[MUD-Dev] BIZ: Who owns my sword?

[Daniel Stahl]

On Thu, 11 Sep 2003, Matt Mihaly wrote:

>    Characters in single player games have minimal value to other
>    players.  That's reality. Why should they be different? I don't
>    really care.  They ARE different, as evidenced by the fact that
>    you cannot go on Ebay and buy my Knights of the Old Republic
>    character

I feel that the reason you don't see more single player game
characters being sold is due to the fact that so many cheat programs
and 3rd party software hacks allow you to achieve god-like status
within single player games.

If there were cheat codes in any MUD that allowed you to get all the
free gold... all the free experience...  and all the free items you
wanted, then the perceived value of these characters would greatly
diminish and you wouldn't see so many characters for sale on e-bay.

That doesn't stop people from trying though... even though hacks
exist for Animal Crossing, I've been able to consistently find
people selling memory cards on e-bay that contain "rare items".

>    Yes, they are a fiction, which is why an avatar doesn't own
>    anything.  Legal entities own things, not fictional
>    ones. Fictional ones only own things in a fictional world.

>From my perspective this gets a little tricky when you consider
what we've done with Magic Online. Here is a game where an Avatar is
given the perception that they do actually "own" a collection of
items that have value based on real world objects (physical cards).
Yet the TOS has legal language that clearly shows that ownership of
all data lies with the company.

The amazing truth behind our system is that our players are
knowingly "leasing" cards very similar to how most of us are
"leasing" our operating systems. If a player decides to "sell" their
digital cards... they are in effect "sub-letting" the rights to play
with the cards they have control of to another player. In all cases,
the players still don't "own" anything, yet they perceive that they
control something of value.

(how different would it be if I uninstalled my copy of Windows XP
and sold it to someone who then installed it and used it on their
machine. Did either of us ever "own" Windows or have we transfered
the software leasing license?)

To throw an even stranger wrench into the equation, we encourage the
perception of value and ownership by offering redemption for
physical world objects (that have very real values) based on the
digital objects they have collected. While this rarely ever applies
to MUDs, it would be interesting to wonder what would happen if
objects in a MUD could ever be redeemed for physical replicas of
those items...

Great topic btw... one that we've (obviously) been pondering for a
long time.

Daniel Stahl
(online media - wotc)
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