SOE: RMT Has Been Veddy Veddy Good To Us
SOE issues a white paper on the Station Exchange one year out. Gamasutra has a copy and interviews John Smedley about it. Sara Jensen has commentary. (As will I when I get a chance to, you know, read it.)
Broken Toys
Adventures in Modern MMO Production
-
Recent Comments
February 7, 2007 at 3:51 pm
Highly interesting data from my point of view. Some of the data contradicts and other points confirm what I expected. Very interesting read all things considered.
Dark elves are worth more, who’d have thunk it.
February 7, 2007 at 4:25 pm
Station Exchange Greeted As Liberators, Major Game Design Operations Have Ended…
It's about the RMT, stupid.
Shit, I really thought I was going to beat Scott out on a really juicy RMT article for once, but damn he moves fast for an old fart. (Actually it's because I've been mesmerized with my cartoon alter-ego all…
February 7, 2007 at 4:37 pm
Smedley plays his own games? He has been effected by RMT?
I would have stopped the interview right there and proclaimed him a liar. We all know he has a hired Chinese slav… errr helper… to play his games for him!
February 7, 2007 at 6:02 pm
The best thing I can do is boycott the whole thing (and Second Life).
It’s not to avoid giving them the stage. It’s BECAUSE they are irrelevant.
Daily, useless chit-chat.
Let them continue to focus on this serious stuff. We’ll see how far they go.
February 7, 2007 at 11:39 pm
It’s all very interesting, and the data will no doubt reveal many interesting points. But there is one key item to keep in mind when making any general analysis about the overall usefullness of this business model:
“This appears to be due, in part, to the fact that Station Exchange is only available on two servers. The remaining 28 EverQuest II servers are likely to see just as much illicit buying and selling as in the past.”
That’s key. If you launch a game with some servers RMT and others not, you will have very different results than if you start up RMT servers in an already established game. Many people aren’t going to abandon their mains to go to new RMT servers, they’ll just keep using the 3rd parties. And if you allow for free transfers, it’s still problematic because a lot of players are in guilds and have friends they don’t want to leave just to legitimize their use of RMT. But if you launch your game with it, then you’ll have a very different result as a high percentage of players likely to want RMT self-select onto those servers.
I don’t know what effect this should have on conclusions that can or cannot be drawn here, I just think it’s an important point to keep in mind while making any evaluations.
February 8, 2007 at 1:06 am
Smed’s actually got his own write-up at http://stationblog.wordpress.com
I like the fact that they’re being so open about all this information, hopefully it will be helpful to other organizations looking to combat this issue.
I’m not sure that I’m optimistic about his final conclusion about RMT enabled games, as there will always be a market for important gameplay items, and the idea of user created content can wind up creating a lot more CS tickets than RMT ever did, but I’m speaking in the now. Its quite possible that future games will handle itemization quite differently.
February 8, 2007 at 3:02 am
I like the fact that they’re being so open about all this information
They don’t do it because they are paladins of information.
They do it so that it can get more acceptation and the gaming community start to swallow it. So they present it all good and positive.
They are just trying to bruteforce the system for it to become “standard”. It starts with “persuasion”.
February 8, 2007 at 7:41 am
Abalieno
It is already the standard, Abalieno. It has been for a very long time. With and without game companies’ approval and support.
But these steps: optional servers, player-to-player trades only, timid consideration of non-impacting-items… they’re so minuscule I’m not sure his feet even moved.
On-order creation of game-money and game-impacting items is the future of this economic model: because it is already the present; just grossly inefficient, denied, damaging, and vilified… still it is what it is.
There could be other ways to handle economy than the way everyone’s been doing it, but by the time anyone is ambitious enough to try, publishers will be hooked on this delicious money.
TPRJones
RMT servers do nothing to compete with 3rd parties’ efficiency at accumulating wealth, so they do nothing to eliminate the harmful in-game behavior which is most of the problem they create in the first place.
Companies need to create items on demand to eliminate 3rd party RMT.
And not meaningless items either. Players pay for most of this stuff because it has an impact.
A non-RMT server option might be a potential once the 3rd party RMTers are driven out of business.
February 8, 2007 at 11:37 am
“Companies need to create items on demand to eliminate 3rd party RMT”
This is directly harmful to the game in a way which facilitating trade ala Station Exchange is not. Either it’s compensated for in drops, which means you need to buy to compete, or it’s not in which case it’s inflationary.
And I’d point out that Eve is allready doing something different.
February 8, 2007 at 12:03 pm
Smed-Flavored Kool-Aid?
Yes Please!
I applaud their work to TRY and give us practical real-world data on the progress of legit, company endorsed RMT. Rather than sitting around hypothesizing about how bad it is. However, I do agree we should take this information and sprinkle a healthy dose of criticism.
February 8, 2007 at 1:07 pm
It’s interesting that Smed says in the interview that after the launch it became a non-event. It was actually the major reason my cousin and I quit EQ2. I suspect there weren’t all that many people who actually quit in protest, on the other hand I think there are a lot of people who wouldn’t start a game in the first place if RMT were a “feature”.
February 8, 2007 at 1:46 pm
It is already the standard, Abalieno.
No. It’s standard in a few circumscribed cases. SOE and EA are pushing to make it standard for THINGS I CARE ABOUT. Where it’s not standard yet and never will.
Despite everyone attempts to convince everyone else it’s a major phenomenon. It isn’t. It’s about a *minority* of players. And it’s the DIRECT CONSEQUENCE of IMMATURE game design. It’s a flawed principle and leads to flawed games.
As with griefing. It’s a side effect of things going wrong. I expect these things to be CORRECTED. Not supported and encouraged.
February 8, 2007 at 2:04 pm
This is a great white paper with lots of hard, tasty numbers to support a variety of theories. Kudos to SOE for publishing it.
> Companies need to create items on demand to eliminate 3rd party RMT.
From a business person’s perspective, that certainly looks like the way to go. You’re printing free money! High barrier to entry (you have a monopoly), near zero production outlays (a few FTE’s in ops), and crazy high ROI.
From a gamer’s perspective, this is a design decision that drives their interest in the game. Although I wouldn’t be interested in playing a game where outspending your opponent is a component of the original game design (see: Magic the Gathering collectible card game), it would appeal to a certain subset of your audience.
Your challenge as the designer and publisher is to find ways to capture both audiences with one game: the RMT’rs and the hopeless holdbacks like me who still believe in the illusion of a level playing field.
February 8, 2007 at 2:39 pm
It is already the standard, Abalieno.
No. It’s standard in a few circumscribed cases.
Actually, he’s right. It’s the standard in almost all asian-made MMOs, and considering that the majority of MMO players are in asian playing asian games, then the majority of MMO players are in games that are pay-for-items games.
There’s more to the world that the USA and World of Warcraft. You are in the minority.
February 9, 2007 at 9:15 am
Abalieno go to a “gold seller” website and find a single game that they don’t advertise sales for. It is the standard.
I don’t know a single gamer that hasn’t dipped into the RMT at one point or time. I’ve done it. I have learned from it. I am over it. It happens and it will continue to happen as long as games allow players to “buy” their way ahead. No matter how minuscule the advancement.