A Real Living With Virtual Goods 251
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."
Problem with it is ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Problem with it is ... (Score:4, Insightful)
no medical insurance though, sheesh!
Re:Problem with it is ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Problem with it is ... (Score:3, Insightful)
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:2, Funny)
Re:Problem with it is ... (Score:5, Interesting)
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,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)
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)
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)
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)
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.
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
Re:Making a million is probably still easy (Score:2)
Re:Problem with it is ... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Problem with it is ... (Score:2)
So what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Problem with it is ... (Score:2, Informative)
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
Re:What a crap job! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What a crap job! (Score:2, Funny)
Greatest fear? (Score:5, Funny)
...instead of being afraid that officials'll crackdown on this and kill his livelihood?
Pillaging (Score:2)
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..
Re:Greatest fear? (Score:2)
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)
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
In other news... (Score:2, Funny)
Still cannot find a girlfriend.
Two words (Score:3, Interesting)
***NEWSFLASH**** (Score:5, Insightful)
Playmoney (Score:5, Informative)
I haven't even played Everquest but it still makes for interesting reading.
Re:Playmoney (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Playmoney (Score:3, Informative)
Online exchange (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Online exchange (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re:Online exchange (Score:5, Informative)
Some years ago, an unauthorized third-party program called UO Extreme (UOX) was released. Among other things, the program allowed you to send unorthodox color combinations when coloring a dye tub. I don't recall the specifics, but essentially, when you colored a dye tub through the normal process, the UO client would send an RGB code to the server indicating which color to make the dye tub. But the sanity check was on the client side. UOX let you put in arbitrary RGB values which were not available from the normal UO client.
And so the black dye tub was born, and people started dying their clothes black. Since black clothing, and black dye tubs themselves, were uncommon (because only those with the UOX program could make them), they fetched a premium price. UOX was deemed an illegal add-on and people who used it were banned from the game, thus locking the supply. For whatever reason, the existing black dye tubs were left alone. The demand continued to rise - this is normal in UO, any sort of "rare" item where there are only a certain number available will attract buyers. "Rares" trading and collecting has become a cottage industry of UO.
All of a sudden there were a limited number of black dye tubs in the world, and since they could no longer be created, they got expensive. That's why they were coveted.
Years later, a black dye tub was added as a legitimate Veteran Reward item.
Re:Online exchange (Score:3, Informative)
The black dye tubs were the result of a program called FUSE (Fallo's UO Server Emulator), which along with UOX (the Ultima Offline eXperiment) were server emulators.
The author of FUSE included a hidden setting in the loader program for the emulator that, when used on legitimate servers, would dye tubs black automatically. It took several weeks for it to be patched.
UO Extreme was called UOE, and its primary feature was the ability to see hidden players.
You have the gist of the
Working at home (Score:5, Interesting)
Rus
Re:Working at home (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Working at home (Score:2)
Older article from someone doing this (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Older article from someone doing this (Score:2)
I played, I sold, I quit (Score:5, Interesting)
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)
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)
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...
Re:Fair enough. (Score:2)
Re:Fair enough. (Score:2)
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
Re:Fair enough. (Score:2)
Re:Fair enough. (Score:2)
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)
Are... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Are... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Are... (Score:5, Funny)
Best Typo Ever, I hope (Score:5, Funny)
You now owe me a new Dr. Pepper, preferrably not dispensed through my nose.
Woah, Hey now. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Woah, Hey now. (Score:5, Informative)
There. So I've trashed one person and elevated another. Total Kharmic result: 0.
Re:Woah, Hey now. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:It's an industry in Diablo 2 (Score:3, Interesting)
Capitalizing on others misfortune (Score:4, Funny)
It's the American dream!
Re:Capitalizing on others misfortune (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Insightful? (Score:2)
What about the poor sods that are so addicted to an online RPG that they buy virtual items for real money?
It's almost as bad as dealing drugs to kids.
Re:Insightful? (Score:2)
So, it's more like selling non addictive, non physical harmful drugs to adults?
That can still be illegal.
You're the one bringing children and harmful drugs into the equation.
I do it the other way around (Score:2, Funny)
In other news.... (Score:5, Funny)
You could call this social criticism (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:You could call this social criticism (Score:3, Funny)
Re:You could call this social criticism (Score:2)
Re:You could call this social criticism (Score:3, Funny)
Nothing new (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Nothing new (Score:2, Funny)
EverQuest (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:EverQuest (Score:2)
So ... how do your friends manage to do it? And aren't they worried about being "caught?"
Child labor (Score:5, Interesting)
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. :-)
Re:Child labor (Score:2)
Real world money defeats the purpose of the MUD (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Real world money defeats the purpose of the MUD (Score:3, Insightful)
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)
...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.
Re:The funniest thing is... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want your debt cleared (or at least relaxed) you should pray for a sudden devaluation of the dollar vs. goods with "real" values such as gold or your labor. If your $50,000 of debt which is worth a year of your labor today, was suddenly worth only 6 months of your labor tomorrow, you'd be a
a few thoughts (Score:3, Informative)
I'm wondering how many (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:I'm wondering how many (Score:3, Informative)
I put myself through college with Diablo II (Score:4, Interesting)
slashdot account for sale! (Score:5, Funny)
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
Re:slashdot account for sale! (Score:2)
Troc
Re:slashdot account for sale! (Score:2, Funny)
Everyone knows slashdot users went downhill after they hit 3000...
Loser (Score:2)
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)
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.
Re:Mod parent up! (Score:2)
He hasn't "quit his day job." He's a freelance writer. He works from home, when he wants, and on what subjects he wants and thinks he can sell. I'm quite sure he's planning on selling a few articles condensed from his blogs when this whole thing winds down.
This has been done before... (Score:4, Informative)
SCO (Score:2, Funny)
SCO?
Irresponsible? (Score:3, Insightful)
Consider this... (Score:2)
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)
$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.
Re:Sigh. We already did the maths on this (Score:2, Informative)
This works great for some.. (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
So, why aren't these guys targets? (Score:2)
So, why aren't these guys being taken apart by other players after goodies?
He didn't really quit his job. (Score:2, Interesting)
Real world income, virtual items (Score:2, Interesting)
On top of that, he gets paid to help people level up ($20 an hour), and s
Tomorrow's Headline (Score:2)
Losers (Score:2)
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)
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)
too bad... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:CRAZY EDDIES SOJ STORE! (Score:2)
Re:CRAZY EDDIES SOJ STORE! (Score:2)
(any Niven fans out there?)