Comments on: This. Isn’t. Sparter.

By: asfasf

asfasf — Fri, 21 May 2010 05:51:38 +0000

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By: PJ

PJ — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 09:04:36 +0000

Many believe the future MMOs will follow Korea’s “Item Shop” strategy. There is money out there but whose is it? Unless the game design changes, the demand for gold and items will still be there.

@Scott: As a game designer, how do you see the success of microtransactions in Korea being applied to future US games and at the same time be as much fun as WoW.

By: Juha

Juha — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 23:43:51 +0000

So has anyone spent time comparing the merits of the two approaches to control RMT (“socialist” vs. “capitalist”), how it affects the game design (and avoids removing the fun elements) – any success of one approach over the other ?

Just curious thinking about the future game designs…

By: Amaranthar

Amaranthar — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 03:07:29 +0000

There’s only one way to take RMT out of gaming, and that’s to make it so that everything that can be gotten in-game has no value (or such little value that it simply doesn’t pay to farm). Otherwise, there will be RMT trade going on of whatever it is that has value to players.

Want to do away with RMT of game MMOney? The game would have to not only sell the MMOney themselves, but sell it so cheaply that farmers can’t undersell them and make anything worthwhile. Or remove MMOney all together from the game. Then you still have items. They’ll sell desirable items, so you have to sell them first, and again, at such cheap rates that they can’t afford to undersell you. Or simply not have items to get in the game, buy them from the company only.

Games like this wouldn’t be much fun, in a well rounded sort of way. They wouldn’t be “worldly” at all. There would be no trade system, since players can just buy everything cheaply, or only get them, by buing them from the game company. In which case, yes a player can sell something to another player, but they’d have to do it at a loss. This kind of game couldn’t have looting, or stealing, or any other traditional PvP type play except combat itself. It wouldn’t have hunter/gatherer play, or RMT traders would once again have an outlet.

I hope you can see that trying to fight RMT by joining RMT would have to take out alot of game play to succeed.

To me, if you want to make a game that has items that can be traded, and has value to the players, then you need to take away the ability to effectively farm. There are ways to do this.
-You can take out static spawns that drop items of value
-You can make static spawns that depend on time of existance to accumulate items of value
-You can let players lose their gear if they die
etc.

This won’t remove RMT completely, but enough things like this can reduce it’s impact enough to make it a non-issue.

By: Please

Please — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 03:02:58 +0000

Does anyone play WoW as an economy simulator? I was under the impression that current MMOGs have forgone robust economies in exchange for simple quests and a modifiable hot-key bar.

By: Please

Please — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 03:01:01 +0000

Does anyone play WoW as an economy simulator? I was under the impression that current MMOGs have forgone robust economies in exchange for simple quests and a modifiable hot-key bar.

By: J.

J. — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 18:34:00 +0000

Shouldn’t have to apologize for any RL leanings about economy. Games are supposed to be fun escapism. Concerns about economy usually aren’t about making games more fun, they’re about keeping them from being made not-fun.

By: Jadawin

Jadawin — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 17:23:51 +0000

The funny thing is that I am a staunch capitalist, but I absolutely despise RMT and what it has done to WoW.

By: Angry.Bob

Angry.Bob — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 17:18:06 +0000

Jolly Pirate Lum said “Asian consumers are happy with it, but it makes most Western consumers recoil”

I think “Western consumers recoil out loud, but in private a sizeable number actually use the service” would be more accurate. It ‘s the equivalent of the Porn industry in the 80′s. Very few people would admit to using it, but enough people really did to keep the industry blossoming. Plan for RMT tto happen via 3rd parties in Project X no matter what you do, unless you include it yourself.

By: Andrew Crystall

Andrew Crystall — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 16:54:10 +0000

Well,

A company generating in-game cash directly is afaik a bad idea. It’s inflationary, for starters. Allowing trade between players for “real world” currency dosn’t directly increase the amount of cash in the economy in the same way. Actually, Eve’s “we print gametime” RMT has allways struck me as the best idea.