[MUD-Dev] BIZ: Markee Dragon

[katie at stickydata.com]

Via Julian Dibbell's blog

  http://www.juliandibbell.com/playmoney/index.html

wherein he mentions being accepted as a broker for Markee Dragon, I
discovered this group for the first time (I'd bet others have known
of them for a while).

To me, this seems like an unbelievably interesting phenomenon and
marker event that would appear to me to signal what were the
beginnings of some new activity in the MMO/MUD universe, activities
which have been discussed here to no small length recently.  For one
thing, the lack of any effort whatsoever to conceal their activities
(quite the opposite, in fact).  I'm not intimately aware of OSI's
policies on out-of-game trading, but Markee Dragon is also
establishing a presence in SWG, and as far as I know SOE is not
endorsing for-cash offline trades of in-game items.  For another, it
appears to point to the existence of groups of users who are
systematizing of the similarities of game economies across a
spectrum, processing patterns, and evolving a means to translate
those patterns into real-world economic analogues in ways that seem
to be far, far broader and mechanical than the designers of the
economies might ever have intended.

Personally, I think that for companies to try to stop this from
happening is - on a somewhat smaller scale, at least in terms of
number of users and amount of data - remarkably similar to the
battle against music-sharing by the RIAA (which I also believe is,
at least in the long-term, not just futile but is actually turning
otherwise ambivalent consumers against the industry, especially when
they see things like lawsuits against twelve-year-olds).  I very,
very strongly doubt that if the efforts of various game publishers
to expand the market for online games succeeds, there will be any
possible way to prevent players to not only continue, but increase
exponentially their trading of in-game items.

Players like those who make up Markee Dragon are building - without
permission, but building nonetheless - a cottage industry, just as
EBay itself has spawned numerous cottage industries (one of which,
in fact, this could almost be called).  I don't think this is
something that is a good thing to try to stop or ignore - cottage
industries in the long run overwhelmingly benefit the
company/industry they are "cottaging," as long as there is a means
for some level of legitimacy and communication.  There will always
be black markets, but at present it seems that game developers are
forcing nearly *everything* outside the game to be black.  It's
somewhat terrifying from the legal perspective to support these
markets, but frankly, the liability is going to be there anyway with
a structured marketplace in existence at all (proving monetary
worth), and there are vast opportunities in encouraging these
markets alongside smart legal teams and good communication between
all three parties (game developers/publishers, players, and the
middlemen brokers).  As we've seen with the proliferation of
file-sharing networks, spam organizations, and encryption laws, it
is essentially impossible to prevent the movement of data - what's
illegal here isn't illegal elsewhere, for one thing - especially
when there is any amount of money available for transmission of that
data.

I do agree that admitting that in-game items are worth real-world
cash money is fraught with potential problems of a variety of
natures, and is also largely uncharted territory.  But I also
believe that it may be unavoidable to some extent.  Looking at the
music-sharing debacle, it is the reverse fight (the RIAA is basing
its stance on the idea that the data, in this case, IS worth
real-world money, and quite a lot of it), but in many other ways the
battle is a similar one, and one that may set some precedents that
are legally related.  Since people are going to do it anyway - and
there are so many ways to do so that it looks impossible to stop
them - I wonder if it's getting to be time to take a look at
building game-related industries out-of-game that grow past the
limited (and, frankly, mostly not-useful) publication and
discussion-forum, largely ad-driven industries.

UO is actually in a somewhat enviable possible position from the
experimental point of view.  For one thing, current players are
nearly all longstanding players - there are not many people signing
up for new UO accounts at this point.  For another, OSI has already
made the decision to support some outside applications of the sort
many MMO/MUDs consider cheats or hacks.  And it's obvious that OSI
must at least be well aware of Markee Dragon's activities (I'm
having a hard time finding anything on either the UO site or the MD
site to say whether or not it's explicitly condoned/encouraged - all
I can seem to find is that selling/transferring accounts is sort of
vaguely frowned upon).  It would be interesting to see what would
happen if OSI decided to work overtly with the MD team to legitimize
the marketplace they are developing.  Probably won't happen, but
would be interesting nonetheless.

Apologies if the Markee Dragon group has been previously discussed.

-k
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