Month: November 2006

Today’s MMO economics lesson is about “relationship-specific investments.” These are investments made to satisfy the requirements of a particular customer. Examples might include a skill or spell you learn for a specific friend, a company that makes parts for one auto company, or getting your hair cut the way your significant other prefers. In MMOs, the most common example is that of support classes, those who advance by investing in others.

Should you play a dedicated healer or support class? Should you include them in your game design? Conveniently, people have been thinking through these issues in other contexts for decades, so let’s apply their work to our hobby/industry.

Continue reading Priests and Bikini Waxes

I was trying to compile a current list of all the MMOGs I have played and this is what I have come up with so far:

A Tale in the Desert 1 (beta)
Anarchy Online & Shadowlands (retail)
Asheron’s Call (retail)
Asheron’s Call 2 (beta/retail)
Auto Assault (beta)
City of Heroes (beta/retail)
City of Villains (beta/retail)
Dark Age of Camelot (retail)
Dragon Empires (alpha/beta – game canceled)
Dungeon Runners (beta)
Dungeons and Dragons Online (beta/retail)
Earth & Beyond (beta/retail – game canceled)
EVE Online (beta/retail) Continue reading MMOG Throwdown

Watching me play City of Villains, my wife has decided that badges need to be awarded in real life. Gamers are willing to go to great lengths for shinies that lack value even in-game, to say nothing of how much it impresses normal people that you got the Keeper of Secrets badge. Gamer spouses, think of how much effort your gamer will put into getting a purely cosmetic “flaming sword” effect, and how you can harness that power for good.

Some people would immediately think of grinding laundry or yard work. Awards at 100, 250, 500, and 1000 garments folded? I would recommend against an award for hours of vacuuming, since you can just turn that thing on and walk away. If I may give away a gamer secret, we already refer to “wife aggro” and think of time with the in-laws as faction grinding (“Just 200 more brownie points to Exalted…”).

My wife, of course, was thinking about sex. You might think that it is sufficiently rewarding already, but can’t we do more? Rewards should be based on quest completion, and grouping will be required (no badges for soloing). This will be a trophy that every gamer will be proud to show off, although there may be questions about RMT.

As WoW has demonstrated, every gamer wants an epic mount.

: Zubon

When you lower the incentive for something, you get less of it. The amount that you currently have is likely to stay, due to sunk costs and the difficulty of converting resources, but you don’t get new ones.

When an item is nerfed, you stop camping for it. When a quest is nerfed, you stop running it. When a dungeon is nerfed, you stop going there. At least, you stop doing so as much. Same risk, lower reward.

When you discuss net neutrality, you are talking about maintaining current prices in return for less bandwidth being created in the future. You are lowering the possible rewards to bandwidth providers while creating the threat of taking further control of their property away in the future. Also, while you are lowering the incentive to conduct maintenance, you are increasing the incentive to shift funds to lobbying; if the government will determine how (and how much) they can charge, the company will make its money by directing its attention to the government, rather than you.

: Zubon

Your mother-in-law tells you, “Take this [twenty-dollar bill] to the [gas station] and return with [a tank of gas]. [Courier mission]

I also helped with some yard work at my grandmother(-in-law)’s house. She and her daughter were having a dispute about whether all leaves should be taken away or whether some should be left around the bases of the trees. Receiving opposing instructions, I thought that “Steal the helpless old woman’s compost” would make a great City of Villains mission, maybe for Westin Phipps.

: Zubon

“Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” Milton Friedman, the most important and second most influential economist of the last century, died last week. You can see the fundamental truth of his work every day in some of the oldest and most popular online games.

Most online games print currency the way that third-world kleptocracies do: whenever it is convenient and in demand, with little thought for long-run consequences. This works in the extreme short run and leads quickly to ridiculous inflation.

Continue reading MMORPG Monetarism

Good news: The California Supreme Court and the Ninth Circuit Court have both held that, under federal law, actively reposting defamatory material does not make you liable for the defamation. That is you may not libel someone, but you can freely repost others’ libel, even if you know the claims are false and tortious. If this interpretation carries in Florida, you are free say anything you like about The Lawyer Who Shall Not Be Named, as long as someone else said it first. (H/T: Volokh)

Bad news: Universal has sued to threatened to sue Myspace, along with fans who they asked to help promote the film Serenity. Maybe I’m confused and Universal Pictures is not connected to Universal Music Group, but if any MMO you write about is connected to any Universal intellectual property, now could be a good time to start deleting those screenshots and reviews.

: Zubon

The mayor of Boston plans to bill Sony for public security costs related to the PlayStation 3 release. Meanwhile, a city councilor is trying to have Grand Theft Auto ads removed from city buses. No plans have been announced yet about forming a lynch mob and storming the nearby offices of Turbine.

In a nearby state, the Senator who was promoting video game censorship as part of her re-election campaign won by a rather large margin. In yet another nearby state, her co-sponsor on the “Family Entertainment Protection Act” was re-elected by a somewhat smaller margin.

If you did manage to acquire a PlayStation 3 or Wii, you may want to put it in your car and start driving west.

: Zubon

hat tip: Hit & Run and Overlawyered.