[MUD-Dev] [NEWS] Gaming Open Market

[Matt Mihaly]

From: Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com
> From: Matt Mihaly

>>> Do merchant accounts let people DK a credit card transaction as
>>> easily?

>> Yes. There is no way to prove delivery of a digital product that
>> Mastercard/Visa will accept at this time. And in a recent,
>> further effort aimed at f*cking over small merchants, the Great
>> Credit Card Duopoloy has deemed that if you dispute a chargeback
>> and are ruled against, you get fined up to $500.

> So a forward thinking publisher might be able to leverage
> that. How about offering, for a fee, in game audited
> transactions. i.e. you pay 5USD and they allow you to perform a
> secure in game transaction with audit and a transaction
> number. This number can then be used to check a web page which
> would confirm the transaction. Seems like a nice way of monetising
> the whole practise without acknowledging that the items have
> direct value.

Sure, could do so that the process is reversible upon chargeback.

> Matt, as an aside, have you tried doing limited edition in game
> items?  Charge a premium, guarantee there will only ever be 10 of
> them and sell them. They wouldn't even have to be unique, just
> change the description a bit so that its visibly different. Even
> if it didn't generate new sales, I bet people who were wavering on
> buying something, but hadn't got around to it would suddenly
> complete.

We've done unique items in terms of function, but players can pay
some of our credits (in-game currency tied to real money) to
purchase custom descriptions on any of their items anyway, so that
wouldn't be a big deal.

Uniquely powered items are a problem though. We've created some in
the past and sold them via an auction process, but it's not really
worth limiting who can buy them. Players are willing to pay more for
function than exclusivity (at least in our games), so the
exclusivity doesn't add enough value onto an item to be able to
charge enough so that you'd make more than just selling them to
everyone who wanted to buy them.

As an aside myself, we have an item for sale that has kind of an
interesting feature: The Veil of the Sphinx. When wearing one (and
they're quite expensive at around US$600), you're immune to nearly
all forms of abilities that locate you specifically. The caveat is
that other people with that artifact can locate you. So,
interestingly, the more of them that are bought, the less utility
they -all- have, at least until a rough equilibrium is met whereby
veils leaving the system (via a character going inactive...remember,
can't give away these purchased items in our games) equal the rate
of new Veil purchases.

--matt
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