[...] weeks ago I ran into Raph Koster’s website, mentioned on gamasutra.com. Raph was having a lively debate with someone named Tobold over the elimination of RMT (Real Money Transfers) from WoW, and how you [...]

Trade is a motivation and opportunity for social contact. Think of crafters building relationships with clients in these games.

A personal example, while I played WoW, one character was a Warlock who took Engineering as his trade skill. Now, with Engineering, one low-level item you can make is EZ-Throw Dynamite, essentially an Engineering explosive usable by non-Engineers. I made *tons* of the stuff, and tried to tip people in dynamite on *every* trade I made (even for stuff like summoned water). Believe me, socialization resulted muchly.

(I’m an RPer. The character was a worshipper of the Church of Boom. Dynamite made the world a Better Place.)

So you have ingame currency and people who want more of it. RMT as a result, with the ongoing (and recurring) talk of restricting how it moves between characters, and why:

Peter S. wrote: replace “RMT” with “Class Balance” conceptually.

Thank you for helping me realize I wasn’t the only one espousing the “keeping up with the Joneses” angle.

Richard Bartle wrote: Trade is not socialisation, it’s trade. You can socialise just as much as you could before; what you can’t do is trade with random people. OK, so perhaps public auction houses can be allowed, if you want to help solo players (it won’t bring in that much more RMT).

But then you’re down the path of listing useless items with inflated prices to complete the RMT transaction. And you’ve got your data monitoring algorithms trying to find the patterns and collecting the batch of this-month’s permaban-ees. It’s really no different than what current happens except you’re proposing to moving the direct inter-character trade function to guilded-only members (which really would only extend the time of the transaction from “get 1,000 gold now” to “get 1,000 gold in a week”). And more restrictions does impede socializing in some ways, because the harder something is to do, the less likely it’ll happen (heh, epiphany). Gifting your friends who just joined the game with gear or gold is the same thing really, a way to help them out, brag about your achievements, show them their own futures, all rolled up into a single gesture.

Slyfeind wrote: If a game is fun, then nobody would RMT.

RMT is not about buying fun nor getting around boredom. It’s about jumping a specific hurdle to continue why you were there in the first place. Raph’s started a new post about strategy guides, which I’ll be reading next (long holiday = lots to catch up on). But to me, RMTing in this regard is something similar to strategy guides. Most people do not follow a step-by-step guide to getting ahead in a game (unless they’re on their third alt). They use the guides to get over a particular hump, a raid boss, a quest location, etc.

I’d love to know how much a person is a repeat RMT-er, and why (if at all, and outside those games built on microtrans).

2. Other folks have more money than time (anyone who buys in RMT)

3. Trading is fundamentally fun, as its just a kind of social interaction

4. Games can basically reward skill or dedication, and most MMORPGs today lean towards dedication (aka time)

So RMT just makes obvious the tradeoff between time and money. So this upsets the people who actually had the dedication/time originally, as it appears to dilute/debase their achievements. What can a deisgner do?

1. Design so that both the purchaser and the non-purchaser have a fun levelling progression. Let the paying guy advance through your content 2-3x as fast, but not 100x. Don’t abandon level limits or skill requirements to use dropped items. In this way the paying player is forced to play through some content (presumably they are also there for the fun of playing) and the non-paying player feels that they have still achieved something.

2. Design so that you can gain convenience and efficiency by paying, but not status. Some things need to be reserved for those who put in the time.

3. Design so that other players cannot get annoyed at whatever the paying guy is doing. In Korean F2P FPSs, typically the best selling item is a scope/targetting reticle enhancement. The guy who guy got shot doesn’t know if his enemy has skill or purchased assistance, but the purchaser does. This sort of asymetry helps both sides have fun.

4. Design multiple systems of success. Maybe having an active guild gains you a glowing halo around your head. Maybe exploring far and wide lets you learn unique emotes. Maybe being and active merchant gains you unique and temporary pets. Diversify away from the unilinear goal of “level 70 > level 69″. If we reward the players for it, they will do it.

I’m all for RMT, personally and professionally, and cannot wait for games to be better designed for the opportunities this presents.

Trade is not socialisation, it’s trade. You can socialise just as much as you could before; what you can’t do is trade with random people. OK, so perhaps public auction houses can be allowed, if you want to help solo players (it won’t bring in that much more RMT).

Richard

… unless you want to address my concerns directly.

*ahem* Thought experiment. *cough*

Addressing your concerns means adding more variables to the experiment. You are deliberately making the experiment more complex. In the experiment, there are no telephones, instant messengers, bulletin boards, e-mail, or snail mail. You only have the facts of the experiment with which to work. That’s why I shared that uncritical inference test with you.

Many people, including myself, when first given the Trolley Problem will want to rationalize the situation, creating ideal circumstances and solutions to avoid making a self-affecting decision. Since I’ve repeated the same philosophy courses several times—my philosophy professors hated me—I’ve heard plenty of ways out of the problem. “Put up a barricade. Drain the fuel. Remove the wheels. Collaborate with others to remove the people from both tracks simultaneously. Kill the one guy because everyone hates him! Nuke the city and destroy civilization. Why would five people be stuck on trolley tracks anyway?”

The truth is that you’re not confused. You’re just missing the point of the experiment. People act in ways that can be perplexing to others. A good example are people who play massively multiplayer online games alone, avoiding contact with other people whenever possible. We could be talking about this subject over pizza, but we’re using Raph’s blog. We could be calling each other up, but we’re not. We could be instant messaging, but we’re not. Bulletin boards, e-mail, and snail mail are also available to us, and yet, we’re not using them! That doesn’t mean we’re ignoring reality. We are reality. We are stranger than fiction.

So, personally, I think the goal could be stated as crafting new (hopefully better) answers to these questions in the design of our games. Does that echo anyone else’s thoughts?

Precisely! No reason to gum up a game with bad advancement systems and boring encounters. Let’s let the player have fun out of the box. If there’s content that players would rather skip over, then that content needs to be reviewed, adjusted, and/or removed from the game.

You say the only way he can communicate with his friends is if his avatar in this one specific game can be in close contant with his friends’ avatars, because for some reason telephone, instant messaging, bulletin boards, e-mail, and snail mail are all unavailable to him, and the /tell system in the game is broken or doesn’t exist.

That’s where the confusion is on my end.

“A trolley, whose brakes have failed, is on a crash course with five people. Another track forks out ahead, where there is only one person. You have the power to change the course of the trolley. You can either choose to save five people while killing one, or you can choose to save one person while killing five. If you do nothing, five people will die. What do you do?”

There is only one way to answer incorrectly. I won’t tell you how, but if you do, then there’s no point in continuing to discuss the hypothetical situation I previously described and we should stop then. Good luck. ;p

Problem solved in 3 sentences? Amazin.

We established that Johnny wanted to meet his friends, then hypothesized that Johnny finds more fulfillment in gaining experience, then you change your mind and say he prefers social contact with friends again.

You say the only way he can communicate with his friends is if his avatar in this one specific game can be in close contant with his friends’ avatars, because for some reason telephone, instant messaging, bulletin boards, e-mail, and snail mail are all unavailable to him, and the /tell system in the game is broken or doesn’t exist.

That’s where the confusion is on my end. We’re changing Johnny’s goals in the game world, and at times downright ignoring reality. And you’re constantly falling back on wonderful arguments that would be great for someone who’s generally uninitiated in RMT and even games in general. We know all that stuff, no?