Real Money In Gaming.

[Ferbian]

Real money being usable in games is something that has started to surface more and more. We had it in Second Life, we had the ability in World of Warcraft to purchase items through Blizzards store in order to allow you to get things in the game (Pets and mounts to be more specific), and soon enough there will be more games introducing it, like Guild Wars and Diablo 3. And Diablo 3 is exactly what made me make this thread.

Back in the beginning of August Blizzard Entertainment announced their new Auction House system which would be available for Diablo 3, where people could put items on the Auction House, and sell it for real life money (Or normal in-game currency, there will be 2 Auction Houses) or vice versa, being able to purchase your way to these real life money sold items, which in reality seems pretty cool, or as Blizzard described it;

We’re introducing a powerful auction house system that will provide a safe, fun, and easy-to-use way for players to buy and sell the loot they obtain in the game. Items can be sold and purchased using real-world money or in-game gold.

A safe, fun and easy-to-use Auction House. Now first when this was announced, I heard a few people bickering about it, some people weren't too hyped due to the fact that it would either ease up the game too much for the 'rich bastards of the gaming community' or it would make it abusable and what not, basically a lot of people whining and complaining. But in-between that, a lot of people were also seeing the upsides to it. A real life money auction house opens up for the possibility of someone who's a hardcore gamer, truly fine showing his skills, and getting that additional advantage in comparison to others, by being able to technically make a living out of this system.

After a while, I stumbled upon a video from a 'famous Youtuber' who goes by the name of Athene (Or real life name Chiren), who had the following opinion of it;

[YOUTUBE]_pc53tFAo1g[/YOUTUBE]

Mind you, you can easily skip to 01:00 and stop at 06:00 in case you just want to hear his input on this specific feature.

Either way, the primary thing that Athene brings up is the fact that the dedicated and skilled gamers playing this game will now have a way of making some sort of income, without having to get outside and work a 'slave' job in order to make money, but instead allowing them to do what they wanna do. As he says "It's the future of gaming", and that is something that caught my attention. The idea that real life money might indeed be the future of the gaming world, where in a few years everything will be dominated by real life currency, and we will have more and more professional gamers. It's something that gives a massive potential for the gaming world, and for the expanding of the possibilities in games, as well as the open community. Because lets be realistic, a lot of those hardcore players that does fuck all but play games, they're gonna get poked at, bashed and teased by the people who doesn't, and the people who frown upon that sort of constant entertainment.

So my questions to you are the following:
- Is this concept anything of potential, what do you think of this, and will it be successful of a failure?
- Is this one of, if not 'the' future of gaming?

 

[Dagger Dias]

I have mixed feelings on this idea. On one hand it could put hardcore gamers in their place due to them not having enough real money to use if and when game currency becomes phased out. Some of them have jobs that do not pay well, or are unemployed completely. I am sure that this idea will receive some harsh comments from that crowd due to their status as the elite being in danger.

Getting the hardcore crowd put in their place could be one positive outcome of this. However with the good sometimes comes the bad. People who are rich will instantly be at an advantage. If they buy their way through games, I see all sorts of issues stemming from that in the future.

That being said, I think using real money in games could be a good direction to go in because it will not only generate more money for the gaming companies but it will also be an incentive for gamers to make a better life for themselves financially in real life. I think it will be a successful slow changing process effecting just about every genre in the coming years.

 

[Sin Jackal]

Interesting subject. I had a long conversation with a friend about this last week, also involving the Diablo 3 auction system.


Personally, I hate pay to win in any situation. It's a video game. . .earn your items and levels. When you just buy stuff, it's taking the cheap way out. Likewise for having friends who duplicate stuff and give it to you, or just outright give you stuff when you join a game. But especially pay to win I don't like. . .because zero effort has gone in to actually acquiring the items and/or levels.

I think of it this way: let's say you go to play basketball with some friends. You play 1 on 1 with a buddy, and you lose 21-14. So next time you're about to play a game against him, you pay him $20 so you can start with 10 points. Now you won the game 21-15. Was that worth it? Imo, it isn't. It just proves you can't win legitimately. So while you can gloat about beating someone in PvP with your store bought gear, deep down you know you would've lost if you didn't buy all that crap. . .since you bought that stuff since you were losing and getting outperformed by better and more dilligent players.

Either way, the primary thing that Athene brings up is the fact that the dedicated and skilled gamers playing this game will now have a way of making some sort of income, without having to get outside and work a 'slave' job in order to make money, but instead allowing them to do what they wanna do. As he says "It's the future of gaming", and that is something that caught my attention. The idea that real life money might indeed be the future of the gaming world, where in a few years everything will be dominated by real life currency, and we will have more and more professional gamers[/B]

I also wanted to reply to this part too. . specifically the bolded part. Selling game items is absolutely in no way capable of replacing the amount of money you could make with a regular job. What this "Athene" person fails to realize with his obvious complete lack of economic knowledge or even experience in selling video game items, is that you will not be getting very much much for those items.

You could sell items on Diablo 2 before (against the ToS), and nobody who did so made very much money unless they figured out how to duplicate. And even then, they drove down the prices of every item they duplicated to the point you could get them for 50 cents.

Now Diablo 3 will technically be even worse. Every single player in the game can legally sell their items. This means the supply of sold items will be MASSIVE. Meanwhile the percentage of the player base who actually wants to break down like a noob and buy items will be significantly smaller than the amount of people hoping to make money off of Diablo.

What this does is continuously drive down the value of every single item in the game the more time that passes. For example, (using Diablo 2 as an example, so I'm assuming you've played it), let's say in Diablo 3 the Windforce makes another appearance. It was the best bow in the game before, let's say it is again (for argument's sake). Someone finds a Windforce, then puts it up for $15. Someone buys it. Later that day, another person finds a Windforce, then puts it up for $15, and gets it. 5 days later, everyone who got a Windforce tries to make $15 through the item selling system. Except, not that many people want a Windforce. Since most of the people who got their bow want to sell it, at least one of them will buckle and price it lower. . .let's say $12-13. Now guess what? People who see that price will now no longer buy it for $15. Every time you try to sell at $15, no one buys it since they know they can find them cheaper. Now Windforce is permenantly lower than $15 in value.

That cycle continues until the item lands somewhere around the 1-3 dollar range. Now let me ask you, how often did you actually find a Windforce in Diablo 2? I found 2, and I mfed a LOT, and played for a long time. I made myself 2-6 dollars for a crapton of work? Yeah, that blows.

If you put it into a "dollars an hour" formula, your money made per hour would be maybe 1/3rd of minimum wage at best. And that number keeps dropping the longer tha game is out, only spiking slightly with every game patch that adds in new superior items, only to inevitably drop once again. Alternative to working a real job? I don't think so. Unless you figure out how to duplicate, which will likely just get you banned from the game, ending your income stream.

 

[Muffin Top Merkley]

I am a firm believer in that all video games will 100% be free-to-play in the near future.

With the success of free-to-play games on things like Facebook, and companies like Zynga making billions off of the free-to-play games they develop, it will only be a matter of time before companies like THQ, Activision, id, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo etc. develop a free-to-play system where gamers get a basic version of game that they want, but then have to purchase additional components.

For example, if I wanted a Call of Duty game, I would get the single-player campaign, three multiplayer maps, and a handful of weapons and equipment for multiplayer matches. Twenty different multiplayer maps and all equipment and weapons would be available for me to purchase instantly if I choose so.

In theory, I'd get the single-player campaign and a small number of multiplayer maps for free, but then would have to pay x amount of dollars for additional maps, plus x amount of dollars for certain weapon and equipment packages.

Online transactions are the future of gaming and will be how developers and publishers earn profit.

 

[Sin Jackal]

I think you're partially right. There will be a lot more "pay to win" features in video games, especially PC/online ones. Almost every free to play game has multiple pay to win features in it. In fact, those games are usually specifically designed so you can get most of the stuff you can pay for. . .only it's painfully slow (I have stopped playing many F2P games because of this. There are tons of examples)

Instead, I think we will still have to pay for the product, AND there will be pay to win features on the game all rolled into one annoying package. I highly suspect the first very guilty party of this is going to be SWTOR (Star Wars: The Old Republic). EA has been draining gamers of money by releasing incomplete products for years now.

Has anyone played Dragon Age? It was the most blatant slap in the face of gamers I have ever seen. They literally released the game with DLC available on PSN on day 1. Stuff that was borderline essential to your ability to play and enjoy the game. For example, you had a very limited inventory of items you could carry on you, and there was no way to store any of it unless you bought a DLC. If you did not buy it, you would essentially have to sell off or drop 90% of the stuff you came across. Going through a single dungeon usually maxed out your inventory. So you would have to sell off most if not all of it. Or go to the next dungeon and begin dropping things just to pick up more stuff. They also held out characters (the golem), unless you bought the super short DLC that featured the recruiting process. And that DLC actually costed 15 dollars! It was arguably the shortest DLC add-on I'd ever played. Both of those things were available on PSN immediately. They were clearly features meant to be part of the original game.. .but instead they forced you to pay an additional $25 on top of the $60 you just paid for the game.

I also purchased Fight Night: Round 4 (another EA product, and it was a huge mistake to buy it), and less than a week later, there's a DLC on PSN to download the rest of the fighters on the roster. Thanks again EA. As if my paying $60 for your lazy rehashed product wasn't enough profit for you, you expect us to pay an additional 10% too? Gimmie a break. . .


So yeah, companies like EA are already nickel and diming gamers with garbage tactics like that. So I fully expect your hypothesis to come to fruition, only companies are still going to charge us for the game itself too. There's no reason for them not to.

Now, I'm not saying all DLC is a rip off like that. But with EA, it is quite clear they are releasing stuff that is intended to be part of the original game experience. CoD games do the same thing, by releasing those "map packs" with every single sequal. Yeah. . . like 5 maps originally, 10 more with DLC. EVERY time. It's more nickel and diming tactics.

So basically, these games where you pay for stuff, most people do so because the game is programmed to have such slow progression that you almost have to buy their crap so you don't waste so much time getting to the next step. Rarely does it actually enhance the game experience. . .it's mainly little more than a tool to speed up a flawed game that has very slow progression.

I can't say I'm looking forward to the "new era" at all. I will not play games like that, that so clearly look to steal away my money. I think I will stick to console gaming, and will just steer clear of greedy companies like EA.

 

[Yrrab]

Interesting subject. I had a long conversation with a friend about this last week, also involving the Diablo 3 auction system.


Personally, I hate pay to win in any situation. It's a video game. . .earn your items and levels. When you just buy stuff, it's taking the cheap way out. Likewise for having friends who duplicate stuff and give it to you, or just outright give you stuff when you join a game. But especially pay to win I don't like. . .because zero effort has gone in to actually acquiring the items and/or levels.

I think of it this way: let's say you go to play basketball with some friends. You play 1 on 1 with a buddy, and you lose 21-14. So next time you're about to play a game against him, you pay him $20 so you can start with 10 points. Now you won the game 21-15. Was that worth it? Imo, it isn't. It just proves you can't win legitimately. So while you can gloat about beating someone in PvP with your store bought gear, deep down you know you would've lost if you didn't buy all that crap. . .since you bought that stuff since you were losing and getting outperformed by better and more dilligent players.





I also wanted to reply to this part too. . specifically the bolded part. Selling game items is absolutely in no way capable of replacing the amount of money you could make with a regular job. What this "Athene" person fails to realize with his obvious complete lack of economic knowledge or even experience in selling video game items, is that you will not be getting very much much for those items.

You could sell items on Diablo 2 before (against the ToS), and nobody who did so made very much money unless they figured out how to duplicate. And even then, they drove down the prices of every item they duplicated to the point you could get them for 50 cents.

Now Diablo 3 will technically be even worse. Every single player in the game can legally sell their items. This means the supply of sold items will be MASSIVE. Meanwhile the percentage of the player base who actually wants to break down like a noob and buy items will be significantly smaller than the amount of people hoping to make money off of Diablo.

What this does is continuously drive down the value of every single item in the game the more time that passes. For example, (using Diablo 2 as an example, so I'm assuming you've played it), let's say in Diablo 3 the Windforce makes another appearance. It was the best bow in the game before, let's say it is again (for argument's sake). Someone finds a Windforce, then puts it up for $15. Someone buys it. Later that day, another person finds a Windforce, then puts it up for $15, and gets it. 5 days later, everyone who got a Windforce tries to make $15 through the item selling system. Except, not that many people want a Windforce. Since most of the people who got their bow want to sell it, at least one of them will buckle and price it lower. . .let's say $12-13. Now guess what? People who see that price will now no longer buy it for $15. Every time you try to sell at $15, no one buys it since they know they can find them cheaper. Now Windforce is permenantly lower than $15 in value.

That cycle continues until the item lands somewhere around the 1-3 dollar range. Now let me ask you, how often did you actually find a Windforce in Diablo 2? I found 2, and I mfed a LOT, and played for a long time. I made myself 2-6 dollars for a crapton of work? Yeah, that blows.

If you put it into a "dollars an hour" formula, your money made per hour would be maybe 1/3rd of minimum wage at best. And that number keeps dropping the longer tha game is out, only spiking slightly with every game patch that adds in new superior items, only to inevitably drop once again. Alternative to working a real job? I don't think so. Unless you figure out how to duplicate, which will likely just get you banned from the game, ending your income stream.

This post is pretty much spot on.

ANY income that a gamer could POSSIBLY make with this system will be null within the first 3-6 months of the game's release. This is because the ONLY way people were able to truly make an income from the game was after they had duped the items and were able to sell a bunch of them, albeit at 50 cents a pop.

I remember back in (I want to say)2002, a windforce was sold on e-bay for about 1700$. That's insane! But, that was also less than a year after the LoD expac had come out, and before the massive, MASSIVE influx of duped items. Couple that with the fact that Blizz will be doing everything possible to prevent dupes, there's no way someone could possibly make a (steady) income from this type of game.

 

[RudoReels]

In theory, I like it, because who wouldn't want to make money for playing a game?

Unfortunately it opens the door for scammers, botters, and griefers. People who suck at the game but have money to blow and get the top gear just so they can screw with people. You know it happens.

Then again, if it's a FEATURE, versus going the eBay/3rd party route, maybe they'd try harder to combat any 'problems' that arise, and perhaps it could be scam-proof somehow.