morction.com::GRex - Gold mattters

It’s inevitable, more MMORPGs are gonna show up, more game money is gonna change hands and more poor gamers will cry to their moms.

But first, how do you change the pile of WoW gold on your hand into the same valuable amount of Star Wars Galaxies credit? Simple, it’s called US dollar.

You sell your WoW gold for so much dollars, and use the same dollars to buy however much SWG credit it can buy.

The problem is, the moment real cash is exchanged, the purist and game publishers will point their fingers at you, shed tears and look at their mommies.

Secondly, if you’ve spent 2 years effort turning filthy rich in your own game server, and by the first day of the 3rd year the game server got nuked by Iranian missiles, your filth goes down with it too.

Basically, your game master is calling shots over your game money (which you or someone else earned through blood and sweat) like your mother was treating you when you were holding coins as a 5-year old. Ok, I’m gonna stop with the mommy issue here.

The point is, your game masters can get hold of any precious sword or armor of yours coz they own the ‘land’, that’s still fair. But if he get to control your bloody and sweaty money too, its means you’ve lost all sense of control over your destiny.

So my question of the day is, what if there is a unified game currency?

One single currency to be used over every MMORPG in existence, effectively eliminating the WoW gold to USD to SWG credit.

You know this, we’ve seen this before, it’s called EURO.

Would this do the whole industry any good?

Would it bring upon new respect from the world community?

Who would and should run the show for this?

I don’t pretend the entire consequences and implications right now. But I wanna put it out here, hoping one of you would put it out to everybody else that matter.

I’ve talked about why sponsoring guilds make sense, especially for gold/credit/platinum sellers and power-levellers. Here’s what the guilds can do for sponsors in return.

1. Guild name co-branding. Example: Acmedotcom Bastard-Clan.
2. Common colors schemes. All members should wear the same combination of colors that match the sponsor’s.
3. Attach sponsor’s brand in all out-game communications. Active guilds are frequently in touch with the rest of the game community on the web too. Guilds can attach sponsor’s brand in members’ signatures.
4. Ad placement in guild’s homepage. The homepage often facilitate members’ communications and interactions with the public. Ad placements with a prominent guild targets the exact right audience.
5. Logo co-branding. If the MMORPG lets guild attach custom logo, design an amalgamated logo of the guild and sponsor.

… and now your imagination takes over.

By now it looks pretty obvious to me. Why not have gold sellers sponsor a guild or two?

Everytime a guild is out there to raid a town or start a turf war, they carry with them a brand. Here’s why it needs to be done.

Again, it works for every MMORPG currencies. WoW gold is my short way of referring to them all.

1. Gold sellers need good PR. Justified or not, the young and ‘pure’ gamers have a crooked view of gold farmers.
2. Guilds have all the reason to strengthen their arsenal. Nothing sounds sweeter than free gold.
3. A kick-ass guild breeds enemies. Enemies wanna one up on them, and they gonna to do whatever it takes to out-armor the adversary. For any cheap amount of gold, more guilds are willing to carry a brand and bust their ass out there.
4. Gold sellers need to associate themselves as hero-makers, not just the stereotypical noobs.
5. Get the corporate sponsorship snowballing. Gamers are not your only gold buyers. Get the outside corporate sponsors into the action, they sponsor the guild and sellers supply the gold.

In the next post, I’m gonna talk about how a guild displays a brand.

I just met Amanda over a lunch date yesterday. This is the second time I met her. She got a Jolie-like lip, commercial-like hair, and attitude of a model doing catwalk.

Amanda was the kinda girl that have you thinking she got strong opinions. At one point, she told me something typical but interesting.

She recounted stories of her past dates and how she made it so hard for guys to even talk to her. Amanda has a very specific configuration of how a man should behave, look and move like. Everything that doesn’t comply with that is out. Everything I’m not.

In truth, her opinions are nothing more than mashed up recitals from desperate beauty magazines. I did the right thing by not making another date after getting out of her bed that same night.

This is where young and ‘pure’ MMORPG have in common with Amanda. You know, the kind that can’t stand you for buying WoW gold (or any game currency, I’m game neutral).

Here’s 5 reasons why some gamers can’t handle the fact that you levelled up by spending real cash:

1. They have a specific ideal of how a game should be played. Anything that’s not with their style are outsiders. Notice the racists and uptight Englishmen.
2. They think gold farmers and buyers are causing inflation. Wrong, game developers are causing inflation.
3. They’ve worked hard all their lifes. Hard and mundane work is part their ideals of gameplay and success. I was in the same doom loop too. Seeing others succeeding with lesser work feels like breaking their internal law and validating their own failure.

They associate business and fun as mortal enemies. Crackers like Enron didn’t help, but entrepreneurship is what builds great civilizations.

5. When a game gets deep enough, it mirrors their own money problem and magnifies it. Their are watching their own eventual bankcruptcy 10 years down the road playing right in front of them.

I call them ‘young’ gamers for the fact that these reasons are issues that born out of their immaturity.

Just like Amanda, stuck up girls are overrated. It’s usually the easygoers who have the most fun.

Matt was at it again. He’s broke-ass, he can’t respond to phone messages coz he ran out outta credit. I’m pretty sure his car loan is 2 months overdue too.

I came in the door finding him in WoW, itching to provoke idle players. I felt like pulling the plug on his router, but resisted coz the window is right in front of him and it’s four storeys high.

It’s hard to start a conversation when the man is self-absorbed. Like you’d worried that raising your voice would forever eradicate his spirit and kill him. “You gotta get yourself together man.” I said. He’s not sure if I’m referring to his skill levelling situation or gaming habit.

“Dude, for all the time you’ve gone into building your characters, you better get something out of it other than self-gratification.” He almost wanted to reply that he got something out of it, than registered “self-gratification” two seconds later.

“How many characters going, four?” I asked. “Five. I just had another new one so I can form a super guild.” Matt said. I didn’t pretend I understand what he said either.

“Look, your characters are pretty pumped up. They’re worth quite a lot. Why don’t you put them up for sale.” For a second, the thought of pimp daddy reflected to my mind.

“Yer kidding me… who’d want my characters? Besides, they are like part of me.” Matt said.

“It don’t work that way. New characters are created every second. Greatly-built characters are like well-managed companies, there ain’t many of them around.” I explained.

I went on: “This thing you do with them, it’s beyond power levelling people can do. The way you’ve designed and bred them, it’s a work of art.”

And I piss off people who take themselves a bit too seriously. “Look, you used to study stock didn’t you. What did they teach you about not being emotional about your stocks? This is just a game. It can be fun, or it can be your business. For the amount of time you dump into it, you might as turn it into a freaking business.”

“Think of your character like a custom-made hotrod. Be proud to put it out there. If you got a superstar on your hand, everybody’d wanna own it. Like everybody wanna play James Bond, know what I mean?”

Matt stared at his screen blankly. I wasn’t sure if he got me, but there’s a glimpse of hope.

I got a gas station near my crib and I hate them. It’s always crowded, the workers are jerks, their washroom stinks, and I’ve got up to 2,400 of their loyalty points. Somehow when I can’t let go of something, it inevitably deteriorates.

It gets better. Everytime I fill up my tank, I have a hunch that I won’t have enough gas to get to the next gas station.

Surely dimishing oil supply is very real, that’s genuine scarcity.

Precious magic rune is not, that’s artificial scarcity.

Matt always tell me there’s only one sword from that particular server. To my ear that sounds the same as Microsoft telling me there’s only one copy of Windows, hence that’s gonna cost me my leg.

Guess what, they are actually pretty close. By limiting the amount of licenses of Windows, the software turns about to be limited in amount.

And there plenty of things that are in limited amount in MMORPG, it’s all by design so I’d fight Matt and everybody else for it. Remember, that’s supposed to be fun. Well, it turn out the more hardworking guys can barely keep up with the cash-working ones.

Matt wanted to get his hand on a blaster, a pretty standard upscale model. He bust his ass for three straight nights, went to the store and found out he ain’t got enough money for the blaster. The price had gone up since he first checked.

It turns more people are credit-rich now. How? Matt has been hard working, and he ain’t anywhere near rich. Commercialization is florishing, more people are ‘born’ into the game rich. They rush to get more blasters, the stores raise prices so much they are planning for in-game IPO.

The working-hard (I mean hardworking) gamers blame the inflation on the farmers. They want farmers burnt to death. The slightly smarter working-harder blame it on the gold-buyers for splurging demand.

Again, that is how it sounds to me: “Oil prices goes up, we have Exxon-Mobil stop digging oil. If nobody can buy oil, we’d all spent our living days digging them ourselves, everybody is levelled and there won’t be inflation. So I’d like to thank the Academy for giving this award.”

Right.

Oil inflate coz more people are spending, and oil is truly running out. Blasters inflate coz more people are spending, but they ain’t really running out.

So who the hell cooked up this artificial scarcity and ruin it for the working-harder?

Game makers are way more powerful than the oil cartel. The cartel drill, the game makers click.

Nothing spoils a game like a loyal girlfriend does. Now I see why they don’t play: because they are COMPETING with the games… for my attention.

I dunno when she developed this habit. A week ago, she had her head up my shoulder while I was deep immersed in hunting the map. Right when I was about to nail a dude, she said ironic curiosity “Is this that ogre bitch again?”

“What ogre bitch, bitch?” She can’t handle an ogre, how she gonna put up with my future mistresses?

That totally knocked me outta my trance. You don’t just say shit to a possessed person like you do to your bed partner.

As a matter of fact, it goes further than my attention. She’s competing for my commitment.

That’s a problem and I’m gonna tell you why, by stealing this articulation from Neil Strauss. I don’t have a problem with commitment, I have problem with giving up the free-wheeling, the swingings, basically all the crazy shit that I’ve missed out doing on my teenage years. Life is a series of pain. Choose one thing, you miss out another. So I’ve made a call, and I chose fun and games.

That same night I disarmed her (after disarming the ‘ogre bitch’) by going down on her. I coulda gain a coupla levels and regain the respect of my guild mates. But if drilling is the price for keeping the bitch quiet (well… not that quiet), so be it.

She ain’t gonna stop here. Chinese saying goes: “A problem that’s solvable with money is not a problem.” This, is not one of them.

Interestingly, a flash of thought came to my mind while drilling her. It turns out gold digging is a lot like commitment. You choose commitment, and you let go of free-wheeling. You wanna go legit and dig more gold, and you let go of the fun the game too.

Digging gold to level myself up is in fact a commitment to mundance existence. That’s not what I play for. I play for the thrill, to learn new stuffs, to see new things. If it’s a gold digging job, I better paid for doing it.

As much as we hate to admit it, life is much more interesting when you live rich. It’s not the filth of money, it’s the opportunity it can buy to live up to your potential.

Now that sounds like a problem I can solve with money.