Barriers and Obstacles: Into the Breach of a New Era in Play-By-Mail Gaming

[ixnay]

Isn't this more or less exactly what many old-school PBM games did? Didn't Tribes of Crane charge extra the larger your tribe was, or the more special actions you used, or the more combat reports you had? I remember reading that some unscrupulous players would launch spitball attacks on their enemies every turn, just to generate combat reports and drain their enemies accounts.

My own alma mater, Empyrean Challenge, charged a flat rate minimum or more depending on how many ships/colonies or orders you had on a given turn. Those who were willing to pay could expand as quickly as the game would allow, while those who tried to stick to the base rate had to carefully budget themselves.

So now I'm imagining, what if I could play Far Horizons for free, as long as I stayed with one home system, one colony, and 3 ships -- anything beyond that would entail some sort of "buy"? That would give people a chance to play, and then the serious gamers would take off from there.

[JonO]

OK, I was thinking of games where literally you can buy more in-game currency. I set up the son of a friend of mine in one of those not realizing that if the player-character worked really hard he could earn a gold piece a day and in a month have enough to buy a new helmet. Or, as the game kept reminding him, he could go to a special screen and buy 100, 250, or 500 gold pieces at $0.25 each. Of course without all the specials he kept getting killed out and brought back to life - which eliminated half his gold pieces. . .

[Ramblurr]

OK, I was thinking of games where literally you can buy more in-game currency. I set up the son of a friend of mine in one of those not realizing that if the player-character worked really hard he could earn a gold piece a day and in a month have enough to buy a new helmet. Or, as the game kept reminding him, he could go to a special screen and buy 100, 250, or 500 gold pieces at $0.25 each. Of course without all the specials he kept getting killed out and brought back to life - which eliminated half his gold pieces. . .

Yea, I detest these sorts of games. They are simply money making schemes disguised as games. Their fundamental game mechanic is more money == win.

[JonO]

Yea, I detest these sorts of games. They are simply money making schemes disguised as games. Their fundamental game mechanic is more money == win.

Did some more research, downloaded the client. You and I may be more ethical, but those designers are a hellovalot richer. The game (wizard 101) is basically a card dueling game with a Harry Potter type world and good animation with a cartoon-like style. It is possible to play for free but there's lots of incentive to upgrade your player character - and there is no way in hell for your character to succeed unless he purchases lots of magical items from athame to henchmen for gold - I was offered a special discount rate and could buy 60,000 GP for only(!) $60.00.

Are you sitting down? The game has 1.5 million players. Mostly tweeners and teeners.

[ixnay]

Hah, this even came up in one game that did NOT reward players with extras if they paid more to the moderators! It was one of those massive-multiplayer online games, not PBM, but still an instructive example. Ultima Online (which I believe has been mentioned in another thread somewhere around here...) charged a basic $10/month. I believe they opened up new areas of gameplay if you bought the expansion disks for a one-time charge. But overall, they were quite reasonable and very popular.

I had played for a short while and noticed all these players had build houses and buildings everywhere the game allowed. Some of them had vendor characters installed on the grounds, selling useful equipment to passers-by. I decided to make that a goal -- build a small house somewhere and set up shop. Best would have been to build something near one of the dungeons, where hopefully I'd get a steady stream of poisoned adventurers, seeking "cure" potions and willing to pay inflated prices. But first, I would need to gather up the $80k of in-game gold currency to buy a deed to a house.

So for a couple of weeks I grinded away. I had a moderate level of power, and could fight off the everpresent liches in one particular forest well enough, but really hit paydirt (as it were) when I discovered a local dungeon with a steady supply of earth elementals. Not only did fighting them continue to hone my combat skills, but their bodies presented me with a precious gemstone or two for sale back in town.

At last, $80 in hand for a deed, I set about identifying a location I might use, when I found that ALL AVAILABLE REAL ESTATE had long since been snatched up in this popular game! Long gone were the days when hardy pioneers could simply plop down a building in the grass, wherever they felt like it. No, my options now were limited and my prospects were dim. Either I could hunt around for openings (buildings with no activity for 3 or more days were empty/dissolved) which were fairly rare, or I could pay a broker to sell me a space held by someone else.

The going rate for a small basic plot of land? $800k minimum, and that was for out-of-the-way spots far off the beaten trail! To earn all that would mean many many weeks of more grinding! Or, I could visit one of the many game currency brokerage houses that popped up outside the interface. I could go to various sites and bid for properties or simply buy game gold -- the going rate for $1m in gold was about $60.

So for a mere investment of $60, I could achieve my dream! No grinding necessary! And this was NOT required by the game publishers - they merely charged the standard monthly subscription. I am sure there were people who played and earned enough to became in-game millionaires through their own hard work, but after I saw how long it took just to get that first $80k, I was just shocked at the process of having to multiply that effort by 10 just to get my foot in the door. A mere $60 could have jumped me to the front of the line, and there were probably MANY MANY people who did exactly that.

So the whales are out there, my friends. They will come and pay, if you offer them a compelling experience, a shared environment, and a persistently rewarding community...

[JonO]

I bumped into a site for EVE-Online (brilliant graphics programming run on super computers) where they would allow you to skip all the grief of being a noob. For a mere $XXX, they would sell you a position that had been run by a guy whose job it was to stay on line and increase all the increasables. I don't remember the prices but they were all three or four figures.

[Ramblurr]

This isn't an uncommon phenomenon. In fact I would venture to say every popular MMOG has a RL economy that has sprung up around it dealing in in game currency, leveled characters, etc.

Studios take a different approach to these markets. Blizzard with WoW wields the banhammer with heavy vengeance. If you're caught buying gold from a gold farmer, not only is the gold farmer banned but you are too.

CCP, the studio behind EVE, once held a similiar disposition, though they evolved and now setup official out of game mechanisms to trade and buy characters. You can't buy toons with IRL cash, at least not directly, but only with in game currency. The only official way to use RL money to buy in game currency is to buy a PLEX, an in game item that when activated extends the player's subscription by a month. Since this is tied to a RL value ($15 per month of play time), you can sell them in game for in game currency.

I like their model, because they provide an outlet for those with cash to burn and the desire to spend it on a virtual game. But it doesn't imbalance the game such that the only way to succeed is to spend money (aside from the monthly subscription).

[JonO]

So if I wanted to, I could buy a PLEX (for $15.00?) and then sell it to you for 20,000 GP? I remember you tried to explain this earlier, and I didn't get it. I think, now I do - and I don't really see anything wrong with it.

The problem comes, methinks, in a way that cannot be controlled only discouraged. Obviously game currency has to be transferable. And while a computer may be programmed to look as suspicious transfers of currency, it is going to have a rough time proving that the transaction was no one sided but that the other side occurred off the board.

[Ramblurr]

Here is how it works:

You can only buy PLEX in pairs, so for $30 you get 2 in game items called PLEX.

You can activate these items on your character and receive a month of subscription time (per PLEX).

Or, (since they are in game items), you can trade/sell/jettison/destroy them. If another player gets one, then they can activate it on themselves to get a month of play time.

So, you can effectively buy PLEX and sell them for in-game currency. But on the other hand, if you have a solid income of in game currency from in game activities (trading, mining, etc), then you can effectively play EVE for free as you can buy PLEX from others and activate them on yourself.

This method words because all IRL money spent on PLEX ends up in CCPs coffers as subscription revenue.

[Nazareth]

Speaking to ixnay's initial post, S&S Tribes of Crane did not charge more for larger tribes. You were charged for special actions and combat (actually large combat initially). Tribal turns, city turns, special actions and combats were all hand moderated early (when I say early, I played from 1977/78 till 1981). Players provided handwritten instructions for field battles as well as city battles, attackers and defenders both, so you can see the time the gm put into the turn results. So yes, they charged for those and I didn't have a problem paying for them.

With respect to the current MMOG's and their current practice of allowing players to buy immeidate success, not for me. I do realize that even in some of the old PBM games players had ways of 'purchasing power' by buying additional positions, but even then they had to nuture those additional positions to the point that they were of benefit and those players usually ended up facing a coalition of opponents. This was not uncommon in 'power games' (that's why they were called power games) and typically the majority of the players making up those games were power players that ran multiple positions. Power games were almost invariably open-ended.