The MMO Money We Talk About, (Isn’t) The MMO Problems We See
The year was 2004 and some friends introduced me to the first video game I’d played since owning an Atari 2600 in the late 70s. The game was called City of Heroes – an online, virtual world where you were able to slap on a cape and use your super powers to be a do-gooder. I was quickly hooked and much preferred interacting real-time with thousands of other people playing superhero to spending my time planted in front of the TV being force-fed mindless glop like American Idol.
In City of Heroes, I quickly realized an aspect of the game that I never expected - social competition very similar to team sports. Success is dictated by a single term – the more time you have to spend improving your character and earning in-game wealth; the more successful you are perceived to be. At least I thought that was the case until I learned the dirty little secret of the MMO – gold farming and grey market currency sales. Organized groups would essentially hire workers to grind day-in/day-out for whatever currency a particular MMO featured and then turn around and sell it online to other players willing to pony up real world cash. While the premise of using actual money to artificially advance one’s online status seemed rather mundane in 2004, today it is an affliction for the video gaming industry that everyone is trying to solve and profit from.
I will admit that when I made my first (and only) in-game, real to fabricated money exchange, it had all the glamour and class of a sketchy drug deal. I used my credit card online to purchase ‘Influence’ points and then met some random, in-game character in a seedy and poorly traveled part of “Paragon City” to do the ‘hand-off.’ I felt dirty and even though there were no ‘rules’ against it, everything about it seemed counter-culture; like renting a Lamborghini for a day and telling your friends you bought it. But… for $34.99 my character instantly advanced as if I’d put in another 50 hours of my time earning it myself and my in-game status took a major leap forward.
Fast forward to 2008 and gold farming in the MMO space has been included as a topic in such mainstream publications as Newsweek and Businessweek. Now in my 3rd year of playing World of Warcraft, I couldn’t fathom supporting the gold farming community because in-game ethics are now very well established and understood in the mainstream. Constant reminders of this epidemic come via annoying in-game spam, social pressure to not ‘cheat,’ and fear of having gaming privileges revoked for disavowing a game’s end user license agreement. How times have changed in just a few short years.
As fate would have it, this week Access Communications helped launch a very exciting company called Twofish, Inc. that will empower video game publishers with the tools to better handle in-game item sales and control supply and demand in this new world economy. Rather than letting the players have the control over arbitrage, video game publishers will be the ones to regulate and profit from in-game item sales instead of sweatshops selling currency illegally on the grey market.
The idea of a ‘virtual economy’ will soon cease as we know it because it is indeed becoming a ‘real economy’ which will follow the laws of pricing driven by supply and demand. Eventually – many believe – even taxation of virtual goods will occur and everything we see in the real-world economy will transition to this new frontier. And for some gamers like me, who are short on time – having these options available will drastically open up our video game experience as we are able to spend less time 'grinding' and more time 'enjoying' the content. Even today, co-workers often tease me (and I love it) about the amount of time I spend playing massively multiplayer games in spite of the fact that video game public relations is Access’ forte. I just smile and take the brunt of the joke but secretly wonder when they’ll be able to apply their beloved “America's Next Top Chef/Model/Idol time” to something business related like I am currently able to do. It is so nice to get paid to do something you truly love.
