eBay launches the era of Virtual Property 133
Heads up: here comes another Net landmark: the broad-based mainstreaming of computing games by the hundreds of thousands of middle-class Americans pouring online in a continuing stream and preparing to pay big bucks for characters, property, tools and symbols.
Here goes another online neighborhood, literally.
For the Net, the past couple of years has already been a Wall-Busting time: MP3's, open source, e-trading, and now, bidding for virtual property.
New but mushrooming trading for characters and property on games like Ultima Online has significance way beyond gaming. It suggests that space on the Net isn't infinite after all, and that people may have to begin paying or trading for access to the parts of it they want to use. Also that people with money can alter the balance of Net and Web culture suddenly and dramatically.
As usual, our phobic media has been obsessing on the wrong story: it isn't online violence, but online property.
The idea of virtual property is radical and new, almost completely unforeseen by the legions of futurists and cyber-theorists studying about the Internet. EBay, it turns out, will perhaps be even more revolutionary than the Mp3.
This week on eBay, Ultima Online players are spending real $US, sometimes thousands of them, to acquire video-game assets.
According to a story by Ariana Eunjung Cha in the San Jose Mercury News, players are bidding at online auctions to own imaginary resources that are becoming increasingly scarce as tens of thousands of people try and play.
Since its release in l997 by Electronic Arts the number of Ultima players has been growing by the thousands each month. Ultima is bringing the formerly geeky world of MUD's to the middle-class. Ultima, played by more than 125,000 people globally, and is, increasingly, creating its own reality for people who once viewed computer games as obsessive behavior for weird kids.
On Ultima, people are born, get married, are happy and stressed, get and lose jobs and die, just like they do in the real world.
But so many people are coming online to play that Ultima is facing serious real world problems, especially over-crowding, congestion and runaway housing costs.
So players are buying imaginary but increasingly scare resources as empty lots for housing, tower or castle developments sell out. Although Ultima's software engineers update and expand the game each month, they can't keep up with the population explosion, which means that gamers are trading with other players for virtual property. It's a shocker, perhaps an inevitable one, but urban and suburban planning problems are hitting online games. Perhaps Web designers, social planners and architects can do better than their real-world counterparts.
For the past two months, reports the Mercury News, eBay has offered gamers the chance to bid on property, characters, gold, armor, magical potions and trinkets. Ultimate Online sells for $39.95,plus $9.95 a month for access to the servers. But on eBay, one gamer sold his account for $4,000, and others have gotten anywhere from $1,500 to $3,000. This morning eBay has nearly 200 different items listed for sale.
This trading could permanently change the culture of gaming, as well as Net economics. The amount of time consumed in getting established in games like Ultima is enormous. Some players have spent thousands of hours over months, even years, to develop characters so they are experienced enough to explore the towns and countrysides of the game without getting maimed or killed.
Now, people with money can acquire sophisticated players and property with little work or time. Inexperienced players can have mature characters. That would change the whole nature of gaming.
"I don't want to spent a year developing my character, building property, getting savvy and confident only to find myself up against some Yuppie who's buying his way past me. That alters the whole idea," wrote Jared from Chicago, an online friend who plays Ultima almost every night of his life. "I have to earn the money I collect, and some newbie can start twice as rich as me because he's willing to pay. It's wrong, and I hope they stop it."
They won't. Company officials told the Mercury News that trading is perfectly legal, that they couldn't do anything about it even if they wanted to.
Still, it's amazing to see that the problems, pressures and rewards of a virtual game are suddenly morphing to real life. People are trading real-world money for virtual property. That takes recreation to a completely different level, and alters the very idea of how conventional property-buying works.
The Ultima trading began when a Texas firefighter decided to put his account up for sale when he got a second job and no longer had the time to play. The minimum bid was placed at $39, and it sold a week later for $521. Two weeks ago, a network security consultant from Chicago paid $1,000 on eBay for five virtual characters, three virtual houses and 300,000 pieces of virtual gold. An Ultimate Online fanatic, he bought the characters and property as a gift to a friend.
The eBay trading is especially ironic in the weeks after the Littleton, Colorado school massacre, when computer games - particularly those like Quake and Doom -- were widely described in media as responsible for aggression and violence. The CBS News broadcast "60 Minutes" devoted a whole hour to this question: "Are Video Games Turning Your Kids Into Killers." As more middle-class Americans turn to gaming, and experience its complex, creative and communal nature, the notion will seem even more ludicrous than it already does.
In the most literal sense, gaming is about to be about as controversial as buying a new car or fixing up a second home. In fact, it might soon be almost indistinguishable from it.
Maybe it's time to get your characters in shape. You might soon be using them to buy some new hardware, or pay for your real-world vacation.
I can see it now... (Score:1)
Does this mean we'll be seeing a new profession springing up in the future, where "professional trainers" start characters from scratch and build them up to high levels before handing them over to their well-paying clients?
I can think of worse jobs to have.
Re:Wow. (Score:1)
why people are buying accounts. It takes weeks
or months to develop a badass character. Why not
just pay some dude cash for a setup account? To say they are cheating is like your cheating when you buy a car. Why didn't you build it yourself? CHEATER!!
btw, anyone else here on Baja??
Market price limits (Score:1)
buying game characters and buying star athletes or
copyrights - the later are in definitely limited
supply and cannot (yet) be easily cloned. These
game items seem limited only by 1.) server capacity, 2.) the user time & skill spent creating them. Like DRAM and hard drives, once production
ramps up, the price falls - anyone who is in this
for speculation will likely be very disappointed.
I don't play but I would ask this question -
are the top ratings limited by requiring head-to-head competition as in chess and boxing - then they may retain some value - but only if the new player has the skill to win against other skilled players.
UO money (Score:1)
Be careful of the fine print... (Score:1)
Long before Ultima Online went into production, a mud-style game called "GemStone III" [gemstone.net] had already experienced character and item sales. The players routinely sell their items or accounts for thousands of dollars, however due to Simutronics' [the owners of GemStone III] usage policy, they have absolutely no rights to the characters or accounts themselves. This means that at any time, the owner of the game could delete or modify the account at any time without notice to the buyer. Be very careful when paying for accounts in this manner. You have no legal rights to the data.
Re:Wow. (Score:1)
don't really own property, you own the
the right to make use of it. In this
context all property is "Virtual".
Magic the Gathering all over again. (Score:1)
Re:Is money real? (Score:1)
Of course, the community may indeed benefit from a better view of the river if that person is forbidden to build his home or expand his business, but the courts have come up with a solution for cases where it is clearly a case of the person giving up a large part of his property's value - the community must financially compensate the owner. Sorry, "Gee, the value was never there because the new rules forbid the use" doesn't work, being recognized for the fallacious construction it is.
My point being, there are several ethical solutions to this problem. The first would be to gather like-minded UO players, pool your RL money, and buy up the rights to the UO property on the common market. Unfortunately, despite their claims of need, communities rarely come up with the cash unless forced. Perhaps you might propose a tax on all players to fund such - that should make you popular.
Then there is the open-source method. Expend a good deal of your time creating characters and exchanging them for free under appropriate licensing, to increase the supply and reduce demand for the expensive proprietary characters.
Lastly - if you don't like the price of the property, try a cheaper neighborhood. Try moving to a MUD or talker with fewer amenities. Sure, the schools aren't as nice, but the small-town atmosphere can be refreshing. Or start your own, for that matter. The hilarious thing about this whole matter is that the supply is infinite - it is merely the cachet of UO's name that is being sold.
This isn't new (Score:2)
I think the main cause for this is that there's now a lot of extra money floating around that wasn't readily available before. A few years ago, it cost $3-$6/hour to play these games (up to $36/hour in the early Genie days). It's easy for that to add up to $500/month, or even over $1000/month for those who were truly obsessed with the games. Now that they're all on flat rate fees, the money that would have been spent just to play the game is being used to gain extra benefits and goodies.
Most likely, the people that are spending this money now are the same types that would have played during the hourly days, as opposed to those who can only afford to play at the flat rates. The shock is to the people who never dreamed that there would people those who could get so seriously into a hobby that they'd spend thousands of dollars on it, or at least don't understand that that magical armor can hold as much value for someone as a rare stamp, or a first issue comic book, or any other physical commoditiy.
There are plenty of other examples, it's just a matter of people trying to classify what's 'real' and what's not. That piece of armor I may buy is nothing more than a bunch of text and data, but then that's about all the article Mr. Katz wrote is as well, and he presumably gets paid for it, as do any number of journalists and reporters. Paying for stuff that's not 'real' is not new, and paying a lot of money for hobbies is not new. So why is the media so surprised about it?
David
#CISCO too (Score:1)
Professional gaming (Score:1)
So, I wonder just how much you can get off something like this. I see several people selling for instance, just gold (100k is going for $30-50) or other pieces. I don't have the time/patience for these sort of games, but how long does it take to earn that much? You may be able to at least recoup the monthly fee this way, though I doubt you could make enough for it to be your profession... yet.
Re:Online Auctions still useless to general public (Score:2)
After browsing the Ultima Online auctions, most of them are by sellers with very low feedback scores. So, I'd certainly be wary. Only try it if you don't mind losing the money.
Autorogue? (Score:1)
Where can one find that one? Sounds interesting...
---
Well (Score:1)
That is, assuming ebay hasn't closed it down yet. (-:
Would only work a little... (Score:1)
----
Re:No reimbursements at all. (Score:1)
In that case, if I were Origin, I'd create a few more valuable objects (black armor? etc.), and sell them for real cash.. It's like having your own mint. :^)
Re:Wow. (Score:1)
>>To say they are cheating is like your cheating >>when you buy a car. Why didn't you build it >>yourself? CHEATER!!
It is cheating...everyone has a chance to get a normal car with stock parts same as anyone else to get a regular caracter.
BUT it takes away all the fun when you get a car already prep'ed and modified that can probly do 10 secs on a 1/4 mile drag strip.
In the words of William Shatner... (Score:3)
Seriously, the fact that people are paying an
arm and a leg for a bunch of bits and bytes
in a *game* is disturbing in the sense of
"a sucker is born every minute". It's
understandable that as we do go towards
paying for virtual 'items', such as domain
names, web page hosting, ads, MP3 & other
media, and such, that it's important to
question how much will people shell out for
this. However, in all the cases I've mentioned,
there is some definite value that those virtual
items represent, whether it be a better
reputation, or some entertainment value that
can be used at a number of places. But
with the Ultima Online characters, it seems
to be something that can only provide
entertainment at one place (the server).
Everyone probably has a value on what they
would pay for various forms of entertainment;
some people refuse to see movies that cost
more than $5 to see, some people will be hoping
the trans-Atlantic flights come May 18 to see
a certain other movie. So I guess in the end,
those people that are spending $2000 of
their own real world money to buy a character
in a virtual world are getting their own
jollies, or cannot stand the rather tedious
task of building up a character for so long
to get that character to a point where it becomes
fun
well designed game. The beginning is enjoyable,
the middle stages boring, and the end exciting --
that's how you draw in players, and promise
to keep them hooked.
In any case, this seems very reminisant of MUDs
and varients, and I cannot remember anything
like this happening. It must be something to
do with the 'ease' of ecommerce -- it's *very*
easy to spend money when you don't see or
feel it.
Money is virutal anyway (Score:2)
Property, money, IP.. they are all social constructions anyway. We're more used to some than others, and some have more dubious justifications. When paper money was introduced people were amazed that someone would be prepared to swap real food for paper money. The amazing thing is not so much that people pay money for virtual property, but that people even think of money as a concrete entity.
Cash for players (Score:1)
Re:Virtual property? I think not. (Score:1)
It's never a good idea to get so annoyed with the over use of a buzzword that you discount every use of it.
So? Make a new virtual world. (Score:1)
Wherever there is scarcity, there will be value placed on ownership, which leads to the development of fungible currency and laws to protect ownership.
As a Libertarian, I firmly believe that resources are best developed when there is a cost to owning them: it behooves the owner to exploit them to the best of his or her ability. There is no reason to believe that a virtual world will be any different.
However the thing about virtual worlds is that they can be designed with softer or non-existant resource limits, thus muting the need to "own" things. If you don't like a particular virtual world, design a different one.
It would be very interesting to see how three different virtual worlds evolve: two with limited resources, one of which forbids trading except in virtual terms, and one which doesn't; and a third where resources are essentially limitless.
The libertarian in me says that of the two worlds with limited resources, the one where non-virtual trade is permitted is likely to evolve faster than the other. Enforcement in the non-trading world can take the form of a "virtual tax" on virtual property levied by the game server owners and used to purchase virtual property which can then be sold by the game server owners ("the state") for real $$$. These real $$$ can then be used to investigate people who trade virtual property in the real world and ban them from the game.
Do You Really Own Your Property?! (Score:1)
It was nice, it was a community, built and kept alive by the users. Eventually, the company who owned the system changed the rules. Until then, registration was free, but now they made users pay or lose their accounts.
So the people who built the world, created and made a real virtual community come true, were forced to either pay or leave. The notion of "your property" suddenly didn't matter anymore, the worlds belonged to the system, which was owned by a commercial company. Actually those early builders should have been paid for developing the system and enhancing the community. Regular users should be paid for making the virtual world worthwile. At least all should get it for free.
I learned my lessons from this adventure and realized a community shouldn't be based on a proprietary system that can change too suddenly. If a proprietary system dies because its owners give it up, it's gone, all your property will be gone as well. Lots of time, energy, money will be wasted. Usually people move on, establish their communities in another system, so my point is that the actual property isn't as important as the community itself.
If UO would perish, people would migrate to EQ, or something else. They won't be able to take their property with them, though, only their experience. So I wonder how one can value virtual property that much? If there was an open way to convert and move property, it would be great, you could move around! An open protocol to use your UO characters, items, and possessions in EQ, for instance. But as long as commercial companies only think about doing the opposite, binding people to themselves, forcing them to use their system.
I really wished there was a free and open standard system - I know there are some in the making, but there's no real alternative to UO/EQ/etc. yet, is there?!
Finally, to sum it up, maybe I should have labeled this posting "Does Property Matter?" since IMHO only the community matters: If UO/EQ/whatever was deserted, you could have all the property, but it would be worthless!
Interesting. (Score:1)
Re:Isn't there a free alternative to UO? (Score:1)
*end shameless plug*
Seriously, a free alternative where anyone can set up their own "virtual world" essentially removes the value of virtual property. Why pay $2K for a plot of land for a house when you can just find another server?
Re:truly sad (Score:1)
Re:Wow. (Score:3)
The point of most games is not to win, but to have played. If you want a 'badass' character then you should earn it. Otherwise two things result: 1st, you cheapen the entire experience of playing into an exercise in comparing disposable incomes. 2nd, you destroy the worth of such a character, because what's stopping other people from buying or making up better ones?
The point of a car, OTOH, is to go places. But I think that people who build their own cars have a better appreciation for cars, and the things that go into them, etc. than I ever will. They learned something, and they're better for having taken some time and expended some effort and having done so.
Anyway, no, I haven't played any of the Ultima games. I don't like computer roleplaying much, as it seems much more limited than regular playing. But I've read a bit about Ultima, and it seems to me that the point of the game is to impart a rather good set of morals/values to the player. Being the sort of person who immediately reads the end of a book does nothing for you. Give a hoot, don't cheat.
Wow. (Score:4)
Amazing! Of course, they're cheating (if you consider it a game) and buying a character, who succeeds primarily because of the player's skills and personality - not necessarily stats, screws things up. If I were playing a game, and a friend's behavior is replaced with that of a total stranger, I'll stop being friends.
Ultimately people who buy love are just fooling themselves, and people who cheat shouldn't play in the first place. Unfortunately I have a suspicion that my brother has just found a job as a professional gamer.
It's not even new. (Score:1)
I personally enjoy the games too much to buy my levels, but hey, people are idiots.
--Dan
Town square? (Score:1)
See you on the edge...
Vp Synnr @ Fractal Edge
Re:Why does this surprise anyone? (Score:3)
No reimbursements at all. (Score:1)
Remember, you're paying to play on their systems. You don't own a single byte of data-- it's all theirs . . . Which brings up an interesting thought: the individuals on eBay, although in reality are selling their UO characters and property, are actually selling their time invested in the game itself, since they never owned any of the products they produced within the game. Or perhaps Origin is just ignoring the fact that people are actually selling their property? Hmm...
The reason people pay/play... (Score:5)
... is because it's more than a game to a lot of people. You're interacting with others in a virtual community. It's not just some load-em-up-and-kill-everything game like Halflife-- people create goals and set out to achieve them.
With over 100,000 subscribers, Ultima Online is HUGE. You can do a plethora of things in the game: cook food, socialize with others, create armor, kill monsters, kill players, and even hold a wedding. It's progressed to the point where people no longer look at it as a toy, but an extension to their virutal persona.
The land has grown to the point of overcrowding. It's virtually impossible to find a place to put even the smallest house-- forget about placing a castle! People who buy these structures (and characters, and gold, and other things) via eBay are doing so because it's just so hard (impossible, even) to do so normally. There's nothing wrong with buying these things-- it's a hobby to the players, and if you've ever gotten really involved with a hobby (e.g. model railroads, Magic the Gathering, remote controlled cars, beanie babies), you'll understand how expensive it can be, even though it may seem absolutely worthless to anyone else. Since these items are valued so high in the game, it's only natural to extend their worth into the real world. These purchases satisfy the need to feel more powerful and wealthy than your average newbie.
To anyone that claims "it's just a game. get a life.": Who are you to judge these players? What is so wrong with interacting with others in the virtual world of Ultima Online? Get off your high horses and realize that not everyone is the same as you-- many, many people take pleasure from interacting and adventuring with others in an online community. Although they may spend large amounts of time within the UO universe, that doesn't mean they've totally neglected the Real World. The blanket statement "it's just a game" doesn't apply here-- it's more than just a game, it's a virtual community.
Not necessarily true... (Score:1)
Re:HAHAHA! (Score:1)
Help me out here... (Score:1)
If people or government stopped giving out domain names, would the Net ever fill up? Get jammed the way Ultima is? I'm wondering if there's any reality to the idea that net property itself could someday become valuable..
Software Design Defects (Score:1)
The project did not scale.
People have managed to exploit this defect
into a profit center.
Not really about gaming (Score:1)
Ebay likes to generate controversy. That gets
attention. Attention lures people to Ebay.
Business thrives.
Re:Isn't there a free alternative to UO? (Score:1)
So, what's the exchange rate of Gold pieces to $$? (Score:1)
Isn't there a free alternative to UO? (Score:1)
ie, not subscription based.. etc..
Re:Help me out here... (Score:2)
The Internet was built to scale, and it has scaled far beyond what the original creators dreamed. tcp/ip handles http traffic surprisingly well considering that http traffic is radically different from what the designers expected and designed tcp for.
IETF, NANOG, ARIN, RIPE, et al are headed by savvy people who know and understand the trends and the problems caused by them. They have done a fantastic job for more than a decade and I see no reason why they won't continue this excellence.
Damon
I don't think it's all that revolutionary... (Score:5)
Damon
Not revolutionary at all. (Score:1)
I know people who would sell characters for cash, cigarettes, weed, beer, or whatever else they wanted. (College is great, isn't it?)
Eh? (Score:1)
In any case, this seems very reminisant of MUDs and varients, and I cannot remember anything like this happening.
This happened all the time on muds I played on. Characters were sold for cash, or traded for beer, weed, whatever. College is fun. :)
Bidding as a contract (Score:1)
But let's say someone bid $ 100 on your item, he was the only bidder, and he never sent money. He was, of course, from another city and state. The cost of legal action would be way higher than the $100, so you've effectively lost out.
You can give the guy bad feedback, so he can't do it again using the same account - but of course he can just get another account and start the process over.
D
----
Re:truly sad (Score:1)
It's not, partly for the reason you are about to state.
If I played cards [...] then I'd just make my own. Either copies of existing cards stats (unlikely to be a copyright violation then)
This is referred to as "proxying", and most people who come into my store to play do that -- they either proxy cards they don't have yet for a deck (to see if it works, and therefore is worth theeffort to acquire them), or they proxy "the big names" (the first-run, long-out-of-print cards).
Sure, you can't use proxy cards in tournaments, but the tournament rules are only mandatory if you're playing in a tournament (or plan to).
There's also this things that I've seen called trading, where people exchange cards for other cards of equal or greater importance. (I won't say "value", because the existance of card price lists throws that out of whack).
90% of the people who play this game around me acquire more of their better cards through trading. Yes, they have to buy cards to trade with, but that means they buy a few packs now and again, either to find the cards they're looking for or acquire cards as trade fodder. I wish people were plunking down money to buy piles of boxes of cards -- it means I could pay my bills on a regular basis...
Jay (=
Slightly off-topic -- Magic common decks (Score:1)
At my store, we used to do that. We'd take the piles and piles of common cards (with a few uncommons) left over when we broke a box or two open for singles, build decks with them, and sell them for like $5.
Sure, there are rare cards that are "simply better" than the other cards out there -- and the long-out-of-print cards like the Black Lotus were totally unbalaced when it came to practical gameplay -- but there are many tournament-level decks that rely on various common cards as staples...
Jay (=
(I might have to start that up again -- the commons box is getting full...)
Re:#aggies for sale (Score:1)
It would be a bummer to lose a channel to a netsplit after having paid for it.
--bricktoad
Re:this is stupid...selling HSX ports (Score:1)
A black market opportunity (Score:1)
virtual status is centuries old (Score:2)
Read some modified Katz:
"New but mushrooming trading for characters and property on games like Heaven has significance way beyond gaming. It suggests that space in Afterlife isn't infinite after all, and that people may have to begin paying or trading for access to the parts of it they want to use. Also that people with money can alter the balance of Heaven's culture suddenly and dramatically."
This is against eBay's policy. (Score:1)
Anyone more knowledgable than I want to comment? Any eBay employees here (feel free to post anonymously)?
Cheers,
Joshua.
comments missing the point IMHO (Score:1)
that is the sense in which the property is "virtual:" its a simulation of a real thing. a world within a world.
ISP accounts, securities, intellectual property, etc. are not, strictly speaking, simulations.
now what would be really interesting is if some character in UO wrote a video game that the other characters could play, then sold the game as intellectual property. or if the virtual game was another simulation, and your character had a character in that game which owned property.....
UO and it's virtual community (Score:2)
UO and Everquest have become the dominate forum for her social life. She jokes that this makes her a looser, but I think that it is great.
Just a couple of years ago she would have been basically cut off from most human contact. Now she has friends from many other countries and backgrounds. Wonderfull!!! I would pay a lot of money for anything that could enhance her experience.
She recently quit UO and switched to EQ. Too bad she did this before I found out about this bidding. She had a multiple grandmaster character with a good reputation and a lot of money.
Re:Wow. (Score:2)
You know - that's an interesting thought. I wonder what it would be like to sit home all day, play games, and then sell your results.
I wonder if it would be possible to ever hate that job.
Actually, it's more like... (Score:1)
That's the deal with the UO issue - players who have BUILT THEIR SKILLS and KNOWLEDGE while playing these characters up to their value, selling their accounts to folks who, quite possibly, haven't a clue how to play the game. Magic plate and swords may well be great, but if you don't know what's too tough to tackle, or where to tackle it... it's a very small part of the whole picture.
It'd be amusing if some of these accounts had characters that were utterly HATED by the populace on their servers... "Why won't anyone help me?"
Sure it is. (Score:1)
Retina/thumbprint identification! *laugh* (Score:1)
This of course would be great for much more important applications... financial/medical records, etc... but it'd sure put the kabosh on selling characters (or more specifically, the accounts).
Re:Real Life (Score:1)
Buying a UO character is a one-time thing - buy it, it's yours. You could have the baddest-ass character on the server and know NOTHING about how to play... but that won't matter.
i don't understand (Score:2)
(well, ok, the difference is that a bunch of whack-jobs willing to spend thousands on a mud character probably don't deserve media attention, but that's beside the point).
i think katz writes these because he is interested in discovering a phenomenon -- in order that he can say "told you so" a number of years down the road. well, after enough of these vague, prophetic (and apparently unresearched) articles, something is bound to hold true.
but probably not sexbots.
Great for those you continue playing (Score:1)
Other players will have the opportunity to get things off the bought character. The former player would be good enough to keep his assets, the new one will find it trickier.
Look, when an industrial create a huge company and when he dies, its very rare that only one people (his child) keeps everything on the long term. In fact others come in, and even though the company continues to exist, we can say that its assets have been shared.
Deja vu all over again (Score:1)
Pre-made characters (Score:2)
snow crash anyone (Score:1)
Re:Help me out here... (Score:1)
Also, if expansion of the "big three" (com, net, and org) stopped, there's always national domain names, of which there are many more. You can easily buy a ".nu", ".co", or ".to" address today.
A third tactic that could be used in this case is redirections. Even if you get a crummy name, you can pay somebody to put a web page up in a better named domain that redirects to your web page. The owners of "come.to" do exactly this; moving naming from the DNS into the rest of the URL.
While competition for specific domain names may be fierce, the domain name system itself is by no means a resource-scarce market.
I must be missing something big. (Score:1)
-----BEGIN ANNOYING SIG BLOCK-----
Evan
Oh, that sounds like a GREAT idea! (sarcasm). (Score:1)
Right. And what happens when you have your own mint?
One word: inflation.
--
- Sean
Linked to your home PC? (Score:1)
I admit, it'd be cool... but if I were OSI (Origin Systems International, not Open Source Initiative -- lol), I wouldn't use such technology to guarantee
--
- Sean
Hmmm... (Score:1)
"President Quayle this morning declared the Sonoma server a Federal Disaster Area, and allocated $5.2 million from the Federal Disaster Relief fund to kick-start a rebuilding of the economy after the had drive crash at approximately 10:15 PM last night. Details are still sketchy, but we believe approximately 4 thousand characters were online at the time and suffered irretrievable non-material losses, which would add up to much, much more than the president was willing to re-imburse. There are many horrifying stories of people who lost absolutely everything when their monitors suddenly went blank. Our correspondant, Bob Smith, is talking to a user who was in Shame Level 3 when the crash hit. Bob? Over to you."
--
- Sean
Re:Wow. (Score:1)
Virtual property? I think not. (Score:1)
It's never a good idea to get so caught up in a buzzword that you lose sight of what's really going on. There's nothing especially radical or revolutionary going on here. Just people paying for computer access and recreation, both of which have been going on for years.
Re:Virtual property? I think not. (Score:1)
Fair enough, but how is that any different from paying your ISP an extra few bucks per month to give you more disk space? The point is that just because gamers are doing it doesn't mean it's new or revolutionary. Transactions involving intangible things has been around for a long time.
this is stupid...selling HSX ports (Score:1)
Hearing from a friend who plays HSX as well, retiring players were selling their ports of eBay.
What is the point of the playing the game if you BUY your championship?
ranting on and on...
homeworld (Score:2)
Think tradewars in 3d with a limitless universe and support for linux.
Anyways, what my babbling is saying is... i dont think we've seen anything yet in regards to the virtual character selling... thank god i dont play games much.
T0ast.
Re:Help me out here... (Score:1)
Non tangible assets have existed for a long time, the fact that some of these exist as bits on a disk somewhere doesn't seem that revolutionary to me. Check out Goodwill on a companies Balance Sheet sometime...
Re:truly sad (Score:1)
the difference is that any 'poor' person (but rich enough to purchase the retail game and pay the monthly charges associated with playing) can work at getting their character(s) all well off. (and more than likely have fun doing it)
Re:I don't think it's all that revolutionary... (Score:1)
Anyone care to join me? (Score:2)
1) Sells the bot software (boooo!)
2) Uses the bot software to accumulate lots of resources, and sell the chars on eBay.
I used to do this all the time on MUDs (without the selling part).
In response to earlier posters that said these sales violate the spirit of the game, this is an age old debate on MUDs. You have several groups of players that think the other ones are out of touch. The power players, who just want to be bigger badder faster more, and live for the kill. The chatters, who want nothing more than to stand in the town square and chat. Several other sub-species exist, like me who just coded bots on muds where they weren't allowed. The challenge was to make them as un-bot like as possible, if you get caught botting, it wasn't a good enough bot. Also try to make them as hardcore productive as the human hack-n-slash players.
-s.p. Red
Nothing "Virtual" about it. (Score:1)
As to the gaming aspect, this simply adds the realism we all crave in our RPG's. Some people come into this world with priveleges, some with disadvantages. If you want a fair game, play chess. Deal with it.
Re:In the words of William Shatner... (Score:1)
Makes me think (Score:2)
Online characters I was shocked, but then I
realized that this thing has happened everywhere.
I remember playing AD&D and someone bought
advantages buy offering plenty of snacks for
the DM. The players would also trade items for soda or snacks between themselves.
We ended up making this illegal, people could
offer the DM something, but he could _never_ give
any advantages (this part was obvious)
But we _also_ made it illegal to trade items
between players based on such merits..people
giving other players strange gifts, not called
for during the game, would be taken XP from.
This is in a way excactly the same, only there
are more at stake, people offer MONEY to buy
other peoples items of characters.
I find this repulsive, as people with LOADS of
money will always find a way to use it, and if
you can't ever spend up all of your money, why
not buy yourself advantages like this?
Trading characters should be illegal in the game,
and people caught doing it should be banned IMHO.
People that spend a lot of time and money to build
up a character should not be bypassed by some newbie with a lot of cash buying themselves into
the line.
Re:Why does this surprise anyone? (Score:1)
Re:Makes me think (Score:1)
Great, I love it. (Score:1)
Money is only an abstraction of time and so are the virtual characters, so where's the problem? It'll only work if good characters, virtual gold, items are kept scarce (supply/demand, that whole market thing) tho, but with one company in charge keeping things on their servers and owning all the data, it shouldn't be that hard.
What's the prob? (Score:1)
I know that was the point of your article, but I just don't get why it's a problem.
Re:Wow. (Score:2)
Re:This is not new! (Score:2)
This game had gods in it, so the GMs were effectively playing those gods when needed. Their table was the "temple", and those who provided sacrifices would be rewarded.
Then my roommate showed up carrying two grocery bags. That's when the rest of us knew that we were doomed...
#aggies for sale (Score:1)
Jack
HAHAHA! (Score:2)
This reminds me...the IRC channel I hang out at on Efnet recently got taken over...so what do the hostile parties do? Sell it on ebay! Wish I could find the URL for that auction, it was funny as hell when we found out.
At any rate, I think that this buying and selling of virtual property is kinda getting too much into the game. But I guess it was just a matter of time before something like this happened. Another case of rich people flaunting their money and taking the easy way out. It's a GAME, for crying out loud. If these people are playing Ultima Online they had better have a lot of time to begin with. All in all, this buying and selling sickens me, but it's natural in the progression of things...people are now buying their ways out of entertaining themselves.
Jack
The premium isn't on 'empty' space... (Score:2)
It's not that net 'space' is ever going to get scarce. The net has an almost infinite capacity for expansion... assuming hardware can keep up with demand.
What these people were paying for was convenience. Those characters had probably been developed since UO began. That takes a lot of time and dedication. Someone without the time to spend building up a character like that, or someone who's simply impatient would look for an easier way into the world. If all of a sudden, 200,000 more users signed up for UO, they'd probably just expand the game world, but getting that well established would still take considerable effort. It's the same reasoning behind hiring a consultant to do your web page, or buying a pre-made computer from Dell or Compaq. The premium is on the service, not neccesarily the composition of what you're buying. Sure, I could spend a while reading up on HTML or decide to code my own online game, but that's a large investment of time (at least coding the game is) that I probably don't have.
Because the net is so scalable, the only real value is attached to developed space, or unique properties (i.e, altavista.com).
---------
Pokemon (Score:1)
Seriously, though, this is only kind of new. Magic: The Gathering is just a game, but people are willing to shell out a great deal of dough on the Moxen and the Black Lotus (Or they were before I quit)... I'm for it, though, my parents won't let me get a job so I pretty much have to sit around playing video games and stuff all day, but maybe I can pay for that Ibanez 7-String guitar this way.
This is not new! (Score:2)
While it was rare, it has not been unheard of for
people to pay money for MUD characters, or to pay
MUD admins for favours in RL money and/or other
real life *ahem* favours. While I've not seen
$1,000+ spent on characters personally on MUDs,
I would venture to say this is for 2 reasons:
1) Generally MUDders are poor college students.
2) MUDs are usually free, so while with UO it
actually DOES cost you money to develop characters
like the ones being bought, on a MUD you're only
paying for the luck of good statistics and the
time spent building up the character.
This is totally not a new thing, it's just gotten
bigger. I wish Mr. Katz would stick to writing
about things he knows something about.
...dave
Re:Pokemon (Score:1)
let me tell you from experience, your parents are making a BIG BIG BIG mistake.
how the hell else are you going to make it in life?
are they going to put you through college too? i suppose you're going to just go to school and not work. let me tell you again, from experience.. that doesn't work.. you'll end up like the guys who buy their UO characters -- with NO SKILLS and a fancy piece of paper.
do yourself a favor; get off your ass, put your guitar down, get a job and quit living off your parents.
Remember PLATO? It's not new at all . . . (Score:2)
> new, almost completely unforeseen by the
> legions of futurists and cyber-theorists
> studying about the Internet. EBay, it turns
> out, will perhaps be even more revolutionary
> than the Mp3.
Not so! In the late 70's and early 80's, the University of Illinois ran a computer aided instruction system based on some CDC computers, named PLATO. This network had terminals across the country, a good number of which were appropriated by students heatedly standing by their orange plasma panels, engaged in interactive gaming with hundreds of others, and wondering whether the Balrog would get them.
Oubliette, among other games, was so popular that when its sponsors lost funding, actual cash was raised among players to support the space for running the game -- unheard of at that time. Likewise, there was a rich economy for booty extracted from the gaming world, and for services of accompanying others into the darkest dungeon. Not big bucks mind you, but a clear demonstration of: (1) the massively wonderful and addictive power of interactive gaming, whether automated or not; and (2) the virtual markets that arise under them when false scarcity is created by the author of the game.
Note that any such economy is inherently at risk. The author can always change the rules or the physics of the game, making hypervaluable assets worthless in the game sense, or by giving away massive numbers of them, which has the same effect.
The same is true for "collectables" markets. Wizards of the Coast might cut their own throats by reprinting rare and, presently, valuable cards, but at the same time the market for those cards would be substantially undercut, if not destroyed (depending how distinguishable these reprints were from the original). Alternatively, they can likewise just change the rules so as to make the cards less valuable.
As I noted, these virtual "economics" are based upon a false sense of scarcity that wholly relies upon the slight and probably unenforcable "promises" of others not to change the result. A bad investment unless you have got the inside track.
Online Auctions still useless to general public (Score:3)
Most sites don't try to authenticate bids, so you may be getting outbid by someone who has no intention of buying the product, and in most cases doesn't even have the vash to back up the bid.
Yes, I realize most sites allow the seller to contact other bidders if the top bidder fails, but this seems to kluge up the whole process. I'm not interested in bidding against people who are goofing off. For all I know I'm bidding against a script that is programmed to match and beat my bid...which serves simply to run up the price.
PK'ers Rejoice!!!! (Score:2)
What about litigation? (Score:3)
-Bravehamster
Why does this surprise anyone? (Score:3)
In a world where people will pay hundreds of dollars for Tickle Me Elmo and thousands for a Beanie Babie, anything that someone considers valuable for WHATEVER misguided reason will eventually be worth lots of money.
Look at Magic cards. I refuse to play because I don't have that kind of money to devote to a game, and the "good" decks seem to require large investments. If I'm playing against some rich kid who has a thousand-dollar deck, I don't know if I've got much chance.
Pity that it's intruded into the online world, though.
If you REALLY want to get fancy... (Score:3)
Last I checked, UO doesn't check on any other servers to see if you're logged in on any other server, so you could build up a good set of characters on every UO server at the same time this way. You could even include a markoff chain chatter program so that if anyone addresses a message to the character, it could respond in a fairly random fashion, convincingly enough to make it hard to tell who's being run by a computer and who's not. It wouldn't be too hard, it would just have to say "D00D U SUK" from time to time and it would be about as loquatious as your average player.
So you could buy a few accounts each month, set up some autoUO character templates, have the program work up high level mages, fighters, theives, blacksmiths and mules on every server, sell a few accounts with 5 powerful characters on every server every month, and make a pretty good living as long as no one caught on. Of course a hypothetical program such as AutoUO would be a substantial investement of programming time, as it would be advanced well beyond your average macroing program. It would make an interesting project though...