "like" isn't exactly right either)
But, after a huge time and emotional investment, players might be entitled to consumer protection rules that force operators hands in many ways. Freedoms and protections players get might start looking like property rights(especially if players can't be punished for using real currency buying/selling "services" that others perform free* for friends). Unfortunately many industries can get painted into corners by public policy rules.
The whole thing makes my head spin... I'll won't play devils advocate! I feel your pain.
* whats the quid-pro quo for leveling and giving gold to a girl-friend's avatar?
Posted by: shander | Apr 15, 2008 at 16:20
@Scott, who said: "One reason for this is because they seem to have very little interest in how others outside of their various play groups, play the game. Personally, I've always been amazed at how many game players seem to care so intensely about how other game players, play a game."
If how you play a game has no effect on my experience of the game, I truly don't give a fat rat's ass. But when it does, I do.
On the buyer-side of RMT, many folks just see it as a way to trade money for time, as you said. But to supply the game-goods, others need to do stuff that can have a real impact on all players. Gold farming can cause inflation, for example. If I want to play the game without RMT (either by choice or because I don't have the money to do so), and I have to play longer to earn more gold because of gold farming for RMT... that is an effect. Someone else has traded their money to gain time for themselves, but they have also cost me my time.
There's also the case of farmers who camp quest areas. They can prevent other players from playing the game the way it was intended.
My final beefs with RMT are more esoteric. I believe it is harder for designers/publishers to tune a game that's being played in ways that are explicitly outside their control. For example, if a certain class is tweaked to be harder to play because many/most of the RMT'ers are twinking that class and it seems (to the devs) that the class is too strong and/or easy... that will have a negative effect on development.
Lastly, I don't like to be lied to. If your character has 70th level gear and stats, there is a not unreasonable assumption that you are a 70th level player. RMT allows a player to behave as something they are not. Which sounds weird in an RP world... but is fundamental to the ideas of good role playing. I can imagine the consternation a new player in a live, pen-and-paper RP would have caused if he'd shown up saying, "I want to start with a heroic character, and I'll buy the GM pizza if he lets me." Bad, bad, bad.
I've got no problem with a game that specifically allows RMT. Then it's understood. It's planned for. It's designed into the model. All cool. The other? Not so much.
Posted by: Andy Havens | Apr 16, 2008 at 12:23
Scott>I think there would be a variety of responses; some would try them out just to find out what they are like, some of them wouldn't consider it a factor at all in making their choice, and some wouldn't because they would want to play on the 'regular' servers.
So what you're saying, then, is that even if a new MMO came out and it explicitly flagged its servers as "RMT is allowed" and "RMT is disallowed", your friends who see nothing wrong in RMT could well still play on the non-RMT servers.
OK, that's fair enough. The question the becomes: would they still engage in RMT, even though it was forbidden on those servers and even though there were other servers which embraced it?
>They wouldn't think that there should be any punishment for engaging in the RMT on the 'regular' servers.
Even though these servers were set up especially for people who didn't want RMT? And even though there were alternatives which did allow RMT?
Would it make a difference if the RMT servers were the "regular" ones, and the non-RMT ones were the flagged ones?
>One reason for this is because they seem to have very little interest in how others outside of their various play groups, play the game.
But surely there's a difference between "very little interest in how others play" and "deliberately playing on a server where people play differently"?
>Personally, I've always been amazed at how many game players seem to care so intensely about how other game players, play a game.
That's because they regard it as a competition. If you were in a competitive game (eg. poker) and your opponents played the game differently to you (eg. they showed each other their cards), would you care? What if your game was tennis and your opponent was taking steroids so they could hit the ball harder? What if it was baseball and two of your team-mates decided to miss the ball deliberately because they'd been paid by the opposition to do so?
You may not yourself care how other game players play a game, but plenty of people do care how other people play games that it's not some kind of weird, outlying condition. If they prefer to play with like-minded people, wouldn't you want them to have somewhere separate they can do this, so you don't get the hassle of hearing them complain so much about your playing style? Why would you choose to play in a world where you know (even if you don't understand why) the other players are going to resent you?
>In almost all cases they use it as a service. Most of them have the skills necessary to try and exploit games if they wanted, but they would consider that cheating and too work like.
But they're prepared to buy gold or whatever from people who do use exploits? Or do they only buy ethically-sourced gold?
>One guy just wants to keep up with his wife, he travels a lot, she sits at home. So he pays a service to keep his character caught up.
So let's suppose that this is such a common problem that the developers decide to offer a service whereby you can fill in a web page saying how many experience points or whatever you want your character to have, and what gear, and then you click a button and your character instantly gets the experience and the gear. Oh, and it's free. So now, your friend can come home from work, see his wife has got a few more thousand points in reputation for some faction or whatever, and just fills in the form, clicks the button, and voila! He's caught up with her. He'd like such a system, right? It costs him nothing to get what he's paying for at the moment, so why would he have any objection? And what about all those people who go out to work but are still too poor to pay someone to level their characters - they'd be happy too, because they could also keep up with their spouses.
Would such a game be viable?
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Apr 17, 2008 at 05:17
shander>But, after a huge time and emotional investment, players might be entitled to consumer protection rules that force operators hands in many ways.
This wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, it depends on what's involved. Laws that assume things about gameplay could be too blunt an instrument, though: saying that you're entitled to your character back if it is destroyed might make sense in WoW, where you're only going to lose it if someone hacks your account and deletes it, but it wouldn't make sense in a game world with permadeath, where you could lose it in the course of regular gameplay. It all depends on what's inside the magic circle and what's outside it. For non-game worlds, with no magic circle, it could be that consumer protection laws could happily apply to everything.
>* whats the quid-pro quo for leveling and giving gold to a girl-friend's avatar?
She gets to take half your virtual assets when you split up.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Apr 17, 2008 at 05:29
"Would such a game be viable?"
Uh, yeah, it's called Counterstrike.
I'd go so far to say it's not a game if there is no level field that isn't handicapped by time or chance. Games end and get reset. That's where the players who do not want RMT go, not to some world that thinks it's a never-ending game and tries to enforce stupid rules that nobody really knows about or agrees with anyway.
That's why there is no magic circle. The system is handicapped to begin with.
Posted by: robusticus | Apr 17, 2008 at 10:07
@Andy Havens who said: "There's also the case of farmers who camp quest areas. They can prevent other players from playing the game the way it was intended."
In all the years I've been playing MMO's I've very rarely seen groups that I could definitely say were farmers holding up my game play. I've had many other players, that I know for sure were just other players hold up my game play, but not farmers. The farmers usually keep moving from place to place, at least in the games I've been playing (mostly SONY games).
Sure I've seen groups of wizards in EQ2, and even back in EQ1, although one of those was actually a guy running 6 characters at once. (Way too much effort for entertainment there). But they don't cause me problems. I have a hard time thinking and talking about 'inflation' in a game, unless maybe it's EVE.
Is what they are doing really any different than one of my friends camping a drop in EQ1 while I'm at work and then calling me when the item I want finally drops, so I can log in the character I camped at the spot to loot it? Ok, so it cost me a couple of beers, but is that RMT?
@Richard who said: "That's because they regard it as a competition."
Nothing in EQ said it was a competitive game, unless you went to the designated PvP servers. The competition in this case is one sided, and is it really competition if one side doesn't know or care if they are in a competition?
As for your example of being able to choose the level and gear, why not? We often had PnP adventures where people had to level up to a certain level to start. Of course there, every adventure was pretty much a new one. While many aspects of the character were the same from one session to another (i.e. one guy always was a dwarf cleric etc.) each session started fresh. Heck, I even made a NWN mod that everyone could only wear leather armour, and could only have a rusty short sword, and that's all the loot that dropped besides gold. Of course the in game merchants only sold leather armour and rusty short swords. Did people want to play it? No. But it sure stopped the whining for a few weeks.
Back to Any who said: "Lastly, I don't like to be lied to. If your character has 70th level gear and stats, there is a not unreasonable assumption that you are a 70th level player." I don't really buy into this argument. Personally, I've seen many players get worse as the levels got higher and their character got more powerful. I can also speak from my own experience where, due to medical issues, I am not nearly as good a healer on my main character in EQ2 now as I was before. The medication I take makes me much too slow and woozy sometimes to be an effective player. So picking me based on gear would get me called an e-bayer I guess.
Posted by: Scott | Apr 17, 2008 at 10:27
Sorry, that was supposed to be back to 'Andy'.
Posted by: Scott | Apr 17, 2008 at 10:30
Scott>Nothing in EQ said it was a competitive game
That's right, but if people regard it as competitive (which is what achiever types do) then to them it IS competitive. This explains why they're annoyed when people pay money to get an advantage.
Now if you personally don't care about competition, but you know that there are people who do care about it, yet you deliberately play on their servers rather than the servers for people who don't care, and you purposefully break the rules of competition on those servers, then why would you think you shouldn't be on the receiving ends of sanctions for that?
>The competition in this case is one sided, and is it really competition if one side doesn't know or care if they are in a competition?
From the point of view of those who do regard it as competition, yes, it is really competition. If you don't care, why spoil it for those who do?
>As for your example of being able to choose the level and gear, why not?
Because then, why play?
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Apr 17, 2008 at 11:02
I liked the OS analogy, Scott. I do think all significant and interesting worlds will be regarded like that. Anything less is just posing.
How do you say, Leave the Grind to Heaven in Japanese? :)
Posted by: robusticus | Apr 17, 2008 at 11:34
@Richard: In general I would stick with the servers that fit my type of play. Now if many people I knew had already joined another server, I wouldn't really care which type it was and I would just join the one they are already playing on. That seems to be the case with many people. They will ignore whatever the label is and go where they know people. Of course, if you want to change later, it'll cost ya.
For myself, I've been finding that the competitive nature of other MMO players is starting to be a turn off for me. While I was getting radiation and chemo treatments I found that I could only really handle playing a trader character on SWG. As it happens now the only max level characters I have in anything are the traders in Star Wars. Who knew, I guess I did want to be Uncle Owen after all. It's also the only MMO I have access too right now that doesn't have raiding. Raiding was fun the first couple of times in EQ1 when it first started out, but then the whining started and I lost interest in that part of the game.
Regarding the choosing the level, my friends and I played many nights in EQ1 on test where you could do exactly that and had a great deal of fun with it. EQ1 tried out a lot of things that were good fun, but didn't last and other games have never tried. That's kind of a shame.
@Robusticus: 天に粉砕を任せなさい
Scott
Posted by: Scott | Apr 17, 2008 at 15:16
Scott>Now if many people I knew had already joined another server, I wouldn't really care which type it was and I would just join the one they are already playing on.
That's fair enough. However, what if this were a non-RMT server and you engaged in RMT on it? Would you think there was nothing wrong in that, or would you accept that there was perhaps something wrong but not care? Or what? And what should the developer do if your RMTing were detected?
>For myself, I've been finding that the competitive nature of other MMO players is starting to be a turn off for me.
This does happen to longer-term players. It has an explanation in terms of the Hero's Journey, but this probably isn't the thread to launch into it...
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Apr 18, 2008 at 11:36
@Richard who said: 'However, what if this were a non-RMT server and you engaged in RMT on it? Would you think there was nothing wrong in that, or would you accept that there was perhaps something wrong but not care? Or what? And what should the developer do if your RMTing were detected?'
I can give this a couple of answers. I wouldn't engage in it myself, but I'm sure most of my friends would. Based on previous conversations I've had with them on this topic I don't think they would care that there was a rule, and some would actively take steps to not get caught.
As for punishment, I think most of them would just get another account if banned, so I feel that the developer is kind of stuck there. As I said before, I think the money is there to be made and someone is going to make it.
I don't think the seperate servers idea would work in the long run, although Sony is claiming some success with the idea. I just think that many people engage in the activity but don't want to confess, even to their friends. I just happen to know a bunch of people that are happy to discuss the topic. Many of them have confessed to gliding their characters too. (Yet another variation on the topic). that's not too surprising though given they are mostly all very techinical so it was just too inviting to not play with that some.
Myself, I've yet to find a reason to open my wallet for something in a game. On the other hand, I probably pay for at least twice the number of game accounts than any of the rest of the gamers I know personally. So if I was going to get involved I'd probably gravitate to the farmer side of the coin. Be a seller rather than a buyer. I just think that the seller side is pretty well locked up by now.
On the other topic your probably correct, it's much too long a discussion to start here.
Posted by: Scott | Apr 18, 2008 at 15:05
Scott> Personally, I've always been amazed at how many game players seem to care so intensely about how other game players, play a game. <
As Richard says, some of that may be related to competition. But I think a more critical divide is the classic game or world focus. If you have any interest at all in the world the game is being played in, it immediately becomes obvious that how other people play is major determinant of how the world operates. At that in turn clearly affects how you react with the world. If you think how other people play doesn’t affect how you play, I don’t think you have been paying attention to the patch notes.
No matter how game oriented a VW development company is, some of the developers are aware they are dealing with a complex system where a change in one place has unexpected effects in another. That probably is the cause of the developer/player divide. The big picture is not usually the players problem, unless they choose to pay attention to it.
Personally, I’d rather play in a world where players did care intensely how other played the game. But I don’t see anything coming out that favors that viewpoint.
Posted by: Hellinar | Apr 21, 2008 at 13:21