Please don’t misunderstand, Jeff. I’m trying to point out that the approach of trying to stop RMT via EULA creates an unenforceable nightmare, precisely because it comes down to detecting motive, which is a losing battle.

As Randy Farmer pointed out in his “KidTrade” exploration, RMT is reliable and systematic twinking writ large. That’s why I’m approaching the problem in largely the same way that PvP and non-PvP are handled today… by code enforcement. The design on my current project handles (I believe) the prevention of RMT arising, while preserving the ability yo make reasonable gifts between players, keeps an in-game currency, utilizes a rich and intimate crafting system, has economic mini-games, and now even re-allows buying and selling of items in an auction format… while still preventing the out-of-game sale of currency and items, and preventing alternate currencies from arising as well.

If we as developers feel so strongly about providing an RMT-free environment (for customers who want it) that we’ll write EULAs that enforce account closures against those who do so, then it’s high time that we show that segment of our customer base that we’re truly serious… and give them a fun enviroment where the game’s physics stops the practice of unbalancing power transfers for any reason. And it has to be for any reason, because we’ll never know the motivations behind all seriously unbalanced gifts between characters.

they stated that they wished they started swg with station exchange.

Fine, sure, throw one more feature in there why not.

Oh I’m sure I would have been enlightened, I think his video footage is great and his project interesting. If there is a transcript/link to the talk I’d be interested in reading it.

I think the most important thing about Station Exchange, and the reason that this whitepaper is so helpful in showing how publisher-controlled RMT can work, is that the Exchange servers are seperate from the regular play servers. You choose if you want to condone this type of thing by playing on them or not. When the choice is available, we can argue morality all day long, but the end result is that if you don’t want to deal with it in your local game, you don’t play on an Exchange server.

…and combining this with game designs that actively thwart commidification attempts (in code), we can offer an entire spectrum of playing experience: from code-enforced prevention of unbalanced power transfers, to standard rulesets, to Exchange-enabled servers, and even publisher-direct sales of gold/items/characters.

Players can then not only self-segregate, those that dislike the impact of RMT can play in an environment where it is actively prevented.

@Bissrok

I remember when Station Exchange was first announced, about 30% of the people in our guild hated the idea and thought it was giving into the bad guys, another 30% didn’t care, and the remaining 30% said “that’s cool, maybe I could make some money”.

So there you go.

As for safety, it only takes getting burned once to make a player crave a safe alternative. It would be really interesting to see a followup on this whitepaper next year, and see what’s changed.

By the way, please define a “real game”. I don’t like WoW, I think it’s far too simplistic and easy, and lacks any sort of real challenge. Yet I would still consider it a “real game”. Heck, Runescape is a “real game”, even though I cringe when I realize just how many mid-teens are playing it because of the low cost.

“do you enjoy having to EARN all the stuff you accumulate
in game? do you work hard at it? how would you feel to know people
could go around your local crafter or hard work to “achieve” goals?
the main thing that keeps people playing mmos and grows a community
is a player based economy, which is tied into decay,debuffs,etc.
an “official store” leads to eliteism in my eyes.”

As a gamer yes, actually I do enjoy crafting and economic aspects of MMO’s, and I agree with you about what grows an economy as well as longevity of items “decay” being an intrinsic part of economic activity or rather keeping “stickiness” with the gamers who play.

What I dont enjoy is gold farmers ganking players to maintain thier gold farming activity.

What hurts gamers and game companies are sites like IGE and farmers who send you in game mail “gawld-4-12.99″

Would you have overt “elitism” (thats a loaded term) with control mechnisims in place or those who will use the black market to circumvent your hard work weather you like it or not?

You cant have it both ways, and one way is much better than the other…

In one case you can use legitimate channels to try and effect change, in the other you have ZERO control, the latter option is good if you just want to keep your head buried in the sand and not have to bother trying to do anything to help change the system.

“Plus, to beat the gold farmer’s prices, they’re going to drop their’s to almost nothing. If they don’t, it won’t hurt the farmer’s business. If they do, it’ll kill the economy.”

If the currency is allowed to float (meaning no controls and a free market) then buyers/sellers will set the prices, and GF will have to sell at a loss related to investment of time (or rather they make less) OR they will sell at the same or similar market rate. Then it becomes an issue of who the buyer wants to use:

You can use a safe SE like system
OR
Gold Farmer site #3,456 that might rip you off

And which one will provide you with CS and a remedy in case there is an issue in the transaction?

IMO Gold farmers are active in games where the time/profit ratio is highest (WOW, L2) and the system can be gamed the most (Macros, 2-3-4 boxing) by running multiple accounts, not in games where a free market economy sets prices. What’s going on here is SE co-opted the GF system of exchange by legitimizing it and making it safer for gamers who are going to buy items/gold/accounts anyway.

They might have even increased demand for crafted items from players, thats good for gamers who craft, good for gamers who buy crafted gear, bad for farmers who spend time killing for loot drops, and the barrier to entry to prevent a flood of crappy items from GF who do craft:
$1.

$1 in the US compared to most countries where GF is prelavent is a VERY HIGH barrier to entry. $1 to a 23 year old US college student or a 37 year old professional who enjoys crafting? Not so much.

@Amaranthar

I agree with what you posted, safe RMT should be the end goal for gamers and designers and game companies, everyone knows its going to happen it doesnt matter if people “like it” or not, all that matters is if people are willing to do something about it by keeping a dialouge open, making sure it’s a level playing field and the system in place is well designed.

As you say economy for MANY players is not a “feature” it IS however the deciding factor on if those gamers will bother playing a game at all, and if that game economy is amenable to gold farming why invest the time and effort in the game at all?

However, what of a system where RMT is an intergal part of the design from the outset, where transactions are safe, and in the case of SE where people can even earn significant money IRL from thier activity (again without selling to and encouraging or supporting a black market).

Thats good for gamers, good for developers, and good for a game companies bottom line (which makes it good for gamers in the long run).

For the record: I am not a SOE fanboy, in fact as a gamer SOE has a way to go before they get my loyalty back as a customer but at least they seem to be trying more lately, and at least they are being proactive about a big issue, as a consumer/gamer I applaud them for this and I hope they keep at it.

Plus, to beat the gold farmer’s prices, they’re going to drop their’s to almost nothing. If they don’t, it won’t hurt the farmer’s business. If they do, it’ll kill the economy.

I dunno Bissrok. Don’t the sellers set the prices? That still can lead to what you are suggesting here, though. But I don’t think it’s so much about fighting the farmers as to give average players a safe way to trade in the RMT. They only made a little under 300k in the year. Yeah, this would likely grow, but still it’s pretty small compared to everything else. I don’t see profits as a viable driving force yet. However, safe RMT is huge for the gaming industry, and much more likely to be the force behind it all.
But still, how will it affect the games economy, this is an even bigger question for games that actually want a good economy. I don’t think any of these current games do. It’s just another “feature”. Otherwise they wouldn’t have gone with the level grind build, because that doesn’t really work for anything else, whenther it’s PvP or economy.

But if there was a game that really wanted a deep and functioning economy tied to the game world, then this is quite an important question.

Um…Whoa…hold on…Smed it’s going to be difficult for gamers to hold an illogical grudge against you if you keep talking like that….

hard? not really. do you enjoy having to EARN all the stuff you accumulate
in game? do you work hard at it? how would you feel to know people could go around your local crafter or hard work to “achieve” goals?
the main thing that keeps people playing mmos and grows a community
is a player based economy, which is tied into decay,debuffs,etc.
an “official store” leads to eliteism in my eyes.

From the Gamasutra Interview:

Smedley: “(rather than gold farming) Make it about creativity. Make that the source of rarity. Then I think we’re on to something huge.”

Um…Whoa…hold on…Smed it’s going to be difficult for gamers to hold an illogical grudge against you if you keep talking like that….

raph are you planning a “areae exchange”?

Whoa. Sorry. You updated while I was writing my comment, somehow. Are you sure you shouldn’t be PsychicPenguin?

“The majority of active SE buyers and sellers – close to 18% in both categories — are based in northern California.”

I better close my virtual sweat shops and move to China pronto!

@Raph:

I might have missed it but did they address if the SE servers have less/same/more gold farming?

I thought it was interesting, that they cited registration as a barrier to entry, that enabled a “trust” based system of commerce, SL could probably take some lessons here…

It’s also interesting that the ROI seems to encompass not only the revenue generated but the cost savings associated with reduced CS demand. They could have applied some cost metrics related to this and given a total sum ROI for the company as a whole, I imagine the cost saving of having 20 CS reps rather than 30 is pretty significant.

Also it looks like they could improve margins, reduce costs to players and increase profit by:

Increasing the number of SE servers
Making SE a cross server market

Overall a great paper, I would love to see a dump of the raw data to play around with. That would be some mucho-pivot-table fun….

Anyhow I’ll give Sony a grats on this one for validating what players already know: RMT is going to happen anyway, and players would rather it be sanctioned, and facilitated by the game company.

It also looks like they got the system balanced, fair and well designed programatically based on thier reported data.