Secondary Market Debate (Developer vs Seller)

[Multiplex]

http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm?loadFeature=1017&bhcp=1

That's a pretty good (albeit quick) debate betwen Brad McQuad (creator of EQ1 and Vanguard) Roger Kipe (owner of YourVirtualSeller) about buying game currency outside of the game world for real world money. It's kind of like a clash of the titans event that I found very interesting.

My opinion: I like secondary markets, if I invest time and effort into getting virtual items I should be able to do with them whatever I please.

It's simple for me:
1. X = # of hours to farm/get Super Uber Item of Doom (SUIoB)
2. Y = $$ per hour I make in the real world.
3. Z = X * Y, or real world money invested in getting the item.
4. N = Item Value on secondary market.

If Z > N by a good margin then I might just pay real world cash to get the item. If N > Z then I'll just farm it.

We all have our different reasons for playing MMOs though... For me personally I don't find farming for 10 hours to get that uber item to be a particularly rewarding experience... I am all about performance, reputation, and helping others.

/shrug

[Kernel Error]

The only differance i see between this and micro transactions is that the peeps that created the game are not getting a cut of the sales.

[Gruthar]

Well, the problem is also that now real world financial standing plays a part in games that a significant amount of people play to escape reality. I don't know if anyone else has played Project Entropia, but it was a game that had a built-in exchange rate between real money and ingame money. What I noticed is that generally the players with the largest disposable income were the most successful. Perhaps it was a problem with that particular game, but it didn't balance out the 'game zealots', it made them almost irrelevant. In games that are largely item-driven, secondary markets are definitely detrimental to gameplay, since it's almost like cheating to just buy your way to the top, no work required. In other games, where items do not play a crucial role, secondary markets are harmless.

The thing that disturbs me is that many people are paying to avoid playing the game. What kind of game design is that? If you don't have the time to complete a lengthy quest, that's one thing. But avoiding a pain-in-the-arse quest is entirely another... it bothers me that the term 'grinding' even exists. Secondary markets would not be an issue in a game that people truly enjoy playing instead of the treadmill variety so common these days.

[Tykwer]

yeah, finding that awesome item through your own adventures is why the game was made. i enjoyed the hell out of diablo 2 for the first year or so it was out because it was all about the quests, getting that sense of satisfaction when you're lucky enough to find one of those rare items, and, in general, PLAYING THE GAME! after a certain period of time, though, one started to get spammed to hell by people trying to sell their crap on EBAY and the only instances of the game were devoted to grinding, at which point i lost all intrest in the game. i must say, the first time i saw people trying to sell items on ebay, i thought "who is the complete f&$@ing moron who would pay real money for some bits of code on a limited online world which, if they played the game, they could get for nothing more than a little time?!" and my views of this subject have changed little to date. i still think if you pay real money for something in a game, other than the game itself, you're a foolish person.

it's like if you pay for pottery lessons and, instead of spending the time to make a good pot yourself, you just go out and buy one. i mean, you already payed for the lessons and the only thing between you and a pot you make yourself is the time it takes to get decent at it, but you go out and pay extra money to buy what your basically already bought, so you pay more money for less satisfaction. that's probably a bad analogy, but it was hastily constructed.

[Multiplex]

Well the sad fact is that most developers keep pumping out games with the same quest mechanics the end game raid scenarios lead casual players to get frustrated because:

1. All quests in basically all games are the same old "Go Here Kill This", "Go Here Get This", "Give This Item To This Guy", or my favorite "Go Kill XX number of YY Mobs"

2. End game raids usually require full raids (upwards of 24 people, depending of the game) and the loot is already rare. If you are going for an awesome Cleric breastplate, it may drop off a raid boss 1 time in 10 and you might be rolling against 4 or 5 other Clerics for the item if it does drop.

They need to come up with some more original material.


yeah, finding that awesome item through your own adventures is why the game was made.

If grinding for end game raid boss items over and over and over again were an "adventure" then I would agree.

[KrystalStarWolf]

People should think out of the box, cause end game content doesn't have to be grinding or fighting the same series of mobs or anything, like Vanguard has diplomancy and what not. Innovative ideas like that keep the games, well, interesting.

[Tykwer]

it sounds like you dont like RPGs and, more specifically, MMORPGs. the only one that i've played recenty that i enjoyed was dungeons and dragons online, but i dont think it has a lot of high end content (or at least, that's what it seems like to me from playing the 10 day trial twice.). i enjoyed it because the quests weren't at all like those in WOW. yes, killing 50 boars to get 5 tusks is boring. walking through a dungeon where at any time you could be hit with a trap, or cut off from your party by a door suddenly closing behind you, trapping you in a small room with some nasty baddies, on the other hand, was fun and exciting. perhaps because it was just a trial, i wasnt caught up in "man, i want that blade of ultimate slaughter so i can rip through these guys in one hit," and thus focused more on the interesting and enjoyable aspects of the game, but it was the same situation with the WOW trial, and i found that to be rather uninteresting.

really, it's the structure of the MMORPG. there isnt an "end" as there was in the old school single player rpgs where there's this long adventure with an ultimate goal, which, once achieved, ends the game, after which you can either start anew, or go find another game to play.

so when are you going to revolutionize the RPG genre so i can get back into them?

[Multiplex]

Well, if I didn't like those kinds of games I wouldn't have spent years playing EQ1, Dark Age of Camelot, and EQ2... along with a very distant and unrelated Diablo and Diablo II.

:)

[Tykwer]

I really don't like the current XP rate, leveling is horrendously slow as per Braid McQuaid's "vision" of a difficult MMO. I personally don't equate time consumption with difficulty... so this is frustrating and pointless for me. It's the biggest drawback of the game atm...

put that way, i can see your point, but i think it only improves my case that you dont actually like MMORPGs, despite what you say :baeh:

why isnt it easier (read: faster) to level, do quests, and get those uber items? because they're charging you money per time you play. the longer you play, the more money they rake in. while it may be long, tiresome, and frustrating to you, it's quite profitable to them, our corporate overlords. why would they make it super fast to do and get everything if it cut into their profits? i remember hearing someone say "game makers are making games to make money," but if the game is made more profitable at the expense of the fun derived from playing it, wont they, in seeking to make more profit, make less?
i quoted you in this thread cause i didnt wana hijack the other thread, but i may have just hijacked this thread :dunno:

[Mad5cout]

The bottom line is that we all "sign" or accept a license agreement with the producers of the games when we load them on our computer acknowledging the fact that everything in game is technically the property of the developers. Regardless of your opinion, this is legally binding. This makes the sale of virtual items in a secondary market illegal.

I liken it to the sale of someone elses intellectual property. If you buy a book, you cannot sell the ideas in it off as your own. Now the knee jerk reaction would be, "well you can sell the book!". Indeed, and you can sell your copy of the game, too. What is not right is selling the ideas and contents withing the game as your own property.

When you spend time reading a book, you don't earn the right to call the ideas your own simply because you speant the time to read it. Likewise, you do not gain the right to "own" the developers intellectual property just because you speant the time to farm the item online.

Anyway, regardless if you agree with this viewpoint, the first paragraphs statements hold true and it harldy matters what the semantics are. If I sign a contract with someone stating I will not sue them if they kick me in the balls repeatedly, they could in effect kick me in the balls repeatedly because the contract is legally binding... period.

[Multiplex]

The bottom line is that we all "sign" or accept a license agreement with the producers of the games when we load them on our computer acknowledging the fact that everything in game is technically the property of the developers. Regardless of your opinion, this is legally binding. This makes the sale of virtual items in a secondary market illegal.

I believe that the guy representing the owner of VirtualSeller has a great point: if the developers had a leg to stand on they would have already taken them to court over it.

They haven't gone to court because they are afraid that they'll lose.

[StevenNevets]

Who cares if you make more money in real life... It's a game just play it or don't.

You make more money in 2 hours then watching a 2 hour movie, does that meen you should pay a little less then your 2 hour fee and have someone summarise the story?


You're missing out on the experience and avoiding the point by buying items.

[Multiplex]

It is no longer "an experience" whenever it gets ridiculous. Sometimes the casual player has to step up and take matters into his own hands if he wants to stay half-way competetive.

Example: In DAOC if I want a Leviathan Belt I need to get 3 or more full groups of people together to do a Levi Raid. Leviathan usually doesn't drop the Belt... and when he does everyone who wants one (which is about everyone) will have to roll on it. That means I may have to organize all those people and go on Levi Raids every night for 2 or 3 weeks straight just to get that item.

OR, I could just hop on http://ige.com and buy 20 plat for 8 bucks and buy myself a Levi Ring.

Hrm... tough choice and again, I'm not one to confuse Difficulty or "The Experience" with Tedious Time Consuming Crap.

I play for the group dynamic, the guild experience, to explore, and to gain reputation for being good at my class. I don't play for "the grind."

[Gruthar]

Hrm... tough choice and again, I'm not one to confuse Difficulty or "The Experience" with Tedious Time Consuming Crap.

I play for the group dynamic, the guild experience, to explore, and to gain reputation for being good at my class. I don't play for "the grind."

I agree with Multi here. There's no 'experience' in doing dungeons over and over again. Hell, any repetitive task you have to do to level up is tedious. So, you're paying to avoid the tedium. It doesn't reflect well on the game, but I don't see anything ethically wrong with that. You can then move on to the more enjoyable parts of the game and get back to having an 'experience' that doesn't have you pulling your hairs out.


The bottom line is that we all "sign" or accept a license agreement with the producers of the games when we load them on our computer acknowledging the fact that everything in game is technically the property of the developers. Regardless of your opinion, this is legally binding. This makes the sale of virtual items in a secondary market illegal.

I liken it to the sale of someone elses intellectual property. If you buy a book, you cannot sell the ideas in it off as your own. Now the knee jerk reaction would be, "well you can sell the book!". Indeed, and you can sell your copy of the game, too. What is not right is selling the ideas and contents withing the game as your own property.


I would argue that since neither the owner of said item nor the buyer ever claim to have ownership, the EULA is not violated. An item is merely a piece of code in a big database that is attributed to your account. You're not selling the code itself as your own, nor does the person you sell it to claim the code as his/her own. You are merely going in and changing who this little piece of code is attributed to on the code level. I'm no lawyer, but this to me constitutes a service as opposed to a transfer of ownership, and is therefore not in violation of the EULA. At no point does the company lose ownership of the item, either in the virtual world or on the code level. It can delete the item and you'd be SOL. In order to infringe on intellectual property, you'd have to do something like decompile the game and then sell it or portions of it as your own.

[Tykwer]

why not just make an rpg where when you buy the game, you literally buy every single item in the game which allows you to outfit your character with any item of your choosing at any point in the game as well as the ability to choose what level you are? i mean, why waste that time playing the game when you could just by an account which has already finished the game? oh wait, because then you're not playing an rpg, you're playing nothing but a "hike through a digatized world" game. sounds boring to me. ok, so you have to do one dugeon multiple times to get one specific item...so what? do you need that specific item to play or enjoy playing the game? im pretty sure you can go through any rpg without getting those super rare items. i dont think every player in the game should have immedeate access to those super rare items. why not instead of paying real world cash for that item, barter for it with the rare items that you happen to find? that actually makes the game WAY more interesting. instead of every kid on the block having exactly the same gear, there might be some variation between characters. those items are rare for a reason and you should be lucky to get them. luck...given that the chances against finding the item are so high, managing to find the item is that much more rewarding. trading what you do have for that which you wish to have is als much more rewarding then going on ebay and buying an item.
i know, you CANT play any game without having the best gear in it, but you cant play the game to get the gear because that's too boring. so to enjoy playing the game, you dont play the game.
if you're willing to waste your money on bits of code you already payed for, go ahead. i cant stop you.

[Gruthar]

why not just make an rpg where when you buy the game, you literally buy every single item in the game which allows you to outfit your character with any item of your choosing at any point in the game as well as the ability to choose what level you are? i mean, why waste that time playing the game when you could just by an account which has already finished the game?

People do buy and sell accounts like that. I wouldn't do either (or buy/sell items for that matter), but there are people who want to get another end-game character without having to go through the entire game again. There is such a thing as endgame gameplay, and some people prefer that to the rest of the game.



do you need that specific item to play or enjoy playing the game? im pretty sure you can go through any rpg without getting those super rare items. i dont think every player in the game should have immedeate access to those super rare items. why not instead of paying real world cash for that item, barter for it with the rare items that you happen to find? that actually makes the game WAY more interesting. instead of every kid on the block having exactly the same gear, there might be some variation between characters. those items are rare for a reason and you should be lucky to get them. luck...given that the chances against finding the item are so high, managing to find the item is that much more rewarding. trading what you do have for that which you wish to have is als much more rewarding then going on ebay and buying an item.


Sure, you don't absolutely need a rare item, but they make certain tasks easier. Making them easier makes the game less frustrating, and less frustration leads to a more enjoyable experience. You can get back to playing the parts of the game you enjoy instead of farming. I don't believe you should be forced to slog through crap because it's perceived as the 'proper' way to do things. Furthermore, simply because the items are listed on a secondary market does not make them any less rare. They are still difficult to find - the difference is that they are publicly listed. This is no different from ingame auctions. As far as trading the items ingame for other rare items or game money, that can take considerable amounts of time, time that not everyone has or is willing to commit. Lastly, finding a rare item on your own is not necessarily rewarding. If it happens spontaneously, sure, I'm delighted as hell. If I spent weeks trying to get a particular item, I'm just glad it's over with.



i know, you CANT play any game without having the best gear in it, but you cant play the game to get the gear because that's too boring. so to enjoy playing the game, you dont play the game.
if you're willing to waste your money on bits of code you already payed for, go ahead. i cant stop you.


Again, a game that leads you to pay money to skip the crappy portions is not a good game. As I said, a truly enjoyable game would have a much more limited secondary market since few would mind putting in the time to get these items. Nevertheless, I don't see a problem with people willing to pay money in exchange for not having to do tedious work.