Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
> To put it simply, your buying goods and money via RMT in World of
Warcraft (and similar virtual worlds) puts you at an objective
advantage over me, not because of luck or the randomness of the world
itself, but because you took an outside-the-world step to improve your
inside-the-world competitive capabilities. <

OK, so this is a nice, succinct articulation of the standard objection
to RMT. To which the standard response is: 

Yes, but your sitting at your keyboard 80 hours a week while I attend
to the requirements of my job, family, and hygiene puts *you* at an
objective advantage over *me,* also having nothing to do with the
contingencies of the virtual world we share. This fact suggests a  road
range of outside-the-world steps I could take to improve my
inside-the-world competitiveness (quit my job, stop changing the cat
litter, ignore my spouse's pleas to for God's sake come to bed), and
yet, disturbingly enough, it's only the comparatively sane option of
RMT that you want to call cheating.

There are standard counterresponses to the standard response, of
course. But the whole conversation really just winnows toward a single
question: What kind of game are we playing here? What does it value?
What does it reward?

And this is where Jennifer's point about perceptions comes into play.
Make RMT a part of the ground rules, and I don't think it will be any
more controversial than the obscene -- but "fair" -- time requirements
of most MMOs already are.  

Indeed, there already are a number of competitive games that 
incorporate RMT uncontroversially. As I've mentioned, EverQuest 2 now
has a few servers set aside where RMT is both permitted and 
facilitated. The boutique MMOs produced by Iron Realms Entertainment
have had RMT built into the rules for years. And then there's the
strange and somewhat suspect Entropia Universe, an RMT paradise,
controversial for lots of reasons but not the ones we're talking about
here.

In short, you're right, Jamais, the structure of the world does matter
when you're thinking about the fairness of RMT, but not as much, I
think, as the rules of the game. 
  

    <scribbled>
  

    
> The larger and more difficult questions of bot-farming and
gold-farming are harder to address.... The issues mirror some of the
problems with large corporations in this world. When a business entity
works solely to increase profit, and is large enough to rock the
economy, it can cause a lot of pain in other ways, or create outcomes
that actually harm society. In the case of games, the "pain" is that
farming can suck out the fun in many ways.... <

See, now this, to me, is the more sophisticated objection to RMT. And
though I'm not sure how much I agree with this one either, I think it's
unfortunate that the argument tends to remain stuck at the more
elementary level of individual cheating versus fair play. In a lot of
ways virtual economies are great teaching objects, with the potential
to get average citizens thinking a lot more actively about how
economies affect them generally. If people could see the problems of
RMT more systemically, as you do here, Jennifer, they might be more
inclined to relate them to larger systemic economic problems. 

In any case, they'd likely be more inclined to see RMT in terms of
game design as much as play ethics, which might incline game companies
toward more design-oriented solutions -- rather than the largely
ineffective theater of prohibition and bannings that predominates
today.
  

    
I find it quite interesting that EQ2 now has pro-RMT servers with SOE
facilitating the transactions.  Any idea if SOE is getting a cut of
these transactions or are if they are the actual item/gold sellers? 
Any idea how the economies look on those servers?
  

    
Thinking about this question, especially in light of Julian's response, it
occurs to me that an interesting approach would be to look at responses to
RMT in light of the concept of MMOG as "occupation" (not in the sense of
profession, but in the broader sense used in occupational theory,
activities which demand focused attention) versus the concept of MMOG as
"space" (in the sense of a virtual world, or "metaverse" in current
jargon). That is to say, how does seeing yourself as "living in" a MMOG
versus "doing" a MMOG change your response to RMT?

One of the particular interesting parts of this question, at least for me,
is how the increasing overlap between the real world and the metaverse
changes the nature of these transactions. Right now, you can spend real
money for virtual goods (gold, swords, Spinning Mace of Mixing); you can,
at least in very limited ways, also spend virtual money on real goods
(Linden Lab now sells some graphics cards for computers for in-game
currency) -- something that makes Julian's question about the taxability
of virtual goods & money more pertinent. But with the advent of cheap
fabrication technologies (3D printers and such), we're already seeing
people create and iterate product designs in virtual worlds for printing
to the real world -- and folks like designer Sven Johnson have noted that
the easy integration of cheap network electronics in the printed product
would allow use of the real version to affect the virtual version in
return.

It all gets very confusing.

The big question is, then, how far will this go? What happens next?
  

    
FYI, "The Sportive Origins of the State" is in "Toward a Philosophy of
History,"   by Jose Ortega y Gasset N.Y. 1941
  

    
Jazzy: 

My understanding of the RMT servers in EQ2 is that Sony is acting only
as an eBay-type mediator in the transactions (and yes, taking a small
cut of each). I suspect the culture of EQ2 and other games like it is
too wary of RMT in general to permit the game developer itself to
profit from production of virtual items. But again, other game
companies get away with it scot-free: See the Iron Reams games, e.g.,
as well as a whole bunch of Asian games, which increasingly are
abandoning the subscription model for a scheme that lets you play for
free but requires item purchases for any meaningful advancement.

A related example is Korea's Cyworld -- not a game exactly so much as
a more playful version of MySpace. The bulk of their revenue is from
sales of the Cyworld currency (dotori, or acorns), which users spend on
clothes and furnishings for their home-page avatars. Apparently the
penetration of Cyworld in Korea is such that having an avatar there has
become a social and professional obligation. I heard an anecdote
recently about a Korean telecoms executive who got an email from her
brother complaining about the tatty shape her Cyworld avatar was in,
and though she finds the whole thing tedious she felt obliged to go
spend some acorns on making her avatar's appearance a better reflection
of her real-life social standing. 
  

    
> That is to say, how does seeing yourself as "living in" a MMOG
> versus "doing" a MMOG change your response to RMT?

A great question, Jamais. I'm not sure what the precise answer is, but
in general I'm always on the lookout for metaphors of online
interaction that escape the easy, obvious, and limiting imaginary of
the spatial -- and I think your notion of MMOs as "occupation" rather
than "space" looks like a fruitful one.
  

    
Thanks for the cite, robertflink. For those of us with downscale
libraries, any chance you could flesh out Ortega y Gasset's argument
for us a little?
  

    
I'll have to dig a bit. My copy is gone but I think one of my coffee
friends may be a source.

As I recall, the idea was that rambunctious youth in the days of old
were causing so much trouble that the village elders got together and
concocted some sports competitions, dances and parades and such to
channel the energies into less harmful directions. As we all know,
organizing such events is a challenge what with publicity,
construction, logistics, crowd handling, officiating and other tasks.
In the process the village discovered that other village chores and the
quality of life could actually be enhanced through organized
government. I also recall his citing a number of references in literary
works of old. I'll provide more when I have the book in hand.

BTW, Bengtsen suggests in "The Long Ships" that the village elders in
Scandinavia effectively solved the same rambunctious youth problem by
telling the young men of the plunder available elsewhere 
and showing them how to build ships. 

I like exploration of the ludic aspects of humankind. Such a relief
from the academic, the political and the religious!!!
  

    
Y'know, two weeks can just fly by when you're online! Thanks, Julian and
Jamais, as well as all the rest of you who have contributed to this
conversation while it was "featured." We've moved the big light to another
discussion, but this one remains open as long as any of us wich to carry on.
(I, for one, hope it can continue awhile.)
  

    
God, like Bruce said, time flies - I didn't realize that it's been
three weeks since I was over here. StL/Detroit in the playoffs have that
effect!! 

Julian, that's an interesting response to Weber, and it makes sense in
context. Weber is likely a bit off-topic for the central thrust of your
project, but I'll try to follow up on your comments in mid-week. I'm in
the middle of a paper on the history of Auburn (discipline, worth ethic)
and Weber has become a part of it, so I'm still muddling through some of
this. Your comments are useful for suggesting some ideas related to
the transition of labor as "religious" and the more worldly "labor as
profit." I'm plowing back through "The Sociology of Religion" now in light
of your book and my paper, with the deadline looming.