[MUD-Dev] [News] Virtual goods--Oh, the controversy!

[Eric Random]

On Sun, 11 Apr 2004, Marian Griffith wrote:

> However there is an even more insidious and potentially more
> serious problem

There can be many effects of a character/item market on the
gameworld.  It could effect account churn volume (# of new accounts
vs. cancelled accounts) at higher levels as high level characters
continue operating in the world, even though the original player has
long since left.  Churn may remain the same, but the overall volume
may decrease.

This in turn decreases low-level populations as players acquire high
level accounts, and, if the game provides power-levelling
capability, decreased inter-character cooperation at low levels as
players attempt to increase account value at reduced time
investment.  If gameplay is largely dependent upon size of the
relevant player-base, new accounts may be aborted as low-level
gameplay is not as exciting with smaller low-level populations. This
may, in turn, influence more players to purchase existing accounts,
which exacerbates the problem.

The overall game population may more quickly be heavily imbalanced
towards a high-level population (high-level pileup perhaps a common
occurrence in sunsetting online RPG's) which leads to large areas of
low-level content losing their overall value and are mostly ignored.
Depending on world design, this can become a travel nuisance to the
players forced to travel through largely un-utilized portions of the
gameworld to access high-level content. Games exhibit this trait
without an external market, but perhaps a market accelerates it.

> The second inflation is the straightforward monetary inflation.

Economic impacts may be created by an increased motivation to farm
items (repetitively acquire an item without immediate explicit need)
and restrict item usage and in-game trading for external sale. This
may cause greater in-game competition to acquire items and causes
the external item market to strongly influence in-game trade (eg.
referencing e-bay before an in-game trade). Item farming can occur
without an external character/item market, but an external market
may increase the activity.

As long as players are not able to buy new items (otherwise
non-existent in the gameworld prior to purchase), inflation is an
effect of poor overall economic design rather than a symptom of a
character/item market. The market, though, aggravates the problems
inherent in the design. Marian does point this out:

> they are largely caused by flaws in the game design

Does the opportunity of acquiring a high-level character increase
the size of the new player market? Are new customers attracted to
the game, who would have otherwise been repulsed by the required
time investment?  This may be true, but perhaps the market of
players who are accepting of the time investment but repulsed by the
increased monetary investment, required to enjoy it, are lost. Which
group is larger?

>From the gameworld's perspective, it cannot experience characters
change players, and may experience an increase in items trades for,
what appears to be, charity. There may be an acceleration of
high-level (and high value) item creation as characters farm for
valuable items.  There may be a contraction in the low-level
character population as the high-level population continues to
expand, thus an increase in online population density in high-level
content areas, and decreased density in low-level content areas. Do
gameworlds exhibit these traits without an external market? Flaws of
game design aside, perhaps when it experiences declining popularity,
or further, entering a sunsetting stage, where new players dwindle
out and invested players continue their characters to some
personally defined "end-stage" resulting in a high-level crunching
of the overall active character population. Perhaps an external
market causes this stage prematurely. In the end, to keep the sun
from setting, either create new high level content, or reset the
whole game by creating a sequel where everyone starts fresh.

   - Eric Random
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev