[MUD-Dev] BIZ: Ban selling of in-game items for real cash?

[Tess Lowe]

Matt Mihaly wrote:

> I'm sure Bruce, as almost everyone else involved with There.com,
> is a very smart guy. But There.com was a bit of a spectacular
> failure.

Point taken, although There's 'failure' is I feel not entirely
relevant to the debate about whether a secondary market has a
positive or negative impact on developer revenue. A secondary market
could have doubled There's revenue and still been totally
insufficient to cover their costs, who knows.  Likewise, the fact
that Achaea and associated games are profitable using their current
(excellent IMO) model doesn't mean that a secondary market wouldn't
inflate that success further.

> Right, so once there is a sufficient supply floating about from
> players selling who are leaving/have left the game, why would you
> buy from the developer? Sure, some people will, but it seems
> inevitable to me that the player churn would result in players
> selling/giving their items to their friends, instead of those
> people buying them from you.

You're suggesting a situation where sellers equal or outnumber
prospective buyers, purchasers only buy from quitters and no new
items are ever put on sale by the developer. For this situation I
think I agree with you - your monopoly is superior.

However, what about the situation where your economy (ie number of
players) is growing and/or where more people want to buy items than
there are sellers willing to sell before they quit (or upgrade)?

What if new (luxury or affordable) product lines are being devised
on a regular basis?

How many players aren't wealthy enough to buy from you the
developer, but would buy from another player at half price, perhaps
allowing the vendor to buy something even more expensive from you?
This is revenue that is currently entirely lost to you.

Is the optimal economic model always a buy-once-for-life monopoly?
Frankly, I couldn't even begin to predict the answer.

~Tess
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