You may have heard the recent news about e-theft; in case you haven’t here’s a quick re-cap: Two boys in the Netherlands physically attacked (in the real world) a third to get to acquire items in RuneScape. The verdict? On top of assault, they were guilty of theft. This is only the latest in a series of similar rulings establishing precedent for real world value for online concepts.
The notion that items which exist solely on the Internet still have some intrinsic real world value is not a new one. You might recall the virtual island which sold for nearly $30,000 several years ago, or the Supreme Court ruling over ownership of domain names. However, this case is unique in that it’s not tens of thousands (or more) of dollars at stake here. It’s basically the equivalent of two kids beating up another to get his prized baseball card – and the courts are recognizing this as just as valid an issue, despite the fact that the stolen item exists solely in a game.
- I VALUE MY DARN FULL MALEVOLENT GEAR OMG
The ramifications are interesting. IRE‘s EULA provides a solid blanket of cover, ensuring that items such as credits and artifacts are always protected, while items you acquire in-game are subject to game world theft, subject to the individual game’s rules. However, what does this say about the value of our characters themselves and the items they hold? Do they now have a real world or monetary worth? Can items which exist solely in the virtual ether have any sort of price tag attached to them, or are they just intangible abstracts?
An intriguing way to look at this is to consider what in itself denotes value. Basic Econ 101 courses look at real world goods in this way, assessing factors which contribute to an item’s value. One theory suggests that value derives from the inherent costs of production. For items which exist solely online, however, the need for labor and materials is completely absent – a virtual sword doesn’t require a smith’s time or iron ore to make, just like a house in Achaea’s subdivision doesn’t need masons and stone to actually build. Yet these can be highly desired things to acquire in games, so there is obviously something else which plays into how much an e-item is worth – a more subjective scale of perceived use and desirability.
For the most part, items fall into three categories, although there is understandable interlap: utility, enjoyment and rarity. A rune for your blade or a set of wings, a special design for your unicorn in Avalon, or a meta gem in WoW – are all clear examples of items which are highly valued for their utility. These items augment your fighting or greatly ease your travel through the land, and carry high price tags which players consider worth paying because of how useful they are. A house one can roleplay within or a fancy mount, on the other hand, would be an item considered valuable because of the enjoyment factor it contributes to. These types of items often are acquired more for roleplay or sentimental purposes. Finally, rare items, such as prizes earned through events or promotions, or pets which have a very low chance or spawning, are valued primarily because other people don’t have them, or need them and find them hard to acquire.
Artifact auctions provide a great example of this sort of valuation in practice. Aetolia, for example, is currently holding a unique type of auction, where several of the items can only be bid on with special tokens which players acquired in an earlier promotion. One of the items, a torc which gives the Druid vitality skill, currently has a very high bid, due to how useful the ability is perceived to be in combat. Another item, though, is a special traveling house, and is also rising high up on the bid list, because of the “fun factor” many see in driving a gypsy wagon around. The currency itself, finally, is a great demonstration of the notion of rarity – before the items were announced, most people didn’t value the tokens that highly and they sold for rather low prices. Now, however, that the auction is underway and people need the tokens (and the amount available is becoming more scarce) the price these are being traded for is skyrocketing.
It’s somewhat fascinating how the game world can mirror the real one, but with its own distinct spin put on it. Without the fetters of some real world constraints, such as production and material costs, other aspects of the economy come to the forefront, making for a interesting system to sit back and observe.
How about you? What items do you most value in your game of choice, and why?
a little bit of everything all of the time 
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One theory suggests that value derives from the inherent costs of production. For items which exist solely online, however, the need for labor and materials is completely absent – a virtual sword doesn’t require a smith’s time or iron ore to make, just like a house in Achaea’s subdivision doesn’t need masons and stone to actually build.
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I think you’re forgetting an important cost of production–time. That’s what a software engineer is getting paid for in the real world, for example: his/her time spent programming. In fact, that’s what nearly every employee is “producing” for the money they get paid…time spent on work.
Similarly, things in game can certainly cost time. Time spent farming or crafting or whatever else. I believe the Ultima MMO first became famous for having an entire real world economy around it, people’s hard work in game producing items that were sold on eBay for real money.
IMO, that’s a lot of what it comes down to. People buy (against the TOS) things related to WoW (like characters or gold) because it saves them the time of leveling up a character or farming themselves. Material goods and time are the two drivers of value and time is the one that is reflected the most in “e-items,” I think.
Absolutely a great point. I’d go a step further and say that creative vision/ability can also contribute to an item’s value. Something that is beautifully rendered or epically described is way better than a plain brown dress described as “This is a plain brown dress.” However, virtual production costs often become cheaper the more an item is made. The first holy sword of awesomeness +5 might have taken a few hours to code, but the second one merely cost a ctrl-c + ctrl-v. The blue version took 3 minutes to change the color attributes.
Even written descriptions become easier to do the more you do it. I made tons of money in MUDs by designing custom items, houses and even character descriptions for people, and I noticed that after a point things become formulaic and easy to churn out. I’m not saying that I wrote to an *exact* template, but you definitely develop habits and tricks to quicken the process. So, I’d definitely argue that production costs for some things become drastically cheaper the more they are made, especially when you’re dealing with things like a cash-shop where the items are just copies from a master template.
However, I did neglect the farming component. Probably because I hate farming. >_> I’d consider the farming aspect the equivalent of real world production costs, if I were to think about it. There are some intriguing differences, like most games having virtually limitless resources if enough time were invested, but also many similarities to a real world economy. I think GW2’s current (lack of) economy demonstrates what happens when the material distribution vs demand isn’t balanced right.
Considering this reminds me of Stephenson’s latest book, “Reamde,” where he describes a MMO built with the premise of e-items being exchanged and sold; the game itself is designed to facilitate farming and gold selling, with the higher-level gameplay reserved for the people who value their time highly enough to just buy what they need. I loved the concept of a game company just being honest about that!
Also, has a cool poll that explores the value/utility connection a bit.
Two off-topics:
1. I loved MUDs that gave one the ability to change the names/descriptions of items!
2. Now I have a new book to add to my wishlist…I like Stephenson, so the book you mentioned sounds great.
On the actual subject, I wasn’t just referring to the game programmers’ time, but the player’s time in crafting. Granted, crafting in WoW doesn’t take much time (beyond leveling up the profession in the first place) if we count farming materials as a separate matter. But some games do force players to spend lots of time to make an item in game. The Ultima example I mentioned, items could take many hours to create, which is what made them so expensive to players who wanted them for use. (If you haven’t heard of it, I definitely recommend Julian Dibbell’s book “Play Money: Or, How I Quit My Day Job and Made Millions Trading Virtual Loot” and, since you’re a fellow former [?] MUDer, you may also enjoy his book “My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World” though that’s more MOO-oriented).
I think you make an excellent point about design being value-add. WoW, again, sadly doesn’t offer much in the way of being able to design nice things in game (the closest thing is being able to make outfits via transmogrification) but in games where there’s some control over the appearance of things, once could certainly see pay-worthy player-design.
I will have to check those books out.
I was originally writing this from a cash-shop perspective (it was for a MUD website, reposted here), but I think crafted items are a great thing to add (and I am going durrr at myself for missing them). They open up several doors to consider: monetary resale value vs utility (for example, the inscriptionist BoE trinket vs BoA staff), time vs resource cost , RNG… How is production affected by the fact that MMO resource acquisition is only limited by time investment (versus natural scarcity)? How do artificial gatings like daily CDs play into this?
I think, most interesting would be to look at how we value highly rare drops versus highly involved crafted items – do we just compare raw stats, or are there other factors at work? My guess would be that the prestige of having an incredibly rare item – even if the stats were on par with a crafted item – would make the drop be considered more valuable.
This makes me wish WoW had more involved high-end crafting this expansion, aside from just DE 8 things and sew something new. Dull!
I am dabbling back again in MUDs after some time away, and it’s an interesting experience – it’s weird how playing an MMO can color your outlook on a MUD and vice versa. If you’re a fan of design in MUDs, I’d recommend the IRE franchise of games or the new game, Lithmeria. Both allow TONS of custom item crafting.
Sorry for ending up breaking this into two replies, but this struck me just as I hit Post Comment on the other one. 😛
You mention farming not mirroring real-world economies because the resources are generally unlimited in number, limited only by the time a player is willing to put into gathering, which is true. It strikes me, though, that the circumstance in games like MMOs is a rough mirror for what futurists see as the eventual future economy, where nanotechnology could make material resources essentially unlimited, by way of assembler nanobots that can create materials at the molecular level, removing any notions of rarity, etc. In such a situation, the only “valuable” thing will be intellectual property…the patterns that allow nanobots to make refined products (like a hovercar!) and creative works.
Thus, the real world economy will be more like MMOs…raw materials are abundant, patterns (and artwork–transmog gear?;) are what people need!
That is both awesome and scary to think about.