The great RMT debate

by Michael Zenke Dec 27th 2007 at 6:30PM

Filed under: Business models, Economy, Exploits, Game mechanics, MMO industry, Opinion, Legal, Academic

It's always a pleasure reading up on topics getting bounced around the MMOGblogosphere. One of the recent rigorous back-and-forths centered around the announcement of the Live Gamer service. We discussed the 'legit' RMT outfit and the reluctance of companies like Blizzard to take part, but other folks took the ball and ran with it. Raph Koster, well known designer and the big name behind Metaplace, opined that the announcement made a lot of sense as eradicating Real Money Transfer (RMT) is essentially impossible.

Blogger Tobold's view on the subject was quite different, as he offered that RMT was basically just another design problem to be overcome. His site is often quite World of Warcraft-focused, and he offered several possible solutions Blizzard might adopt such as making gold 'bind on pickup', or by changing the Auction House to a 'blind bid' system like that seen in City of Heroes.

Raph responded by offering that Tobold was essentially asking designers to remove the 'Massive' element from online games. He argued that the only real way to prevent RMT or power-leveling would be to disallow players from conversing, grouping, trading, or interacting in any meaningful way.

That's the point when the fit hit the shan. The back and forth began, and Raph let loose what may be the most comprehensive article on Real Money Transfer I've ever seen. Make sure and read that one, and read on for a breakdown of the blow-by-blow back and forth.

Tobold took some extreme umbrage at Raph's assertions, and states that the designer was trying to 'discredit him' by putting words in his mouth. He clarifies that he believes removing asymmetric trades from a game doesn't require the removal of grouping, guilds, and all of that other stuff we associate with online worlds. He points to the words of veteran MMO commentator Darniaq, who offered that RMT "exposes the underlying truth of mass acceptance of inequality."

Raph responds full-bore, unloading a massive post onto his site in response. If there's one article you read amongst all these it should be this one, which basically describes many of the the reasons that RMT exists. He ends by noting that he basically just doesn't care about the asymmetry of online worlds anymore. Inequalities exist, and that's something to be embraced, not railed against. He notes Cameron's article on the possible spectrum of worlds as a great example of this; all worlds are not either completely free or completely locked down. Moorgard steps into the argument as well, noting that games should be about giving players meaningful experiences - something to strive for despite the inequality.

Tobold responds by offering a thought experiment for his readers. He outlines three possibilities: a 'low-RMT' World of Warcraft, a 'high-RMT' WoW, and the current WoW where RMT is not allowed by the Terms of Service but persists anyway. He asks commenters to weigh in on what they'd like to play. The comments came fast and furious, but don't seem to find some kind of consensus ... other than 'RMT is bad'.

Raph responds with an even more radical idea: removing stats from gear altogether. His view is that RMT exists because game companies require players to rate their effectiveness based on what they're wearing. The most effective method to get rid of RMT would be to make gear a matter of choice, rather than a requirement.

That's essentially where the discussion ended a few days ago, though Craig from the Voyages in Eternity site offers up a post underlining the strong feelings this discussion raises. The issue of cheating, a common charge levled against those who engage in RMT, was also touched on by Common Sense Gamer Darren in sort of an off-shoot to this discussion.

It's a thorny issue, that's certain. On the one hand there's certainly a school of thought that free markets should let themselves play out; players certainly seem to engage in RMT despite their protestations that it's immoral and illegal. If everyone that swore up and down RMT was a bad idea didn't partake in it, there'd be no market. On the other hand, companies very much have a right to decide how their content is used. The legal rights development houses have in these situations aren't yet outlined by a court of law ... but that's just a matter of time. For the time being, then, it's down to individual choice whether or not you engage in gold buying or selling.

So, I put that question to you: Do you think selling or buying gold on the open market for real currency is something that should be allowed?

Tags: city-of-heroes, coh, featured, goldselling, raph-koster, real-money-transfer, rmt, tobold, world-of-warcraft, wow

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Coherent said on 7:30PM 12-27-2007

Look, Tobold is obviously being an idiot, but is essentially right in core principles. RMT is inconsistent with the purpose of online gaming. Yet you obviously can not engineer it out of the game because Raph is right too; there is no technological way to prevent it completely.

So the thing is, games will have to be designed in such a way to minimize the importance of RMT and other game breaking services. One way to do this is to make them expensive and risky, as Blizzard is currently doing.

The goal is not to completely eliminate RMT; the goal is to simply minimize its relevance to the average player. Just as buying "Boardwalk" for real money kills the point of playing Monopoly, buying advancement and currency kills the point of playing WoW.

Ghen said on 8:13AM 12-28-2007

Good point. I personally like Blizzard's current direction against RMT. It works in game and is barely noticeable to the average player. The only part I see is the 1 hour auction delay which is negligible. Following a system that is proven to work is one of the cornerstones of capitalism, so hopefully more game designers will latch on to the ideas Blizzard is designing instead of going to other extremes like stopping gold trading completely.

Moiread said on 2:25PM 12-28-2007

"Just as buying "Boardwalk" for real money kills the point of playing Monopoly, buying advancement and currency kills the point of playing WoW."

Excellent quote from Coherent, here. The same principle applies to nearly every MMO I can think of, and in some more than others.

My MMO is CoX, and as anyone who's leveled a 50 knows, there is no endgame. The game is in the journey, rather than the destination. Paying for PLing is even more foolish here, because unlike WoW with it's highlevel raids and such, there is only so much to do at 50.

I must say that I am dismayed at this 'legit' RMT, though. I do not see it curbing the growing problem of illegitimate services spamming the playerbase, and I see a major unbalancing of game economy.

I commented on another piece, and I will comment here: I see no need for RMT in City of Heroes, and furthur, I fully support NCSoft in their approach to these people: /ignore_spammer.

/ignore_spammer.

Markymark said on 12:36AM 12-29-2007

Coherent sums it up... dont play if you dont wanna invest the time getting money.. your just wasting your money.

Jeromai said on 12:36AM 12-31-2007

One thing to note about CoX: Before inventions 'loot' came onto the scene, there was virtually zero RMT spam.

Yes, there was still a RL money to influence exchange rate on the gold trading sites, but the very thought of paying real money for something that fell like manna from the skies, and had no significant personal use to level 50s, was ludricrous.

There was no desire for influence because there wasn't much you could do with it besides buy SOs (once you upgraded to the max, that was it, HOs tended to be traded with PLing rather than inf because the currency was relatively valueless, and it was easy to just pick up a HO lottery ticket from turning up at a daily raid anyway), change costumes or give it away free to low-leveled characters.

The downside was that the game then failed to hold the attention of a number of players, once they hit 'endgame' and realized there was nothing much to do and were unwilling to repeat lvls 1-50 by making another alt.

With all the new systems from pvp, to loot, to SG bases, to ship/hami/STF raids, etc, one might say that CoX has improved on its depth of game, providing new niches that might appeal to various types of players.

Alas, or fortunately, depending on your point of view, one very strong driver of player motivation is Achievement: making their in-game character 'stronger' or 'richer' or 'more of anything.'

Inventions as 'loot' piggyback on this motivation of greed, and once greed sets in, RMT is bound to follow. Hence our recent plague of gold spammers.

There's still an established community of honest vocal folk who wouldn't dream of touching RMT in CoX, and the devs are doing a fairly good job of nipping it in the bud, but let's not kid anyone, the spammers wouldn't be around if there wasn't an underbelly of buyers and sellers. Desire for loot is all it takes.

I'd have preferred if this nasty loot didn't taint my game in the first place, but if it's there, we all have to deal with it. It's my opinion that better the devs of a game you like should profit from this infantile desire to 'have it now, I have $$$' than a third party.

In an ideal world, I'd be playing a game that's designed to be inconvenient and of low value for gold sellers to consider profitable. That's dev responsibility, though.