http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudflation
-cb
Selling your labor and EULAs
Quote:Next question: Why would these transactions be frowned upon? Why not design a game that supports and even encourages a real-world economy to flourish within the game universe?Because the supply of items always goes up due to monster drops or whatever. The cost to buy anything goes up too.
And nobody's going to play a game where you have to buy all your equipment, if you were going to say "well, remove item drops."
The only way to make it work with a real economy is to base the game on something other than traditional "game" concepts and put everything in the hands of the player, as in Second Life.
Quote:Original post by AngleWyrmBecause a free market encourages efficient production, not fun.
Next question: Why would these transactions be frowned upon? Why not design a game that supports and even encourages a real-world economy to flourish within the game universe?
They did. It's called Second Life.
It's a totally different genre to the grinding genre that is most MMORPGs, where a combination of YOUR skill and YOUR effort is supposed to be the determinant (along with that of team building, etc.). Not how big your wallet is - it destroys the competitive angle of the game.
EULAs are, by and large, full of useless stuff that would be laughed out of court. A lot of it serves primarily to cover as many angles as possible so as to let them send threatening letters refering to the EULA (which, due to a disparity of legal arms, leads to vast injustices, but that's not the point).
You can sell your labour. However, you do not own what you 'produce' - it is entirely stored on the company's servers, entirely designed by them, and entirely owned by them. Heck, you don't even produce anything. It is merely created as a virtual instance of a class which has various variables applied to it, or you increment a variable on your gold count.
Also, selling your labour directly requires that you are allowed to use the account. Accounts are normally (always?) in MMORPGs leased (yes, they are technically leased - you do not own the account; however, you do have a right to fair usage in most countries, and they cannot arbitarily ban your account, or without good reason, as that would breach sales laws in almost every developed nation).
The conditions of that lease are usually that only one person can use it, and that it is non-transferable. Whether the non-transferable bit is enforceable might conceivably be challenged, rather as it was for books, but it would be quite tenuous. It also states that you cannot sell things in the account, since it is all owned by the company. This is very enforceable - you don't own it, and the conditions of the licensing agreement are such that you cannot do it, so it is illegal.
It's a totally different genre to the grinding genre that is most MMORPGs, where a combination of YOUR skill and YOUR effort is supposed to be the determinant (along with that of team building, etc.). Not how big your wallet is - it destroys the competitive angle of the game.
EULAs are, by and large, full of useless stuff that would be laughed out of court. A lot of it serves primarily to cover as many angles as possible so as to let them send threatening letters refering to the EULA (which, due to a disparity of legal arms, leads to vast injustices, but that's not the point).
You can sell your labour. However, you do not own what you 'produce' - it is entirely stored on the company's servers, entirely designed by them, and entirely owned by them. Heck, you don't even produce anything. It is merely created as a virtual instance of a class which has various variables applied to it, or you increment a variable on your gold count.
Also, selling your labour directly requires that you are allowed to use the account. Accounts are normally (always?) in MMORPGs leased (yes, they are technically leased - you do not own the account; however, you do have a right to fair usage in most countries, and they cannot arbitarily ban your account, or without good reason, as that would breach sales laws in almost every developed nation).
The conditions of that lease are usually that only one person can use it, and that it is non-transferable. Whether the non-transferable bit is enforceable might conceivably be challenged, rather as it was for books, but it would be quite tenuous. It also states that you cannot sell things in the account, since it is all owned by the company. This is very enforceable - you don't own it, and the conditions of the licensing agreement are such that you cannot do it, so it is illegal.
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