Trading virtual commodities for real world money

oscarian

It's funny, when you think about it, how much time and indeed, money, is spent on eleminating the trade of in-game items, characters, currency, and other such things, for real world money, in the mmo market of today.

 

It's strange because, with a creatively thought out business model, this is an obvious market that  needs to be tapped.

 

Take the example of Warhammer 40k gaming clubs - gamers can purchase figurines/minitures, paint those figurines, take them along to their club, and trade those figurines for real world money.  Another example is the periodically lucritive trading card market.  Cards are valued by their usefulness and rarity, and traded as commodities.

 

So why isn't it possible to set up a market in online games where items become commodities in the same way?  Even in the cases where trades are made without the proprieter (gaming company) making a cut, it's still going to be a method they could use to drive more traffic (in the form of end-users) to their site.

 

Sounds like a piece of cake to me.  I can't think of a technical reason the above wouldn't be possible.  I'm quite sure that even the people of our modern "fat assed couch potato" era are still capable and willing to venture out into the night once a fortnight and meet with other members of their club/fraternity/guild/team/whatever.  But this requires much effort for little potential gain, and in the cut-throat corporate world, "community service" doesn't always come before "increasing the bottom line".

 

Anyhow, it's just a question.  Anyone care to comment?

 

/Oscarian

 

maplestone

Once items have an acknowledged real-world value, you have real world taxes.  There are actually a lot of money-laundering monitors that are carefully watching how large the gaming virtual economy gets - not that long ago there were fortune-500 companies looking at Second Life as a potential "offshore tax haven" in which to do real-world business.

In addition, when the "items" are just database entries rather than physical objects, you are the mercy of the health of the server they are sitting on.  A duping hack, a server snafu or shutdown/bankruptcy and your collection suddenly ceases to have value or even ceases to exist..

Loktofeit

Excellent point, Maplestone.

Also, some devs rather not have their game reduced down to a farming and trading game if the focus is on other gameplay.

As for character transfers and supported item trade, many MMOs have worked that into their game in one manner or another. Ultima Online put forth a clever approach almost ten years ago and a few MMOs have followed suit. By selling services and gametime that can exist as tokens in the game world, they have allowed for a relatively secure way for players to engage in these player-to-player microtransactions.

A lot of developers are currently looking at it from a marketing angle rather than following UO's lead and tackling it from the viewpoint of gameplay and game design.

 

oscarian

The reason I included the "trading cards" example is that this would be an ideal way to remove the problem of intangible "database entries".  The problem would then be how to secure the plastic/card-board cards in such a way that they can't be duplicated or otherwise misused.  A card scanner might be a way of doing it.  But that, obviously, requires additional hardware, which itself presents new problems.

 

But that's where I was heading in the direction of with the concept.  Trading in-game commodities with real world objects that can then, once again, be inserted into and used in-game.

 

/Oscar

worldalpha

Most MMOs I think actually have it in the TOS that users can't selli in-game items for cash.  So, you risk your whole account if you try.  Most game companies want to make sure any money transacted for the game, is between them and the gamer, and not between gamers. 

oscarian

Originally posted by worldalpha
Most MMOs I think actually have it in the TOS that users can't selli in-game items for cash.  So, you risk your whole account if you try.  Most game companies want to make sure any money transacted for the game, is between them and the gamer, and not between gamers. 

Hi...if you read my OP you'll see I'm not discussing current TOS's in current games.

/O

Yodi2007

Originally posted by oscarian

The reason I included the "trading cards" example is that this would be an ideal way to remove the problem of intangible "database entries".  The problem would then be how to secure the plastic/card-board cards in such a way that they can't be duplicated or otherwise misused.  A card scanner might be a way of doing it.  But that, obviously, requires additional hardware, which itself presents new problems.

 

But that's where I was heading in the direction of with the concept.  Trading in-game commodities with real world objects that can then, once again, be inserted into and used in-game.

 

/Oscar

It could be via App by way of Android/Apple with a scanner (camera) and the card code could only be used once with Unique Serial number for that card! Also on that card could be a series of other numbers to coinside with the unique number like deck Serial number!

maplestone

Originally posted by oscarian

 

Trading in-game commodities with real world objects that can then, once again, be inserted into and used in-game.

I guess it's technically possible (with an authenticator chip), but it feels like a lot of complexity and risk (broken encryption, counterfeits, etc) for minimal gain.  It seems to me that it would be safer to just merchandize the IP of your game and leave the real world collecting and virtual world collecting disconnected.

 

 

Scot

Considering our gentle readers love of a free ride, it is amusing to think of the reaction if they found out their beloved cash shops were going to get taxed.