Here is what you missed this week…
World of Warcraft reaches 11 million subscribers
Dutch court punishes theft of virtual property
So this week i set off to find out what the deal is with virtual property and RMT’s. How easy is it to find virtual property? Is it expensive? What kind of people actually make these purchases? How does this all go over within the respective community? I sat down on Thursday and attempted to answer some of these questions.
So i began my search for black market virtual property in the most obvious of places- eBay. If there was anywhere i had expected to find virtual property for sale it was here. As it turns out, eBay was barren. There were plenty of the normal eBay scams directed at power leveling a character, but no physical avatars or individual items up for sale. What gives? Apparently, in 2005, eBay went through and delisted all virtual property auctions, and have remained vigilant to this day. A spokesperson for eBay stated that the removal of these auctions was related to “legal complexities” which surround virtual property. eBay relies on their policy for selling digital goods, which states,
The seller must be the owner of the underlying intellectual property, or authorized to distribute it by the intellectual property owner
By enforcing such a policy, eBay is effectively siding with developers and the writers of EULAs that virtual property belongs to the developing company and gamers just have the privilege to interact with it. With no other course of action, i decided to enter the world (of warcraft) myself (logged in under my friends account) and try to proposition some players as a gold farmer. Basically the easiest way to do that is head to one of the capital city locations and send out a message that reaches that whole location. I sent out a message offering various increments of gold (500, 1000, 10000) for real world money. The result was a wave of derogitory responses, basically telling me to STFU and that i wasn’t welcomed in their world.
The norms of this core gaming community dictate a player must play through the game, experience what there is to offer and earn the rewards. Their virtual property is a reflection of their commitment to the game. In a situation such as MMO gaming, time is literally money. You are paying for time allowances in the game, and the time you spend in that world is valuable to you. Gold farmers are viewed as cheaters and rejected because they do not obey these norms. They offer players an easy out, spend real world money if you have it, and your in game character will benefit. Within the greater argument of rights to virtual property and their protection, this becomes a little tricky. If real money transactions are allowed to occur, the game loses the fairness that is attributed to the world. These games can be played as an escape where real world factors don’t matter such as income, job, status. If RMTs keep going on, then those who advance in the game will be the same who advance in real life, those with money and power and large disposable incomes. However, without the power to sell these items they come across within the world, players do not have true ownership. There is control being exerted over them by the developers limiting the ways in which they can use the items.
Now there is some debate over this control issue. Some believe we should be allowed to sell virtual property. I mean the stuff does sell. Someone must be buying it to be keeping all of these places in business. In”Play Money,” Julian Dibbell explores the world of gold farming first hand. He mentions this debate over the ethics of buying virtual items.
“It’s like showing up to a knife fight with a gun,” argued one side of a message-board discussion I saw once; “No,” the other side calmly replied, “it’s like showing up to a knife fight with a knife you bought from somebody else instead of handcrafting it yourself.”
What seems to be true, is that the core group, who is dedicated to the world frowns upon it. To them, the issue isn’t important as long as they get to play the game, and everyone is put on equal ground.
It seems unlikely that control will be taken from the developers and given to the users in America any time soon. How likely is it that change will occur when the core group of users has no interest in seeing that change happen. The issue is complicated even further by events such as Vendetta allowing user created content. Basically, users get access to editors and development tools and can write story arcs and missions which will be subject to approval then included in the world. Does this content still belong to the development company? Do they gain all the revenue which is now coming from content they aren’t actively creating? It seems very similar to the youtube “theoretical dollars” issue. How much is user created content worth and will the creators ever actually see a dime of it?
Virtual property must have some worth though, as Blizzard has found interesting ways of selling virtual property. They have created a card game, in which some cards contain codes redeemable for in world cirtual items, considered rare.
In this way, they can maintain control over their user group and prevent and loss in revenue from their IP while stimulating spending for a chance to acquire a virtual item in a tangible form.
Final thoughts on Monday.
