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Role Playing (Games) The Almighty Buck Entertainment Games

A Real Living With Virtual Goods 251

Posted by michael from the pulling-one-over-on-the-wife dept.
RussHart writes "The BBC is reporting on a Julian Dibbell who has quit his day job to sell items from Ultima Online in the real world, hopefully making a living on which to support his wife & daughter."
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A Real Living With Virtual Goods More

A Real Living With Virtual Goods

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  • Problem with it is ... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by evslin ( 612024 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @02:37AM (#6673040)
    If you're not duping items or some such, it's because you're in front of the game for hour after hour after hour hording things to sell on ebay. Bet you anything he works longer hours than he did at his 'real job' to make anywhere near as much money.

    • Re:Problem with it is ... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by H8X55 ( 650339 ) <jason...r...thomas@@@gmail...com> on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @02:44AM (#6673068) Homepage Journal
      very true, but at the same time, i'd rather work sixty hours a week doing something i love than forty hours a week doing something i didn't.

      no medical insurance though, sheesh!

      • Re:Problem with it is ... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by evslin ( 612024 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @02:54AM (#6673105)
        Also true - but I can guarantee you that if you do something for 60 hours a week you're going to get sick of it, regardless of what it is. Don't forget in addition to having to play the game to generate these items, he has to spend time outside of the game arranging transfers, setting up auctions, etc. He's also got something else to consider: If he sells too much (or if he has competition) the market could get saturated to the point of him not being able to sell anything else - can he afford to live without income until things get better?
        • I can guarantee you that if you do something for 60 hours a week you're going to get sick of it, regardless of what it is.
          I'm sorry for you, but that's bullshit for a lot of people in the world. I have spent most of my life working longer than 60 hours, and when I am doing something I love, like cooking or being in front of a computer, I have no problem with it. Neither did my father with flying. It's a concept I call pay per subjective hour (PSH). Something you like to do that pays less almost alway

    • Re:Problem with it is ... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Motherfucking Shit ( 636021 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @02:50AM (#6673084) Journal
      Bet you anything he works longer hours than he did at his 'real job' to make anywhere near as much money.
      I wouldn't be so sure. When I was playing UO actively (I sold my accounts in July 2002, only to open a new one earlier this year, though I haven't logged in for months) there was already a buzzing business surrounding ingame items. At the time, the exchange was generally something like:

      1) Buy 10 million gold on eBay for ~$100
      2) Go to uo.tradespot.net and sell it as 10 lots of 1 million gold at $15 a pop
      3) !!!Profit!!!

      Or:

      1) Buy 10 million gold on eBay for ~$100
      2) Go to uo.tradespot.net and buy up tens or hundreds of thousands of pieces of cut leather with the gold you got from eBay,
      3) Sell the cut leather in lots of 60,000 on eBay
      4) !!!Profit!!!

      Often the deals wouldn't involve eBay, you'd just arrange 3 or 4 in-game bulk trades at bargain prices for some item, and then resell smaller quantities of that item right back on Tradespot for a higher price.

      The people who are really making money from UO aren't the ones sitting around mining all day. They're the ones who spend a few hours making smart trades. It's sort of like the stock market; the guys working the factory are making minimum wage, but people trading that company's stock are the ones making real money.

      Oh, and blockquoth the article,
      "It has more than 225,000 active players, who spend up to 20 hours per week in Britannia."
      Geez, I used to spend 10 or more hours a day playing UO. I guess that qualifies me as a reformed addict...

      • Re:Problem with it is ... (Score:5, Informative)

        by child_of_mercy ( 168861 ) <johnboy AT the-riotact DOT com> on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @03:46AM (#6673249) Homepage
        what you're descibing is arbitrage "The purchase of securities on one market for immediate resale on another market in order to profit from a price discrepancy." [reference.com].

        It works well when there are separations between the markets, either geographical or informational.

        It worked best in the pre-telegraph days when, for example, you could buy spices in the the East Indies for a bag of nails and sell them for their weight in gold in Amsterdan

        On the internet arbitrage is at best a short term play, because information moves so fast.

        • Re:Problem with it is ... (Score:4, Informative)

          by Ed Avis ( 5917 ) <ed@membled.com> on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @05:26AM (#6673506) Homepage
          Importing spices from the Far East is not arbitrage, it's just trade. The price difference was largely due to transport costs, and you take a risk that something will go wrong during the journey. Real arbitrage is riskless and you don't have to _do_ anything beyond the buying and selling.

          Buying spices, paying someone to transport them, getting insurance in case they are lost in transit, and selling them at the other end would be arbitrage because it would be riskless. But it might not be profitable.

      • Re:Problem with it is ... (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Nels ( 325798 )
        Hmm, seems like prices have gone up a bit.
        According to his web site, the current exchange rate is about $16.50 per million gold, or 165$ per 10 million.
        Question:
        How long would it take someone playing UO to honestly (or sneakily, in the case of a rogue) earn a million gold? It would be interesting to know what the pay grade is for playing, vs. how much one pays per month in user fees. One could use such data to convince one's rents that it will pay for itself (though it probably won't, unless gold is horri

        • Making a million is probably still easy (Score:5, Informative)

          by Motherfucking Shit ( 636021 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @06:06AM (#6673610) Journal

          Hmm, seems like prices have gone up a bit.

          According to his web site, the current exchange rate is about $16.50 per million gold, or 165$ per 10 million.

          It tends to fluxuate. I can remember several years ago when it was around $30 per million, $35 if you needed it right away or bought smaller amounts.

          At that time, being a millionaire in UO wasn't rare, but it wasn't common, either. When I first started the game, it took me several months to earn 100,000 gold pieces to buy a house from someone. Fast-forward a few years. A couple of duping bugs, along with a house deed exploit, brought mass inflation and the price of gold bottomed out around $10 per million. In comparison, the house that cost me 100,000 gold pieces some two years prior was selling for 5-6 million! Around the time I quit playing seriously, the gold price had climbed a bit, back to $15 or so per million. I guess it's risen a bit higher since then.

          There are also variations from sale to sale even throughout a single day. There's no standard rate, it's sort of like filling up your gas tank. One gas station might be charging $1.659/gallon, then you drive 3 blocks down the road and another station is selling it for $1.599. Similarly, you might go to Tradespot and find someone selling a million gold for $17.50, and no other sales are open, so you buy it. Ten minutes later someone else posts saying they've got gold for sale at $15 per million; you win some, you lose some.

          And, just like any other business, there are always a) suckers and b) desperate customers. If gold is averaging $15.00, there'll be some guy posting 10 eBay auctions with a minimum bid and Buy It Now of $17.50, and probably half of them will sell. Someone who needs a few mil in a hurry - say, to buy a house - might stand at the bank in-game and offer to pay $20 per million; it's faster than going over to one of the trading boards.

          How long would it take someone playing UO to honestly (or sneakily, in the case of a rogue) earn a million gold?

          This varies wildly. When I was last playing, experienced players who had built up or purchased decent characters (and had time to spare) could make 1 or 2 million a day through honest play, using normal game mechanics as opposed to cheating or exploiting. I didn't find this type of person to be the average profiteer, though. Like the parent mentioned, spending 8 hours "working" only to reap $30 or so is no bargain. I used to enjoy powergaming now and then, where I'd spend a day or two doing nothing but trying to earn as much gold as possible, but it was usually for my own spending in-game. After a day or two it always got very boring.

          For awhile, there was a "taming boom" which introduced billions of gold pieces into the UO economy. At some point, people started to figure out that a single tamer towing around several dragons or drakes and a nightmare could literally own just about any dungeon room on the entire map. You could sit in one spot for hours on end, letting your tamed pets kill everything for you. When you wound up with more loot than you could carry, you made a quick round-trip recall to and from a bank to drop off the loot and pick up some bandages for the pets. Meanwhile, your pets gained stats and skills - and thus became stronger - from all the fighting.

          And thus the taming boom started. Hunting in dungeons turned into a lame experience, because no matter where you went, you'd find tamers camping the good spawn spots. The tamers shouted "go to Felluca" but it was the same situation there, except that some of the tamers were killing each other. Worse, because taming became known as the way to make gold, and because UO became known as a game where you could make real money by playing, it attracted the worst of the worst. A game set in Victorian times tends to lose its atmosphere where you walk into the dungeon and encounter a group of tamers named PiMPiN HaRd, deeznuttz, KindGreenBud, and TupacLivzOn hogging all of the mons

          • I have to say that exactly what you are describing is what has drawn me to UO and several other MMORPGs. Although I've stayed away (like an addict staying away from the dealer) I'm always fascinated by the economics of "fake" realities. For example, the situation with tamers is exactly what happened in the IT industry during the dot.com boom. We got people in here who's qualifications were MCSE and "I built a web site once..." Unfortunately, there are no admins to clean up. Yet the market cleaned itsel

    • Re:Problem with it is ... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @02:50AM (#6673087)
      Nope, he's a trader. He doesn't play the
      game, but instead buys accounts from teens
      who get bored with characters, and pieces
      out the account items. He makes back 3x
      what he pays for the account.

      So no, he's not spending 24x7 slaying
      monsters to build up an inventory.
    • no(and he doesn't get the items himself anyways..), the real problem is: this is the kind of a job that is very short sighted. he can't really except to be doing this for the rest of his life, can he? that and the fact that it's something that the online game makers/runners would surely want to pocket themselfs with their future products (heck, they could dupe the items too, but that could end up making the game a lot worse, and one could argue that selling items like this does twist the system too enough t

    • So what? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by fm6 ( 162816 )
      Most people who work for themselves put in more hours for less pay. Why do they do it? Because they like working for themselves, or they want to do something they enjoy. In this case it's probably the latter: he is spending all day playing an online game!

    • Re:Problem with it is ... (Score:2, Informative)

      by MrCam ( 97813 )
      He's making money knowing what people will pay for items and who to sell them too.

      It's a lot like an auto swapmeet. My dad and brother-inlaw make a living doing swapmeets and it's about the same method. Knowing what people will pay for somthing and having it on hand.

      My dad sells nothing but lights and lenses and my brother-inlaw nothing but emblems. Most people seem to think they go to junk yards and strip the stuff off cars, but they buy everything at the same swapmeets everyone goes to. The key is speci

  • Greatest fear? (Score:5, Funny)

    by jtnishi ( 610495 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @02:38AM (#6673044) Homepage
    "Mr Dibbell greatest fear is that he falls prey to real cyber criminals who pillage his Ultima items or steals the cash from his PayPal account. "

    ...instead of being afraid that officials'll crackdown on this and kill his livelihood?

    • So what happens here? Will the cops go after the virtual pillagers who stealed his virtual stock (Out of wich he does make real money and can argue that they stole actual stock from his actual business model)?

      I wonder if as this kind of virtual-real world mixtures come to play into the real-world economic system then will officials/authorities step in and regulate the virtual worlds or something..
    • ...instead of being afraid that officials'll crackdown on this and kill his livelihood?

      Which officials? EA / OSI have always stated that buying and selling virtual items in UO is legal. There's no reason why they should suddenly reverse that decision.

      Dibbell has more to fear from the IRS. What if they get wise to his little scheme and demand income tax?

      • Re:Greatest fear? (Score:5, Funny)

        by Motherfucking Shit ( 636021 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @06:22AM (#6673642) Journal
        Dibbell has more to fear from the IRS. What if they get wise to his little scheme and demand income tax?
        I'd hope that someone doing this on such a high-profile level would report the income. The Beeb article even quipped that "in April 2004, he will declare to the US Internal Revenue Service that his main source of income is the sale of imaginary goods."

        BTW, I recognize you from boards.uo.com (though I haven't really been there since they delegated the boards to Stratics). Nice to see a familiar name from my UO days :)

        ex-Frigax
        Lake Superior
    • Local soldier of fortune gives up career to play Soldier of Fortune for PC.

      Still cannot find a girlfriend.

    • Two words (Score:3, Interesting)

      by PMuse ( 320639 )
      Job security.

  • ***NEWSFLASH**** (Score:5, Insightful)

    by James_Duncan8181 ( 588316 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @02:38AM (#6673046) Homepage
    In a capitalist society, items are worth exactly what the market will bear. Notice that nowhere here is there a distinction about corporial/non-conrporial items.

  • Playmoney (Score:5, Informative)

    by thinkninja ( 606538 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @02:39AM (#6673047) Homepage Journal
    I've been following his blog [juliandibbell.com] since he wrote "The Unreal Estate Boom [wired.com]" for Wired.

    I haven't even played Everquest but it still makes for interesting reading.

  • Online exchange (Score:3, Insightful)

    by casuist99 ( 263701 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @02:40AM (#6673052) Homepage Journal
    This seems to be something that the online games are going to have to address quickly. As I recall from previous posts, they've made it against the rules to sell items, but is that really enforcable? Why not legalize and regulate the trading industry with items that are "signed" or somehow unique to prevent "duping" or other bugs? An auction system similar to ebay or a simple marketplace exchange would perform this service quite well.

    • Re:Online exchange (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Motherfucking Shit ( 636021 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @03:08AM (#6673144) Journal
      This seems to be something that the online games are going to have to address quickly. As I recall from previous posts, they've made it against the rules to sell items, but is that really enforcable? Why not legalize and regulate the trading industry with items that are "signed" or somehow unique to prevent "duping" or other bugs? An auction system similar to ebay or a simple marketplace exchange would perform this service quite well.
      Ultima Online doesn't forbid selling or trading items outside of the game, and in fact at one point someone from OSI was bragging that that the UO gold piece had an exchange rate similar to that of the Lira. The fact that UO items are seen to have real value is (or was) a source of pride to some of the folks running it.

      UO now has an official account transfer program whereby the buyer and seller of an account both mail in a signed contract, pay $25, and the account is "cleaned" of any black marks and then given to the buyer. If that's not encouraging the sale of UO accounts (and, as always, finding a way to skim) I don't know what is.

      As for ingame trades, they've addressed a lot of the old scams.

      Used to be, when you transferred a house, it popped up a little scroll-looking object in the buyer's trade window with coordinates to the house. Plenty of people fell for the scam of dropping a house deed, or even some worthless magic scroll, in the trade window instead of actually transferring the house. Now, when you buy a house, special gumps pop up.

      You used to be able to position a black floppy hat on top of a normal (10 gold piece) dye tub in the trade window, making it look like a then-coveted black dye tub. Black dye tubs at the time were labeled "dying tub" just like any other dye tub, so if the buyer checked the tub instead of clicking on the hat, he thought he was getting a black dye tub. They went in and relabeled all black dye tubs to "Black Dye Tub" to address that scam.

      There are lots of other examples, but in general, UO does try to crack down on scamming and keep the trading safe.

      ex-Frigax
      Lake Superior
      (heh, feels strange typing that again :)

  • Working at home (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rf0 ( 159958 ) <rghf@fsck.me.uk> on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @02:42AM (#6673055) Homepage
    Well good luck to him. One problem I've found working at home is a lack of social interaction with friends. Also it can be far to easy to work at any time. Hopefully the online community will at least support him to some respect. However you can't beat a good drink out with the lads (or ladesses)

    Rus

    • Re:Working at home (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Catharz ( 223736 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @02:53AM (#6673100)
      I have a friend who spent a year playing EQ day after day. He racked up over 100 days of playing time during that year.

      Did he miss out on friends, family, etc? Not to any great extent.

      Was he lonely? Definitely not.

      You end up creating some great friendships out of games like this. I've been half way around the world and visited people I've known from EQ. My friend eventually gave up EQ and moved from Austraila to the US where he's now happily married to one of the people he spent much of that time playing with.

      At the time he quit EQ, his character was one of the most uber necros on the Tunare server but worth at most $1500 USD at that time.

      You can certainly make money from these games, and you won't necessarily become a lonely hermit while doing it. But your social life will suffer and it will take a lot of work to make the same money.

  • Older article from someone doing this (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jeroenb ( 125404 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @02:43AM (#6673059) Homepage
    was on K5 a while ago, it's basically a HOWTO [kuro5hin.org].
    • I kept intending to give that article a shot but by the time I overcame my lethergy the market seems to have mostly dried up. Really a pity too since from that article Earth and Beyond seemed almost tailored to this kind of thing with it's trader class.

  • I played, I sold, I quit (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MasterSLATE ( 638125 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @02:43AM (#6673063) Homepage Journal
    I played UO back in the day (around 2000) and I managed to sell my account for about $500 (US dollars).

    Personally, I can't understand how someone can actually quit their job to sell game items. To me, it's just not enough money for the work that must be done. What if the game goes under? Here's a whatever year old man with no job. Good luck getting a job, considering the market. What's he gunna do, move on to another game?

    • Re:I played, I sold, I quit (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @03:56AM (#6673279)
      I'd like to see that on a resume'.

      1996-2000 Senior account market manager, United Records Limited.

      2000-2003 stock market day trader.

      2003-2005 Role playing games account/item discount broker.

      With all that experiance at that, you either qualify as a strategy book writer, or a 7-11 store clerk.

  • Fair enough. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BiggerIsBetter ( 682164 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @02:48AM (#6673081)

    I mean, what do developers for money each day? - Generally, they create code that has no real substance outside the digital realm. Sure it might be useful to some folks, but game items are equally useful to the players using them.

    I know little about these games, but it seems to me there's better money in a hack to produce virtual goods outside the context of the game, and bring them in. Eg, produce compatible objects in code, and insert it into the game. Consider it as an Import business. I'll ignore the economic ramifications for now though...

    • The better analogy to this sort of activity, seeing as hacking them to fabricate false goods is generally seens as very naughty, would be smuggling.

      • Yeh, you're probably right.

        Who knows though, a few years from now when people have got their heads around it, things might open up. We're basically seeing the emergence of digital economies. We've already got several economies operating independantly with closed borders, so it seems to me the logical progression is to open the borders for free trade.

        It's kind of trippy in a sitcoms-with-crossover kind of way, but the games are already crossing over into the "real" world so why not with each other? And w

      • its more like "wow u have a bar of gold, thats worth alot... *SNAP!* hey look i have 100 million bars of gold, wanna buy some?"

        • Those would be the economic ramifications...

          You can make fake gold at home if you want, but smart cookies know it's fake. Digitally, that's a little harder... Getting around that stuff gets a bit interesting - you need to start looking at security and id keys and assorted madness like that, to verify it's the genuine article - basically the necessary detail of the game skyrockets with the need to implement rules and maintain some semblence of reality. Perhaps instead of gold, the game host creates a virtua

  • Virtual goods? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @02:49AM (#6673083)
    Back in the 90's, quite a few people that visit Slashdot made a good living on virtual services. Ahh, venture capital.

  • Are... (Score:5, Funny)

    by BladeMelbourne ( 518866 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @02:50AM (#6673088)
    Are his wife and daughter in the real world too, or are they virtual items? I have been thinking about purchasing a wife to auger my girl friend.

  • Woah, Hey now. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jason Scott ( 18815 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @02:54AM (#6673103) Homepage
    This makes it sound like Julian Dibbell isn't what he is, a hack writer who mines the online communities he can find for grist. His article [juliandibbell.com] on MUDs (which he later expanded into a book [juliandibbell.com] was a complete smear job, a non-insightful overview of the MUD world intended to turn a small little molehill into enough of a mountain to get his paycheck. He writes self-indulgent overviews [juliandibbell.com] of his online comings and goings, each one crafted as if he has expertly stumbled into a forbidden cave [topicmag.com] of insight and perspective. No doubt this current project is the most recent seed for whatever next article or tome he will lure a credulous publisher into foisting on us. Take a pass, friends.

    • Re:Woah, Hey now. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Jason Scott ( 18815 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @03:00AM (#6673118) Homepage
      And in the name of being positive, I should turn people on to a DVD Documentary out right now called "Avatars Offline" [avatarsoffline.com], which goes into the Everquest and Ultima Online phenomenon and interviews a large number of people with different points of view on the subject. It ranges from intense EQ players and users of various online games, to developers of those games (including people who made Star Wars Galaxies, EQ, Ultima Online, and others). I personally have a soft spot in it for the interview with Lord British, who just makes for a great on-screen addition when he gives a tour of his insane house in Texas in one of the extras.


      There. So I've trashed one person and elevated another. Total Kharmic result: 0.

    • Actually that article brought up some very interesting questions about forming a virtual society. I didn't think it was a smear job at all. Though I didn't read the book.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • if any "industry" is saturated, it would have to be D2. Everything in that game is botted or duped that you can buy (most items on ebay are sold as hacked or bugged items anyways) so its not exactly the same. When 1.10 comes out this should stop until someone finds dupe method because all the new Chars wont be able to use old items...tough deal to legit players but as a legit player myself (well I will return when 1.10 comes...I played a month ago hoping it would come but recently have stopped) I think 1.

  • Capitalizing on others misfortune (Score:4, Funny)

    by CausticWindow ( 632215 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @03:18AM (#6673172)

    It's the American dream!

  • no real-life but real goods.

  • In other news.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by monoqlith ( 610041 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @03:30AM (#6673207)
    BIA(Brittanian Industrial Average) plummeted today. Analysts cited over-valuation as a major cause of the sudden drop in virtual commodity prices. "Virtual Futures just aren't performing as well as most E-bay traders had hoped." ........ President Bush's invasion of Brittania for 'virtual weapons of virtual mass destruction' without UVN consent also seems to have contributed to the poor market conditions....... Two virtual traders jumped out their windows in response to the market's downward plunge, but only managed to break their ankles. "He must have thought he was in a skyscraper. Good thing he was only in our living room!"

  • You could call this social criticism (Score:5, Funny)

    by panurge ( 573432 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @03:41AM (#6673237)
    What are the established churches but ways of making real money out of virtual worlds? The clergy get paid for exploring, reporting on, and handling virtual goods in, a spiritual realm that is actually invisible and whose existence is unproven. At least with online games, the players can experience the virtual environment.

    I guess you could say the same thing about much of commercial law, the stock market,and insurance. And there is more money in all these things than in being a real producer or creator.

  • Nothing new (Score:4, Funny)

    by stere0 ( 526823 ) <slashdotmail@stereo.CHICAGOlu minus city> on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @03:44AM (#6673245) Homepage
    SCO is trying to do that too.

  • EverQuest (Score:4, Interesting)

    by kinki ( 578041 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @03:47AM (#6673252) Homepage Journal
    I have two friends who make their living by selling virtual stuff in EverQuest. The one who started it first now makes about $1000 a week... it took him about half a year to build a character sufficient enough though... the other one is just starting to make money but he says he can also make like 200-300 dollars a week.
    • Wow. I've never played any of the MMORPGs, but I seem to recall that Everquest's makers expressly forbid players from selling items.

      So ... how do your friends manage to do it? And aren't they worried about being "caught?"

  • Child labor (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @03:58AM (#6673285)
    "The producers are the teenage kids that have a lot of time on their hands but no money so they go out and hunt and loot and craft and produce the stuff that I am buying and selling," he says

    So isn't he (amongst others) using child labor? How ingenious to make work look like play.

    A joke, of course, but the thought of having UO sweatshops where kids can play UO as long as they give the owner a share of the loot, is not far. :-)

    • I've long thought about how minors can earn spendable credits by doing work via the internet. After all, they're consumers too - with lots of time (if not necessarily lots of disposable income.) Give them some way of converting their excess time into spendable cash, and everyone benefits (they get to buy stuff, merchants get extra dollars injected into the economy.) Never thought it'd be through playing a game though! Man, if only I could have earned that kind of money for that time I spent playing game

  • Real world money defeats the purpose of the MUD (Score:5, Insightful)

    by The Revolutionary ( 694752 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @04:09AM (#6673317) Homepage Journal
    "Real world" money defeats the purpose of the MUD or MMORPG, as this is for myself, and as I understand this to be for many others.

    As I have said in the past, the hope in the ideal of the MUD or MMORPG is that who or what we may be in the "real world" does not in any way limit who or what we can be in this alternate reality.

    While one individual selling items for "real world" cash may not have significant effect, this behavior, in principle, is unacceptable if the above is the purpose of the MUD or MMORPG.

    When my opportunity to behave as I would like and have a legitimate expectation to be able to in this alternate reality is restricted as a result of my subservience in the "real world" to the political and economic power of another, or of the elite, then I have not even in this alternate reality escaped their reach.

    While we might certainly pretend that those who are powerful in this alternate reality as a result of their political and economic power in this reality, are not so for this reason, but are instead for some false or fanciful reason put in the context of the alternate reality, I refuse to do this, and I urge other concerned persons to voice this position.

    Why would we bring this upon ourselves? Is the political and economic power of the elite of this world not sufficiently overbearing, that we should directly permit behaviors which have the effect of extending their reach into another?

    Does the thought entertain you, that your superior who has power over you from Monday to Friday, from 9 to 5, can for a price extend his power over you, his enjoyment at the price of your integrity, and his opportunity at the price of your hope, even when you at home think you have finally escaped?

    I will not be the pawn of another's wealth; not in this world, and not in any other.
    • Unfortunately, no matter what, influence and power in the real world will always have an impact on MMORPGS and MUDS. And I'm not talking about the obvious economic argument (that which can be sold by poor folk to rich folk in order to pay the DSL bill will be sold), but instead, consider even a situation where it is impossible to sell/trade items and characters in the MMORPG.
      Who has access to the funds necessary to play an MMORPG, and even more importantly the recreation time? Certainly someone working fu

  • The funniest thing is... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BiggerIsBetter ( 682164 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @04:49AM (#6673405)

    ...that the artical makes out like MONEY is somehow real. C'mon people, money hasn't been real since the Gold Stardard was dropped, and depending who you talk to it wasn't real even then. The value of anything is determined by what people agree it is worth - everything: cars, your house, your labour, big businesses, shares, options, and yes, even imaginary gold.

    * Neo pays with plastic
    <Morpheus> You think that's money you're spending now?

    It's ALL virtual. The sooner you realise that the sooner you can stop being a slave to money.

  • a few thoughts (Score:3, Informative)

    by 0xbeefcake ( 672592 ) <rob@xa[ ].demon.co.uk ['nia' in gap]> on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @04:53AM (#6673417)
    Purchasing characters and items removes much of the fun from these games. It trivializes the progression path that you would otherwise normally take and provides a 'quick hit' solution for those who can't be bothered with spending months building their characters up themselves and with their online friends. If that's what people want to do with their money, then so be it. Players build up reputations over a period of time (they can also be torn down rather quickly). Characters that have been purchased online can easily be spotted by experienced players as the person playing it often has little or no clue how to play properly. Many of the serious gaming guilds won't allow an "ebay" character to join in with their fun as they have not taken the time to build up a trusting relationship with guild, and a guild won't want to help a player who may simply sell his character on for profit in 6 months time. So individuals who buy and sell characters and items are often viewed as untrustworthy by players who play by the rules and build their characters up the hard way.

  • I'm wondering how many (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Siriaan ( 615378 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @04:53AM (#6673418)
    Game admins in MMOGs like UO and EQ have the power to create items, or edit accounts, or something similar whereby they can arbitrarily collect real-world saleable items. They could hoard a large number of very highly prized items or just a huge amount of gold, and then sell them to real players, creating money out of nothing - no hours spent crawling the landscape and no risk taken with real-world trading. They wouldn't even need to do it with their own account, simply use their higher knowledge of the gamescape to point a pleb account they own to the locations of hidden hoards of items or prizes.

    I'm not saying game admins are a dodgy lot, I'm sure most if not all of them are completely honest, but all it would take is one guy with just the right amount of in-game power to crank up quite the profitable R(PG)acket.
    • Game admins in MMOGs like UO and EQ have the power to create items, or edit accounts, or something similar whereby they can arbitrarily collect real-world saleable items.
      Two words: GM Darwin [google.com]. That's shorthand for "it's been done, and UO does not tolerate employees who try to profit from their godly positions."

  • I put myself through college with Diablo II (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SoVi3t ( 633947 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @05:04AM (#6673446)
    When I was still in college, I realized that I didn't have alot of money to play with. I thought about getting a job (I had quit my high school job to go to college), but then I realized that the hours would kill me (commuting to the job, working, then commuting back home, would waste valuable time that could be spent playing games and doing homework). So I just made an MF sorc, and started doing runs. I would play for maybe 3 or 4 hours a day, and in between classes. I never used any bots (out of fear), only maphack. Every day or so, I was able to get myself some Ith equipment, rare runes, and so much more. Then I'd be off to eBay, to make some profit. While this may piss off alot of you, I was able to go drinking several times a week, and take my girlfriend out often enough to keep her with me to this day, and buy myself things to amuse myself with. Much better than flipping burgers at Wendy's, like I used to, although not quite what I am making now :P

  • slashdot account for sale! (Score:5, Funny)

    by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @05:06AM (#6673451) Homepage Journal
    ok, first bids start at 5$.

    excellent karma, maybe ~10 fans, over 1000 posts! also for sale: karmawhoring tips, foolproof karma comments & other items of excellency for the one in need of a karma boost, inquire now!

    start bidding!

    ok i'm joking. but if you really want to shell out $$$ for slashdot user, let me know, ok ?-D
  • Mod me a Troll, but this guy is a bottom-feeding loser, who sells to cheating losers.

    I stopped playing CounterStrike because too many people felt the need to cheat. It was no longer any fun to play. And, in case some of you don't know, that what game are for: to have fun. They are a distraction.

    People who actually pay real money to cheat on an MMOPRPG are even bigger losers than the FPS cheaters. And deciding to "support" your family based on a scam like this has to be one of the most irresponsible

    • Re:Loser (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Baron_Yam ( 643147 )

      Welcome to the Real World... where every social structure has a critical population limit which, when surpassed, allows a small number of idiots to ruin the fun for the majority of the members.

      Remember CB radio? How about Usenet News? They used to be good, and now they're mostly crap.

  • This has been done before... (Score:4, Informative)

    by adamofgreyskull ( 640712 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @06:11AM (#6673615)
    ...three years ago [gamespy.com].

  • SCO (Score:2, Funny)

    by CGP314 ( 672613 )
    Mr Dibbell would have no doubt that a crime had been committed but he realises that he might have a hard time convincing the police to investigate the theft of goods that have a tangible value but negligible reality.

    SCO?

  • Irresponsible? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Sandman1971 ( 516283 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @07:20AM (#6673800) Homepage Journal
    I'm I the only one who finds this individual totally irresponsible for quitting his job doing this while he has to support a wife and child??? He's putting his addiction before his very own family. This guy needs professional help, and quick.
  • All seriousness aside....

    A common trade statistic quoted between countries is a trade deficit. That's associated with a flow of capital out of one country to another, and is often a point of concern or even international tension.

    Are we going to have to worry about a trade deficit with the imaginary world now? Is the imagination part of the free trade zone? Is this why people like Pat Buchannan want to erect walls around people's imaginations?

    Oy....

  • Sigh. We already did the maths on this (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Rogerborg ( 306625 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @07:39AM (#6673853) Homepage

    $1000 in 3 weeks, while his wife and kids were away. They're going to be eating a lot of rice and lima beans, and let's hope they don't get ill.

    Heck, let's go over the numbers again:

    "Mr Big" is one of a handful of Ultima players who make six figure sums annually from their trades.

    Assuming "six figure" is $100,000, at an average auction price of $7 (which seems to be the case from the ones I've seen) that's 14285 transactions per trader per year, or 40 competed transactions each and every day of the year for these traders. Cutting that back to an 222 working day year, it's 64 completed transactions per day.

    Push the average value up, and it becomes more manageable, but then you have to spend more time on each trade. And remember, you've only got 225,000 rubes to sell to. If the "handful" of six figure traders is three, then that's $1.33 from each and every rube every year, which seems reasonable until you consider the dozens, hundreds, thousands of casual traders scrabbling for their money.

    It's easy to say that you're making money at this. It's even possible to fool yourself. But until I see IRS filings, I'm going to take it with a huge pinch of salt.

    • I sold three accounts for $550 and bought two for $450 in under and it only took 25 minutes. (some waiting to get PayPal confirmations etc.) The guy I bought the two accounts from, had sold 4 other accounts the last 24 hours. Two for around $300 each. Look at this: E-Bay [ebay.com] (ebay). Several transactions going to take place in the $100+ range. Adding to this, you don't have to live in the US/western Europe to play $1000 could actually be a lot of money. For the smaller transactions I know a lot of people buy

  • This works great for some.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by -noefordeg- ( 697342 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @07:40AM (#6673858)
    Especially if you are from contries outside North America/Western Europe.

    There are a lot of these people out there.
    I knew someone from eastern Europe doing this. He was playing Asheron's Call and he with the help from someone in the US they used to by and sell things by using E-bay/tradeboards etc.
    Some of them play a lot but he also make more money of this than having some ordinary job. And making a living off a computer game is not hard if you live in Ukraine.
    PayPal, Ebay and mmorpgs have made us a new border free worldwide market. Where $10 is just as easy to obtain in US, Norway, or in Ukraine, where $10 is valued so much more than in western countries.

    For those that think this only applies to 'super nerds' you are way off!
    These are people who are just very good at buying and selling things, just like a good broker. They have the ability to analyse the game and to guess what the next patches/improvements to the game, by the developers, will be. A nerd would probably be happy to sell something to the first person giving a reasonable offer, so he could go back and play the game, the buyer however, most likely one of these guys, have probably already found another buyer willing to pay twice the price.

    I tried this for a bit when I played Asheron's Call too. But problem is that you spend more time on boards/talking to people than you spend ingame playing. Also, with the insane economy we have in Norway it would probably be one of the worst places to actually do this kind of business from. :)
    For comparison, I could buy a powerful ingame character (something I have done several times), which would have taken someone several months of ingame playing time to level up, for the money I make in one day in real life. But for someone in a less wealthy nation the money might be comparable to half a year of ordinary income.
    For some it would probably be a pretty ok job.

    You need some luck tho. The guy I knew had a mother working at some school/university in Ukraine, so he had pretty much free access to internet.

  • I don't play any of these games, so I don't know the mechanics but half the fun of RPGs was going after powerful NPCs to nick their stuff.

    So, why aren't these guys being taken apart by other players after goodies?

  • After reading his blog and the bbc article, it's fairly misleading to say he quit his job. He is a hack writer who has obviously been writing similar subjects(online worlds, etc) for a while. This "project" is simply an extension of that job. More likely he'll write an article or whatnot and sell it to some publisher/magazine somewhere. Might even get a book out of it. Read between the lines.
  • Nothing much new here, a friend of mine (in the US) makes his living with Everquest. A rather well off ceo of some smaller company pays him a stipend to be "on call" when the guy plays he only has a little bit of time so my friend has his character ready and waiting to do "fun stuff" if the dude dies he just tells my friend where his corpse is so he can do the drudge work of recovering it for him while the exec is away from the game.

    On top of that, he gets paid to help people level up ($20 an hour), and s
  • "The wife of Julian Dibbell, the man who quit his job to sell items from Ultima Online, has filed for divorce. 'He has deluded himself into thinking he can support his family with his fantasy life. I just got tired of hoping he would grow up,' was the only comment given by Mrs. Dibbell."
  • Filthy losers, people that invest that much importance in virtual items.

    I have played MMOGs here and there, so I am famailar with the crowd. MMOGs are fun; they afford you the oppurtunity to play a fantasy game with thousands of other knuckleheads like you - they are good sources of entertainment, but I feel that they also pander to a nasty trait in some people's character. Most recently I picked up Star Wars Galaxies (it's not that great, by the way, but shows promise). Before that I tried Earth and Beyo

  • Can you be arrested for virtual robbery? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tdrury ( 49462 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @10:21AM (#6674968) Homepage
    I don't play games of this type, so I don't know how you possess items in the game, but if this guy is amassing large quantities of virtual goods for real-world sale, what's to keep a bunch of players from robbing his storehouse or killing his character and making off with his loot?

    You've just taken a large portion of this guy's real-world income. Can you get arrested for that? Could he sue you and win? It just a game, right?

  • Violation of TOS (Score:3, Insightful)

    by skermit ( 451840 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @02:43PM (#6678015) Homepage
    Isn't he violating the TOS of UO (never played, so didn't read). I'm sure he's on the blacklist of any new MMORPG he tries to play much like the casinos do when players make money off the casino in ways they didn't intend or agree with.

  • too bad... (Score:3, Funny)

    by chunkwhite86 ( 593696 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @08:32PM (#6681311)
    Too bad he has to get a real job now to pay his bandwidth bill after being linked to by slashdot.

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