EverQuest and the UN 362
maddugan writes "NewScientiest.com has a
piece on how EverQuest has spawned an economy with a per-captia income comparable to that of a small country. Mostly from profiteering on eBay. If it was indeed a country, it would rank 77th, just behind Russia." It'll be quite interesting to see
what happens as MMORPGs gain popularity and absorb more and more man hours.
Invade France (Score:5, Funny)
Must be about time to invade France then. Seems like everyone else does it.
Re:Invade France (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, but the French are saying their Maginot Firewall is completely impregnable!
Re:Invade France (Score:4, Funny)
As any MMPORPG player will tell you - look for the gap in the polygons and slip through it. France may appeal to the UN to get you banned from the server but all their bases are belong to you still.
Re:Invade France (Score:2, Funny)
Installed as a result of the e-Schliffen plan no doubt
Re:Invade France (Score:2, Funny)
Q: Why did the French plant trees along the Champ Elysee?
A: Because Germans like to march in the shade.
Wasn't this just posted on /. ? (Score:2, Informative)
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/01/23/213
Re:Wasn't this just posted on /. ? (Score:3, Interesting)
three 'w's, or none. Not two. (Score:2)
Slashdot should really add automatic linking. What the fuck is up with all these people posting text links when they can do HTML!?!
National Export... (Score:4, Funny)
Or maybe virgins?
Re:National Export... (Score:5, Funny)
One night we were going around buying equipment, and we kept kissing each other's characters. So we found a room alone, and I signed off one of my guys, and my remaining guy had a threesome with her two characters. A week later one of her characters took on both of mine.
Boy were we a weird couple.
And the disturbing thought is... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:And the disturbing thought is... (Score:3, Interesting)
EverQuest makes nothing, too. Or does it?
Re:And the disturbing thought is... (Score:3, Interesting)
a) the ops will introduce some kind of in-game "need", or
b) they won't, in which case the economy becomes driven by non-need items/services...but...I'd point out that this has already occurred to a large degree in the real world. Everywhere, even in countries which aren't "rich" by Western standards, people spend a lot of money on things that aren't necessities. Look at how much gets spent on Hollywood, after all. Luxury is capable of sustaining quite an economy by itself. (But then you need things to make the luxury items...)
Another point to keep in mind is that even if food and clothing and shelter rain from the sky, there's always a shortage of something. Most interestingly, there's always a shortage of you. You can't be everywhere, see everything, and do everything, and neither can anyone else - so you better run and see Eric Clapton now, because there are only so many seats, and he and you won't live forever...
Duplicate post? (Score:5, Informative)
This article references the one we already had about the Norrath Economical Report...
Evercrack is addictive (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't know what can/should be done about it. The question is, who is benefiting from sucking money out of so many people's wallets?
Re:Evercrack is addictive (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Evercrack is addictive (Score:3, Informative)
I could be wrong, but I'd imagine that those, amongst others, are where the $10/month goes. You may notice that most of the next gen MMPORPGs are looking at charging about double that to be able to stay profitable.
Group attempted to sue (like tobacco) (Score:2)
They have also gone so far as to attempt a class action lawsuit against Verant, much like the one that was (is?) being attempted against tobacco industries. They say that Verant is profiting off of the addiction of others, and should pay the consequences.
They also threatened to protest at an EverQuest Fan Faire, and hand out flyers about how evil EQ was. They never showed up, but there was security looking for them anyway to keep them off of the premesis.
Personally, I feel that the point of a game is to get you hooked, Verant seems to have done a great job of that...Almost too great.
Re:Group attempted to sue (like tobacco) (Score:2)
That depends on if you're looking at gaming from a developer/publisher's point of view or that of the gamer. For the gamer, the game should first and foremost be FUN.
Re:Group attempted to sue (like tobacco) (Score:2)
I don't know about you, but as a gamer, it's impossible for me to get hooked on a game that isn't fun in the first place.
Re:Evercrack is addictive (Score:2)
I saw many gpa's drop full points because of that game. Like EQ, there became a massive market for the items from the game (the net wasn't as mature, but at one point it had the largest non-binary newsgroup on the net). The only difference was that the items were not entirely virtual. But as long as the EQ software keeps certain items sufficiently "rare", then there is little difference between the two addictions.
Re:Evercrack is addictive (Score:2)
Frankly it doesn't deserve to. It's an amusing diversion but it's pretty repetitive and tiresome if played for too long. Kill, med, kill, med ad nauseum.
I have to question the sanity of those who spend their whole lives on it. I don't know if its funny or tragic considering many of them are still in school.
Re:Evercrack is addictive (Score:2)
While this may be a fault of the basic game design, there are finite game-play resources designed into EQ.
For example, a player finds that the Mega-Sword spawns in the Mega-Dungeon. If this item can be successfully sold on Ebay or Playerauctions.com without any possibility of intervention from Sony, then it encourages that player to do nothing but farm Mega-Dungeon to make money off Mega-Sword, keeping other players on that server from being able to try to get a Mega-Sword by fighting or an in-game trade rather than with real $$$.
There are only about 30, maybe 40 EQ servers. If more than just a few people get it into their head that it's okay to do this, then it ruins quite a bit of the game play for new EQ users, encouraging them to try one of Verant's competitors.
Now, this issue can be addressed by changing game play mechanics rather than filing lawsuits. Verant has already done this to a small degree by making many items... The Ghoulbane comes to mind... into 'No-Drop' items, incapable of being sold or traded. This is a rather
1. Say our farmer has previously looted a Mega-sword... Every time he loots this, or any other rare item, his chances of being able to loot that same rare item go down. Eventually it will no longer be worth his time to try to loot that item any more.
2. Our farmer is in Mega-dungeon farming Mega-swords. Every time another player comes into the dungeon, another Mega-sword carrying monster spawns... preferrebly invisible or invulnerable to the farmer. Everyone gets their chance this way.
3. The more often our farmer loots a certain item, he stands a greater chance of incurring the wrath of the game-gods, who will reach down and death-touch him before he has a chance to loot again.
Two reasons (Score:2)
Second, it upsets the dynamic of the game if rich people who can afford to buy this crap do so.
sad state of affairs (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:sad state of affairs (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand, the article is about "per-captia" income. So what it really says is that people sink more money on average into Everquest than many people have to spend. It doesn't mean they have more money total--most countries have populations larger than Everquest.
On the other hand, it is kind of sad that you can earn more from playing Everquest all day than the people in a lot of countries earn in a week. I wonder if "virtual sweatshops" could actually come into being--people come into work, log on to computers, and make virtual artifacts all day. Hey--probably beats farming.
Scary, almost (Score:3, Interesting)
A Bit Misleading (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically, he calculated the approximate real-world worth of people's items, as sold on eBay, and this figure (GNP of Norrath 77th worldwide) would be correct if everyone sold everything they own on eBay, at these prices.
Quote from the article : However, he notes that not all the assets are converted into real-world cash.
Of course they aren't! If they were, the price for each item would be significantly lower, and the real GNP would be nowhere near what he is quoting. So in reality, if Norrath was a country, the GNP would not be as high as his estimate.
Still an interesting thought though.
Re:A Bit Misleading (Score:5, Informative)
Of course they aren't! If they were, the price for each item would be significantly lower, and the real GNP would be nowhere near what he is quoting. So in reality, if Norrath was a country, the GNP would not be as high as his estimate.
You can't "convert" an item to cash. All you can do is sell it to someone else for cash. Do you claim that, say, Egypt doesn't have an economy because the things produced there are rarely sold for dollars?
Here's an example of his argument: The game produces (via spawns or user manufacture) 10 swords of dragonthwacking per day. Those have an in-game value of 5000 platinum pieces. You can exchange pp for dollars on the open (though technically black) market at around 100:1. Thus, there are $500 worth of SoDs produced every day. Repeat these calculations for every item in the game, and from there you can figure out the GNP of Norrath.
Remember, GNP does not have anything to do with exports. GNP attempts to measure the complete value of the production in a country or place.
This is the same way that you can figure out, in dollars, the GNP of a place like North Korea. The closest analog to this would be to try to figure out how many things are sold by USians to USians for dollars in Mexico.
Re:A Bit Misleading (Score:2, Interesting)
Consumer Spending + Investments + Gov Spending + (Exports - Imports)
Exports == The "Illegal" trading of in-game items
Imports == ($10usd * every month * Active players) + (Expansion pack price * active players)
One's time put into the game can be argued both ways, both as an import and as a "Consumer spending". I guees it is all in how you structure your definition of the economic system.
Re:A Bit Misleading (Score:2)
Monster a "drops" sword thing, even if nobody wants it.
Plus it populace is, for all intents and purposes, immortal.
plus you got that whole imaginary money thing.
Considering the BEST return on selling things is about 2 dollars an hour, not much of an economy, if you ask me.
Re:A Bit Misleading (Score:2)
This isn't quite right. My understanding is that GDP is the value of everything produced within the borders of a country, and GNP is the total value of everything produced by assets *owned* by the country in question (or its citizens).
This is the same way that you can figure out, in dollars, the GNP of a place like North Korea. The closest analog to this would be to try to figure out how many things are sold by USians to USians for dollars in Mexico.
This seems a little confusing. Economists use "purchasing power parity" to attempt to normalize the relationship between currencies in order to compare GDPs. It is calculated based on how much it costs you to buy various things in each country. For example, the Canadian dollar is worth about US$0.62 in foreign exchange, whereas it is worth about US$0.78 in purchasing-power parity. Canada's CA$1-trillion economy is worth about US$780-billion.
The world of the stupid economist brings you... (Score:2, Informative)
The argument you give is just plain stupid, sorry but its true. If I sell an original painting for $5,000 this does not mean that _every_ painting is worth that much, its diminishing returns, as the original poster said.
The US is NOT the measure of whether an economy has a GNP, GNP is the GROSS NATIONAL PRODUCT of that country i.e. how much it produced IN ITS OWN CURRENCY this can then be traded on the FX to produce a Dollars, Euro or Sterling rate.
But it really is muppet-tastic to think that because you sell one item at X that you can sell n items at X. The example you give demonstrates the failure to grasp simple concepts.
If the US prints 1,000,000,000,000,000 1 dollar bills a day, then they'd be worth a damned sight less a week later.
Supply - Demand, this doesn't determine GNP, it determines scarcity v market. To multiply it up means that either
a) You don't understand economics AT ALL
or
b) You've also been nominated for a Darwin award because "Lead isn't poisonous in small doses so how can a bullet hurt ?"
Re:A Bit Misleading (Score:2)
GDP = C + I + G + (EX-IM)
Where
Consumption (C)
Investment (I)
Government (G)
Net Exports (EX-IM)
What about the cost to play? (Score:2)
Re:What about the cost to play? (Score:2)
And many people play for 80 hours a week. Clearly if they sell their character after a while then they are going to be in profit.
Re:A Bit Misleading (Score:2)
By your logic, the GDP of Japan isn't measurable from the US because the only way it could be measured is by forcing everybody in Japan to sell off their yen for US dollars. And since that would drop the yen through the floor, the numbers macroeconomists get for Japan are actually much higher than they really are. And the GDP for the US that Japanese economists get is much higher than it really is as well.
Of course, all of these measurements assumes that the value of the observer's currency is fixed, but nobody can prove they're the One True Currency because there's no ultimate frame of reference. Even using the gold standard is no good because the amount of gold in the market changes constantly.
Sounds like special relativity, don't it?
The full research paper (Score:5, Informative)
I tried to post this article last week but it seems like I did something wrong because it got rejected.
Watch out (Score:2, Funny)
Ten Thousand Villages new Project? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Ten Thousand Villages new Project? (Score:2)
Hey, no problem! Just trek out to some remote village in the South American jungle, or Africa, or Vietnam, and set 'em up with EverQuest-enabled PCs. Who cares that they don't have power, or even potable water supplies - they'll intuitively understand the Western culture of fantasy that is EverQuest. They don't need to spend their time finding food or eking out a living - they can just play games all day, and pick up the electronically-posted fund at the nearest ATM. Because hey, it works in America, right?
I hope you were gunning for the +1, Funny rating, 'cuz otherwise, you need to lay off the sauce.
sheesh...some people...
Re:Ten Thousand Villages new Project? (Score:2)
Perhaps...but I doubt the guy in Vietnam who made my flower-pot would enjoy a game of EverQuest - despite the availability of computers, the cultural differences are still there. I did not intend to imply that people in these countries don't understand computers, but the culture that is infused in any western-culture-based computer game would not likely hold their attention for long. You seem to have a bias about your culture and it's application to the rest of the world that would be better laid to rest.
That aside, I like my humor dry, as you seemed to have intuited.
As do I. Cheers!
all in the averages. (Score:2)
However, in any economy, per capita INCOME is not the only figure you have to take into consideration. You need to understand that while some people earn money from the selling of accounts, others have to purchase those accounts and unless they purchased the account with money made from trading accounts, then you don't have a closed economy.
To be considered a true economy, there must be a way for Everquest to actually GENERATE wealth. It needs to create something such that the value of the products and services it offers grows completely from within its own environment.
Players (your workers, if you will) need to accomplish something by their gameplay that increases the overall wealth of the system such that the lifestyle of the players improves. However, the best Everquest can be attributed to is the art industry. People buy and sell art, but art alone can't sustain an economy, unless you have a country that only produces art and external counties provide all other basic resources in exchange for the art.
-Restil
Re:all in the averages. (Score:2)
A distinction needs to be made between making wealth in the game (which is just manipulating bits, when it comes down to it), and creating wealth extrinsic to the game (which is what the report was trying to measure). The example given above only creates wealth for the characters, not for the players.
If pleasure were wealth, beggars would masturbate (Score:3, Interesting)
The only pleasure I can see attaching to the item (as opposed to that derived from the gameplay involved in acquiring it, which can't be given away or sold) is that of munchkinism, the idea that an RPG is more fun when your character has a +2 sword rather than a +1. (I don't understand it, but I'm not going to deny its existence.) This needs to be distinguished from both the pleasure derived from creating the item and the impact of the creation on the gameworld economy in any economic analysis.
What have horses done to this? (Score:2, Redundant)
For those that don't know, the latest upgrade (Shadows of Luclin) introduced horses to the game. You can buy a horse which lets you travel fasters. (And look cool).
The thing is, they are *very* expensive. The cheapest one is about 10000 platium for a slow horse going up to well over 100,000platinum for a fast one.
Even the cheapest one is more than the vast majority of players can afford and the expensive ones only a few people can affort at the moment.
I'd be interested to see how this affects the economy.
Obviously it's a huge money sink, which should reduce the prices of things. (If people have spent all their money, they won't pay so much when they want to buy things)
But also, it means that many people have got all the old junk they had in the bank and started selling it. So does this reduce prices as there are more for sale, and people want whatever they can get, or does it increase prices because people want the money to buy a horse and so are unwilling to part with items for a bargain price.
It's interesting. But I have no answers.
Re:What have horses done to this? (Score:2, Informative)
Per capita? (Score:5, Insightful)
Heck - I've got a per-capita income comparable to a small country: my income devided by one.
Well, I guess it is "New Scientist", and not "New Economist", but still...
Gross income? Net income? Anything
Re:Per capita? (Score:3, Informative)
One of em (GDP, iirc...the domestic product) counts in everything made by non-US citizens living on US soil or employed by a company in the US. Bigger number.
GNP counts only stuff made by US citizens made on US soil. Smaller number.
I think a more meaningful statistic (speaking as a *not* Ph.D. in economics) is the per-capita yearly income. That compares, more accurately, the lifestyle of the people of that country on average, if they lived in your country...India's per-capita income is what...$10k/yr? Decent but that's dirt poor here in America. Guess what? So are most native Indians.
My $0.02 adjusted for inflation a few times, and probably wrongly.
Re:Per capita? (Score:2)
I was under the impression that GNP counted everything produced by assets (and/or people?) owned by a Country, anywhere in the world.
On a per-capita-income basis, the country of "Me" is the wealthiest in the world, if we don't include the country of "max(You)".
I'd assume that per-capita income and per-capita GDP are highly correlated.
Also, on average, for example, Americans have a higher per-capita GDP (and presumably income) than Canadians, but the bulk of that wealth is distributed much greatly to the higher-income levels than it is in Canada. Thus, 80% of Canadians enjoy a higher standard of living than 80% of Americans, even though the "average" figure might suggest otherwise. America's a great place to be a multi-millionaire, but it's probably fairly far down on the list of first-world nations to be someone in the middle class.
Re:Per capita? (Score:2)
They're related, that's for sure.
Income per-capita = GDP per capita - deprecation per capita - business taxes (direct and indirect) per capita, including social security et. al...
Per-capita GDP doesn't tell us much either, unless there is a fair and equitable distribution of wealth. In most countries, there isn't. All of these economic indicators will let you see a part of the picture, but you can't piece it together with only one.
Re:Per capita? (Score:2)
for example, if your country has 5000 people, and 4990 of them make $10 a year, and the remaining 10 make $450,000 a year, you have a per capita income of $100, which does not acurately reflect the income of most of the people, which you would be able to notice with the standard deviation
Chip And Dale's MMORPG (Score:2, Funny)
Just imagine (Score:2)
If Russians had more disposable income, they could buy Everquest assets, then Everquest's "economy" would become greater than Russia's. No wait ...
Not on Ebay, Playerauctions.com (Score:3, Informative)
You can usually just a search for your server name or use their catagories. Doing a search for "prexus" as an example will show all the auctions on that server.
Building an economy on the backs of parents.. (Score:3, Funny)
Sure Johnnie, we can go pick up your copy of EQ after you clean your room...
[Month 2]
Johnnie, get off the Internet...I'm trying to phone your Aunt Bertha!
[Month 3]
Dinner time! Where is that blasted kid!??!
[Month 4]
Is that a new gameboy game? I see your paper route is finally starting to pay off..Or at least it's keeping you off that computer, we should have never got that high speed access
[Month 5]
What is this XBox thingie?
[Month 6]
Your teacher called...She asked for something called "Mythril Armor +4"..Crazy teachers
[Month 7]
Ok honey, this is getting a bit nuts...but we have to get you your own mailbox
[Month 8]
A new car? Just for US!? Thank you Johnnie! Don't worry about cleaning your room for a whole month!
That's for you, dotcomers! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That's for you, dotcomers! (Score:2)
Oh. Wait.
Fundamental Flaw (Score:2, Interesting)
BTW when I say "goods" I mean goods or services or anything usefull for that matter. A programer or movie actor is producing goods just like a factory worker is. The point is that something is getting done.
Re:Fundamental Flaw (Score:2)
The only oddity is that the economy only produces things that can be used in Norrath, and that anyone anywhere can use that thing if they have a character in Norrath who owns the thing. Frankly, I have no idea how to relate that to a real/unreal economy. But, barring that, the analogy to an economy seems very firm.
who cares? everquest sucks. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:who cares? everquest sucks. (Score:3, Funny)
Russia is not @ 77, it's at 17 (Score:2)
Number 77 is Lithuania, and you thought newscientist knows what they are talking about.
Re:Russia is not @ 77, it's at 17 (Score:4, Informative)
Does that mean... (Score:3, Funny)
This seems like a good way to get around the DMCA...
:)
Wonder how Russia would do if... (Score:3, Funny)
But, at least Russia doesn't have undead. Well, ok, they have muslim separatists, but nobody's perfect.
This is the result of double counting... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you take the hobbies of rich people (and folks, most people posting on this site are generally rich by world standards), you can get a high "per-capita" economy for just about anything. Like:
Economy of California
Economy of luxury goods.
Economy of oversized boats and cars
Trouble is, it's all double counting. Those people's incomes are already counted as part of the US GDP. You don't get to count them again.
Re:This is the result of double counting... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This is the result of double counting... (Score:2, Interesting)
But no, it's not double counting. You can analize the bigger picture and still maintain data from the smaller factors that leaded to the main conclusion.
It's like saying that in A + B = Y you are double counting A's value because it's part of the 'total' (Y).
Intellectual Economy (Score:2, Interesting)
What we have in this case is an economy which is based on intellectual interactions. People work in the corporate world (service layer on processing layer on manufacturing layer on farming layer) in order to make enough energy to interact on this new plane. It is not the first attempt to build up a new layer of value creation, nor the last.
Everquest is limited by the rules governing it; it will remain on the fringes. Not enough value can be created to liberate this mechanism and let it take over the entire economy as a primary layer (on par with the processing or manufacturing or service economies). It is not flexible eough. I am sure one which is flexible enough will emerge (the web is one very large example).
The same works in ecosystems in which a predator eats grazing animals, which in turn eat vegetation, which in turn eat sunlight and bacteria-processes nutrients.
One particular predator started thinking about some things and a whole new game of layers got started. He started building farms and powered up enough value to support an entire lattice. It really accelerated once combustion engines started getting built.
The real question is: what is the next layer that will feed on the emerging intellectual economy layer?
Many might
errors in research (Score:5, Interesting)
1) The survey was self-selecting. Hardly a valid research tool.
2) Poorly worded survey questions. They were geared towards provoking a specific response.
3) Time. This person played the game for an immensely short amount of time. People have been playing this game for two YEARS. The researcher put in around a week.
There's more, like how his favorite city was Qeynos (definetly not a place anyone sticks around to enjoy, Qeynos is at the butt end of Norrath), but you get the point.
I find it appalling that a "reputable" source like new scientist is actually giving this guy's poor research this kind of air time.
Re:errors in research (Score:2)
Does that make Halas the dingleberries of norrath?
(As a barbarian shaman who spent much of his early years in that hellish, snowy wasteland, I would have to agee)
Re:errors in research (Score:2)
Butt-end it might be... alas, those of us spent our newbie years in the Qeynos area way back when didn't have to put up with the constant barrage of people shouting for binds at the gates, people shouting for sow's at the gates, people shouting for ports at the gates, people shouting for spare pp at the gates, people auctioning off their orc picks at the gates, people shouting about who KS'd who, who's a n00b and who is uber... Qeynos might have been the butt-end of Norrath (Anyone in the know knows that Tox Forest is the butt end of norrath
Re:errors in research (Score:2)
One of the things New Scientist does well is mix 'proper' science with the less rigorous, 'pop science' that this report represents.
As a first briefing to the world about the economy of EQ to people who haven't heard of it this report did a good enough job. Its a bit hyped up and sensational, and wouldn't stand up to rigourous review as a serious piece of research.
BUT
There is a lot of snobbery about science. If I go out and count the number of blackbirds in my garden every day I am doing science. If I put out food for a week I get more birds. Therefore birds like food. WOW. Scientific deduction.
This is a similarly intuitive bit of research to do some quick, back of an envelope style, calculations to attempt to quantify the size of an economy. If there a real world economy? I think so, lets count it!
So while I agree that this is the lower end of the scientific spectrum - I am overjoyed that New Scientist continues to publish a range of articles. This is better founded than many of the articles they publish about extreme physics, and is certainly more approachable to the majority of the public.
Re:errors in research (Score:2)
Of course it wouldn't stand up to a review.. What you read online (the
Why not create a game where you buy/sell stuff? (Score:2)
The game company could charge a "tax" on everything sold, and you could only sell online via a ingame e-bay, and pay online via a ingame paypal clone.
Make XP worth money, so you could buy XP (at small ammounts), and put in restrictions to keep the game flowing and stop player killers who have everything.
The company should be more like the Ferengi [electriciti.com] on Star Trek!
Re:Why not create a game where you buy/sell stuff? (Score:2)
If the company who is in charge of the game actually treated virtual items as real assets, they could get into trouble. Suppose someone trips over the power cord, lets in a destructive virus, makes a programming mistake somewhere in the mudlib, or something else, which causes some virtual items (which some player owns), XPs, platinum pieces, entire characters, etc to be lost?
You know that there should be someone demanding that the virtual losses be restored, and would sue if it didn't happen. There would also be fraudsters who could demand fake losses restored, etc.
Considering the (lack of) reliability of modern computers and the people who operate them, I sure as hell wouldn't want to be responsible for anyone's virtual assets.
Noteriety in an alternate universe (Score:5, Interesting)
From a somewhat psychological view, one could argue that one of the primary addictive qualities about EQ is that it allows the player to be represented in a grand, heroic fashion. All the guys are buff and appear strong, all the girls look like a cross between Xena and two coconuts. Riches and adventure are somewhat easy to come by, given that you spend enough time playing the game, so the opportunity to escape one's mundane and unaccomplished life is ample. Given that the rest of the game's world is populated by the avatars of living, breathing human beings, it becomes more than a simple diversion to establish oneself in the society...it becomes a major ambition, just like our normal lives.
Enter the interaction between our real world and Norrath. It is difficult for someone of average income to buy great status. Luxury cars, large homes on prime property...all these things cost tremendous amounts of money. And since most of us did not win the genetic lottery, our appearance will not gain us said status, either (hence, only a tiny portion of the population are models). With the EQ universe, the dynamic is changed. For a mere $100, large sums of game money can be purchased. For your real-world American dollars, you can purchase the most powerful, greatest status symbols of the game. You can walk through the game world boldy, showing off your prized status symbols to other players just as wealthy Americans enjoy going for a drive in their shiny Mercedes.
The ability to re-invent yourself is a major selling point for what is otherwise a chat window with a game around it. Verant, as a business, was very wise to include hard-to-find, rare items that would confer "great champion" status to their owners. It is the same behavior we see in our society, it's just more affordable for the average person.
Re:Noteriety in an alternate universe (Score:3, Interesting)
Virtual Entertainment Nation Nothing New (Score:2, Interesting)
Witness also the huge amount of activity based on the rotisserie/player franchise sports leagues.
EQ is just the graphic MUD equivalent of all that. Keep yer pants on, this is nothing new.
Could be the saddest thing I have ever heard (Score:2)
I am not an anti-EQ nazi or anything...I like computer games, and while EQ isn't my cup of tea, I have friends who like it.
But this is out of control. 77th richest country! If people used all that wasted time, the United States (which is the principle players of EQ) we would have the combined economys of us and Russia (?!)
I think just MAYBE this whole thing has gotten out of control.
Re:Could be the saddest thing I have ever heard (Score:2)
gdp per capita (Score:2, Informative)
For example, GDP per capita of Switzerland is ~$30,000. GDP per capita of China is less then $1000.
Studied like a NORMAL ECONOMY? CRY .... (Score:3, Insightful)
Castronova believes that virtual worlds like Norrath could eventually become more closely linked with the real world. "Virtual worlds may be the future of e-commerce, and perhaps the internet itself," he says. "Ordinary people, who seem to have become bored and frustrated by ordinary web commerce, engage energetically and enthusiastically in avatar-based online markets."
Jesus christ. I feel sick to my stomach. Can be studied like a normal economy? Hello? Can we start killing off the players when they run out of virtual water and food? Can we cut a few of their virtual legs off and then tell them they cant play the part in EQ that they want to?
I mean, does anyone actually believe this? Are we all so wealthy that we can't understand the significance of scarcity, poverty, inequality, yadda yadda in the (earth to Castronova) real world? The idea that when you can't get your next meal, you're unlikely to be fit enough to run the capitast race?
Before everyone gets bent out of shape. (Score:3, Insightful)
EQ has a virtual economy, we can agree on that.
A fraction of players buy/sell virtual items/money for real world money.
This is wta they base the per-capita income on.
The fact is, if everyone in the game started selling things IRL, the value would probably drop to zero.
It's similar, in a way, to large shareholders of companies. Like.. say, Gates.
You have a value on paper, but you can't just sell it all and get cash.
GNP - Economy - Production Abstraction (Score:2)
Remember, however, that money is an abstraction of value, traditionally the value that was built on the backs of laborers... if people are willing to pay for EQ items, then playing EQ is a valid job. It contributes to the GNP and therefore helps the economy.
The problem with economic indexes is that they really only measure the amount of money changing hands, but does that translate into quality of life? That is the assumption that many capitalists and economists make, but I submit that as we move into an increasingly abundant era, traditional economic indexes become more and more meaningless. I believe earning more money is only the best use of your time up to a modest income level ($30-$60k). After that non-GNP adding activities like spiritual/religious exploration, volunteer work, mentoring, open-source hacking, etc. will not only satisfy an individual more, but may also contribute more to society.
So, to tie up this massive ideology that I've strewn about, my point is that EQ should not be judged by the cash sales it generates, but by the amount of happiness.
Personally I feel that most computer game playing is pure escapism and thus not worth much even to the people who play it, but that's another argument for another day.
Some other meaninless economic stats... (Score:2)
If the US were somehow to lose CA it would lose about 40% of GNP.
High-tech nations have higher GNP/GDP because money changes hands. If everyone fixes their own car, GNP suffers. If everyone pays $60/hr to have the car fixed, GNP grows. Imagine a home where gourmet meals are home-cooked "from scratch" every day, vs a home where everybody eats at McDonalds. The McDonalds home has a higher GDP.
Wow (Score:2)
Bill Gates is the eqivalent of a medium sized country too.
Economics are based on Scarcity, right? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know the numbers, but I'm sure that if I went and crunched them we would see that assuming growth trends remained the same the per-capita of Norrath would soon (5-10 years) be higher than all real countries. That is, assuming their economic model doesn't implode because they're stuck with surplusses.
Wait a minute! Maybe this isn't so irrelevant to real life after all. All I have to do is, while stating the obvious, use the magic words "Gift culture" and "software paralells" in the same sentence as the magic
On second thought, I kindof prefer having a high karma than a real discussion here. Perhaps some AC will do the honors?
making a living at it... oops (Score:2)
I built a machine for my brother in law a while back.. and kinda got him into gaming. I also took him out on x-mas and bought him EQ as I told him how much fun and great the game was...
He played a LOT - and ended up making about 2K per month off the game... it supported him through college, but he was banned for life from EBAY (those bastards)...
So - yes it is time consuming - however you can farm virtual product for a living from that game if you so choose.
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Russia's GDP (Score:2)
Is everquest productive, in an economic sense? (Score:2, Interesting)
After all, we could do a reductio ad absurdem whereby there is no everquest online game. Instead, it would be economically the same if Tom just pays Joe 2$ to think of a sword.
Two questions to ask, if you're interested in economics.
1st: what good is an imaginary sword?
2nd: is everquest productive, in an economic sense?
Question #1.
Someone is creating an imaginary object, and someone else is buying this imaginary object. But the imaginary object can't ever be used, except in the imaginary game. From an economic sense, is any value being created? Well, yes, because it improves the leisure of whoever buys it. It makes his game experience more fun, so he recieves a value. And from his perspective, it might be worth paying for: dollars spent for better leisure. However--
Question #2: Is everquest productive, in an economic sense?
In other words, is society as a whole wealthier or more efficient after a virtual trade takes place? My thinking is, no.
Example: Joe spends 3 hours building an imaginary sword in the game, and then sells it to Tom for 2$. Tom feels that he has gotten a fair trade, because he values the three hours saved more than the two dollars spent. And Tom now has a valuable tool in the game. But it's an imaginary game! Jake, the person who runs the game, could just have easily given Tom a sword with no effort required. Or a million swords. Why should Tom pay Joe for effort that isn't really required? So from society's perspective, it seems like the 2$ has been spent uselessly. Money has been moved around, but society as a whole isn't any wealthier or more efficient.
Now, why is buying an imaginary sword with real money pointless, from a macroeconomic perspective? After all, stories are imaginary, but we pay for books. The reason his action in buying an imaginary sword is pointless is because the resource he's paying for may be valuable, but it isn't scarce. A book, on the other hand, is scarce, in that it has only one author. And only that author can think of that exact book. But anyone can think of a generic imaginary sword without any effort or time spent. Why should someone pay for a resource that's so abundant? As an analogy, look at oxygen. Very valuable, because we couldn't live without it, but in most circumstances we wouldn't pay for it because it's abundant and cost nothing in time or effort. Similarly with an imaginary sword; anyone can think of one. The only difference is that in everquest, an abundant resource has been made artificially scarce.
Now if it seems to you in looking back over this reply that the explanation in question 2 seems to contradict that of question 1, you're not alone. It appears that this sword has a microeconomic value, but no macroeconomic value.
Which is why even after my explanation, I still think this is all really strange, and I don't quite understand it.
Anyone with more of an economics background, please leap in.
Re:Deflation rate? (Score:3, Redundant)
When the game started out, relatively mundane items were pretty powerful because no one as yet had gotten to the high-level areas with the "phat loot". Early on, a guy running around in simple bronze platemail was a rare sight. Weapons with a damage/delay ratio of 1:3 (or 1:2 for two-handed swords and the like) were godly and commanded godly prices--if they were sold at all.
As time went on there was inflation, as people gained thousands of platinum pieces (the EQ currency) and bid up the prices of those items. But the inflation reversed itself after a while.
Items don't decay in EQ. They don't wear out. The only way they leave the world is if they are destroyed by a player, on a character when it is deleted, or poof when a corpse poofs. So as time went on, more and more of the items entered the economy, and better and better stuff was found. Verant has added three expansions over the past two years, and each one has had better toys and phatter loot. As that stuff enters circulation, the former "godly" stuff becomes less valuable and typically gets passed down to lower-level "twinks" (alternate characters equipped with hand-me-down or purchased loot that's better than what they could get on their own) or sold.
Using an example--there's an EQ weapon called a Short Sword of the Ykesha. It looks like a Ghurka khukri knife, and will occasionally hit a target with a 75-point damage spell. In the early game, it used to be the bad-ass one-handed sword, a rare drop off a tough level 40ish monster in a very tough dungeon (Lower Guk). When they would be sold, which was rare, they would go for 8,000+ plat.
Well, since the Kunark, Velious, and now Luclin expansion packs, there's stuff out there that makes the Ykesha look totally lame--plus, the number of Ykeshas on the server gradually increased over time, as more and more people entered that dungeon and killed that particular monster. The price of the weapon spiked up on my server as people started scoring a lot of money, but once the better weapons entered the picture the price went into freefall. Now "Yaks" go for 1000 plat or even less.
It's an odd combination--people have more plat than ever before, but prices are simultaneously falling. The result is that there are level 5 twinks running around in gear that my warrior didn't have at level 40 18 months ago.
The same thing happens as new servers are brought online, but it happens faster there because people already know exactly where to go to maximize their income and their chance at items.
Verant has tried to introduce money sinks to reduce the amount of money in circulation (horses that cost 110k plat, for example), but that won't solve the deflation. Item decay might, but it's way too late in the game's lifecycle to introduce that. If I end up spending 15 hours of my no-life to camp the Frenzied Wumpus for the Ass-Kicking Widget of Doom, there's no way I want my widget to break or wear out in a couple months.
In short--the deflationary aspect in EQ doesn't seem to have much to do with the money supply, it's got more to do with the supply of items that people want to trade for.
Re:Do these numbers add up? (Score:5, Informative)
First of all, it's the per cap (and not absolute) GNP that was claimed to put Everquest right around Russia. That's pretty meaningless, as it's a self-selected group of people from the richest countries in the world who have a lot of time on their hands. I mean, the per cap GNP of my house is several times higher than that of the richest country in the world. So what?
Secondly, France's GDP in 2000 was $1,448,000,000,000, which is a thousand times greater than the number you posted.
The difference between GNP and GDP in a nutshell is that GNP includes income generated by multinationals based in that country. For instance, Microsoft's worldwide income accrues to the US GNP but only its US income is counted for the GDP.
Re:Do these numbers add up? (Score:2)
The difference betwen a game and business (Score:2)
In a business, you get more back then you spend.
It's only a game if you're losing money.
Now there's a thought.
Re:What is sick... (Score:2)
If you want to get into it about the buddhist's... they aren't open to further clouding your mind with fiction when reality clouds it enough.
Re:basic economics (Score:2)
from the
Re:Rank behind Russia? (Score:2)
Re:The Master Plan (Score:2)