Computer games, I love 'em & hate 'em. They are one of the greatest sources of joy & grief for me. Some may call that sad but it's no more-so than someone who can lose themselves in a good book or movie.
Sometimes they can provide some interesting insight though.
Today's blog is all bout greed. Greed is the single most important driving factor in our capitalist society. Greed is exhonerated, we applaud those who have managed to make their millions. We idolise them on TV & in magazines. We rate them on a world's richest league table. We do the same with companies.
This week I was hoping to enjoy a new game by the name of Diablo III. It is made by Blizzard, they of World of Warcraft. You may have seen the TV ads with Chuck Norris & Mr T. This game is unremarkable in almost every way, it's a simple concept and simple gameplay. The graphics aren't ground-breaking and the story is... nothing to write home about.
It has one unusual feature that sets it apart however. Every item in the game is tradeable on an 'auction house'. Things can be bought & sold on this auction house for in-game currency but also for real money.
This has a number of effects on the game but let me first explain with an example. I put an item up on the RMAH (Real Money Auction house) for £10 and someone buys it. I can choose to allow that money to go to my Battle.net Balance or to Paypal (some countries don't have the Paypal option).
Great? I can make money by playing a game right? Well... sorta...
So, someone bought my £10 item. Instantly the lsit fee goes to Blizzard, it's $1 in the US, I'm expecting 75p-ish here so I get £9.25 right? Well, no. Blizzard now takes a 15% cut of the original sale amount. So, £7.75 then.
Here's the really awful catch, That £7.75 goes into my battle.net account which I can never access in the real world. So, my real-world money has become another in-game currency essentially.
I can of course choose to recieve this via Paypal in which case Blizzard's cut goes up to 30% so my £10 sale leaves me with £6.25 and Blizzard have just made £3.75 from some poor soul.
Now I'm not against someone making money, that's what businesses do, I do have to object with this because of the following...
You MUST play on their servers. You may have heard that many people who just paid £30-ish for a new game weren't able to play it because the servers couldn't cope with the amount of players.
This would be understandable in an MMOG (Massively-Multiplayer Online Game) but this is a game that many will play single-player. Even if you're on your own you MUST connect and stay connected to their servers.
The reason for this is that if the game generated the loot that players receive client-side (on the player's computer) then there is a good chance that eventually someone would work out how to create non-legit items. This happened with a great game called Borderlands (but wasn't hindered because it didn't need to keep the reins tightly held)
This would render the RMAH useless because people could simply make their own uber items if they were so-inclined and would also destroy the motivating feature of the game, that is, gathering loot.
So why not simply allow people to play in a single-player environment with characters that can't be transferred over to the multiplayer environment? Simple, because that is potential money lost. It would make these players the digital equivalent of window shoppers. Never mind that they have already shelled out £30 for a game that has no new features on top of Diablo II, released in 2000.
So, the issue we are left with is a game that nobody can play (because the servers can't cope) and a company that thus isn't making money from it's schemes, all because of greed.
A shame really because the little bit I have managed to play thus far is actually a lot of fun. I'm sure the servers will cope eventually once the amount of players drops slightly (or Blizzard actually put some of the crazy amounts of money they make from WoW subscribers into more authentication servers). I'll just be opting out of using the RMAH & enjoying playing this with some mates.
So, greed making everything worse for everyone else...? Where have seen that before?
Sometimes they can provide some interesting insight though.
Today's blog is all bout greed. Greed is the single most important driving factor in our capitalist society. Greed is exhonerated, we applaud those who have managed to make their millions. We idolise them on TV & in magazines. We rate them on a world's richest league table. We do the same with companies.
This week I was hoping to enjoy a new game by the name of Diablo III. It is made by Blizzard, they of World of Warcraft. You may have seen the TV ads with Chuck Norris & Mr T. This game is unremarkable in almost every way, it's a simple concept and simple gameplay. The graphics aren't ground-breaking and the story is... nothing to write home about.
It has one unusual feature that sets it apart however. Every item in the game is tradeable on an 'auction house'. Things can be bought & sold on this auction house for in-game currency but also for real money.
This has a number of effects on the game but let me first explain with an example. I put an item up on the RMAH (Real Money Auction house) for £10 and someone buys it. I can choose to allow that money to go to my Battle.net Balance or to Paypal (some countries don't have the Paypal option).
Great? I can make money by playing a game right? Well... sorta...
So, someone bought my £10 item. Instantly the lsit fee goes to Blizzard, it's $1 in the US, I'm expecting 75p-ish here so I get £9.25 right? Well, no. Blizzard now takes a 15% cut of the original sale amount. So, £7.75 then.
Here's the really awful catch, That £7.75 goes into my battle.net account which I can never access in the real world. So, my real-world money has become another in-game currency essentially.
I can of course choose to recieve this via Paypal in which case Blizzard's cut goes up to 30% so my £10 sale leaves me with £6.25 and Blizzard have just made £3.75 from some poor soul.
Now I'm not against someone making money, that's what businesses do, I do have to object with this because of the following...
You MUST play on their servers. You may have heard that many people who just paid £30-ish for a new game weren't able to play it because the servers couldn't cope with the amount of players.
This would be understandable in an MMOG (Massively-Multiplayer Online Game) but this is a game that many will play single-player. Even if you're on your own you MUST connect and stay connected to their servers.
The reason for this is that if the game generated the loot that players receive client-side (on the player's computer) then there is a good chance that eventually someone would work out how to create non-legit items. This happened with a great game called Borderlands (but wasn't hindered because it didn't need to keep the reins tightly held)
This would render the RMAH useless because people could simply make their own uber items if they were so-inclined and would also destroy the motivating feature of the game, that is, gathering loot.
So why not simply allow people to play in a single-player environment with characters that can't be transferred over to the multiplayer environment? Simple, because that is potential money lost. It would make these players the digital equivalent of window shoppers. Never mind that they have already shelled out £30 for a game that has no new features on top of Diablo II, released in 2000.
So, the issue we are left with is a game that nobody can play (because the servers can't cope) and a company that thus isn't making money from it's schemes, all because of greed.
A shame really because the little bit I have managed to play thus far is actually a lot of fun. I'm sure the servers will cope eventually once the amount of players drops slightly (or Blizzard actually put some of the crazy amounts of money they make from WoW subscribers into more authentication servers). I'll just be opting out of using the RMAH & enjoying playing this with some mates.
So, greed making everything worse for everyone else...? Where have seen that before?
