March 2002: It's My Time and I'll Sell if I Want To by Gavin Carter
A fan response to auction controversy surrounding Dark Age of Camelot: "I have no formal legal training, however, and will not make an exhaustive review of the lawsuit's legal issues. Instead, I want to put forth reasons why it would be beneficial for Mythic to allow out-of-game sales of characters and other properties to continue instead of restricting them, as they have done with Blacksnow."
How much is your time worth? Who owns your time? Currently, the massively multiplayer gaming scene is grappling with similar questions. Just last month, Blacksnow Interactive, a company specializing in the sale of Dark Age of Camelot and Anarchy Online items for real world money, sued Camelot creator Mythic Entertainment over alleged attempts to stop out-of-game item sales using real-world currency. Blacksnow claims Mythic is engaging in monopolistic practices that violate federal antitrust statutes by blocking their company�fs activities. After Blacksnow announced the suit, online communities flared in heated debates. Everyone has an opinion, yet Mythic remains intent on running their virtual world with an iron fist. Despite this, MMOG players largely seem to be vilifying Blacksnow, blaming them for almost every problem the massively multiplayer scene has ever had. Their anger should be directed elsewhere. Gamers should take Mythic and other MMOG producers to task for forcing strict play standards on supposedly free-form products and engaging in practices that ultimately harm both the community and their own bottom line.
First, a disclaimer: Since Blacksnow initiated legal action against Mythic, this issue is no longer another opinion war, such as the discussions about class or race balance that routinely appear on both Sony and Mythic�fs forums. Blacksnow has charged Mythic with committing a crime, and as long as they pursue the issue, only the legal wrangling of courts and lawyers will bring about a conclusion. I have no formal legal training, however, and will not make an exhaustive review of the lawsuit�fs legal issues. Instead, I want to put forth reasons why it would be beneficial for Mythic to allow out-of-game sales of characters and other properties to continue instead of restricting them, as they have done with Blacksnow.
Blacksnow is a small California-based company made up of hardcore MMOG fans. In the early days of Ultima Online and EverQuest, the first two widely accepted massively multiplayer titles, eBay and other online auction sites were regularly filled with items and accounts from both. In fact, eBay is still filled with auctions covering every major MMOG. Many of the items being offered are rare or extremely high-powered, and sell for grand sums of money. A personal friend once sold his level 50 EverQuest ranger -- the highest obtainable level at the time -- for $1,500. Blacksnow saw a business opportunity in these dealings. Upon the release of Camelot, they set up a website where players could pay for a particular item using a credit card, and a Blacksnow representative would meet them online to deliver it. In effect, the customer was trading money for time. Most of the items people are willing to pay for require hours of in-game activities, such as camping, where a player sits in one spot awaiting a specific creature or event. Paying for the item circumvents the wait. Mythic perceived a problem and intervened with a cease and desist order for Blacksnow, halting their sales.
But why shouldn�ft a person be allowed to sell the products of his or her time? It happens all around us every day. Two elements determine the price of any product: the cost of the materials and the charge for the labor required to create it. When viewed in this fashion, outlawing the sale of non-illegal products of a person's time does not make sense. Mythic wants you to believe they own your character and all of his or her items simply because your avatar exists on their servers. As a player who cherishes free-form gameplay, I�fm not keen on the notion that someone is laying legal claim to what I do with my time. I purchased Camelot from Mythic and have put considerable time into my character; if I wish to earn a profit, they should not seek to stop me. Mythic cannot claim ownership of my time.
At the center of this debate is the question of ownership of property, items and characters in MMOGs. Too often, the meaning of ownership is misconstrued. By moving to stop secondary sales, Mythic is claiming your virtual property legally belongs to them. Consequently, they can force you to use the property however they see fit. Their justification is that you are paying your monthly fee to "rent" the property. This bizarre argument baffles me. For starters, players have already paid their one-time fee to acquire the install disc, which for most titles costs as much as standard commercial releases. Secondly, the issue of ownership is immaterial. Whether players like it or not, Mythic exerts dominion over the characters and items of Camelot�fs world, meaning the developers can alter or delete anything. Thus, when selling an item outside of the game world, one is merely transferring the right to use the particular object or character to another person. Mythic still retains ownership -- and absolute power -- over their virtual world and everything in it no matter who�fs paying the monthly rental fee. This is a case about rights, not ownership. Mythic is trampling our rights as gamers, and so far we are allowing it, and even welcoming it in some cases.
The debate over gamers' rights to virtual property can be looked at from two perspectives. First, Mythic believes the practice is wrong, as evidenced by their attempts to halt it. The publisher takes this view because it runs a business based on the time other people invest in them. The longer people play Camelot, the more money Mythic earns. Purchasing an item second-hand represents a circumvention of the time-based system, and ostensibly costs Mythic revenue. The second way of looking at this issue is through the eyes of gamers who purchase secondhand items. Casual users rarely enjoy MMOGs, as a substantial amount of time is spent leveling up characters. The best EverQuest players take a full month of playing time to get their characters from start to level 50 and higher. That�fs not a month of eight-hour workdays, either; it�fs literally a month of 24-hour days logged into the world of Norrath. Who�fs right? The gamer, because everyone has a right to use their time and money as they see fit.
Sales of virtual property doesn't harm Mythic as much as they would claim. By taking a narrow approach to the issue, Mythic is ignoring the potential benefits of allowing character and item sales. The most obvious is the economic benefit of a continued account. Assume a girl wants to quit Camelot. Before Mythic began halting player auctions, she had two choices. First, she could uninstall Camelot, cancel her subscription and put the disc on her shelf to collect dust. A more attractive option would be to put the character she has poured time into up for public auction or sale. Doing so would continue to generate revenue for Mythic. Mythic would surely rather keep on earning an account�fs monthly fee than see it canceled. Some say the sale of an account dodges the cost of buying the installation CD, a practice in which all MMOGs currently engage. Yet Mythic earns more from the 100,000+ checks coming in every month than from the one-time revenue generated by CD sales.
Another reason Mythic should allow secondhand sales is how they benefit purchasers. Most current massively multiplayer online titles are grounded in the principle that gamers want to feel powerful and see cool stuff; thus, they start you off weak and tell you to go forth and kill to become more powerful. Soon, new weapons, spells, exotic locations and meaner monsters become available. The problem is people have different amounts of time to devote to playing online. A working mother who�fs an EverQuest fan is going to spend less time online than a seventh grader out of school for summer. To ensure all subscribers have the incentive to keep their monthly checks flowing, progress is quick in the beginning, but slows down exponentially in the middle before coming to a near standstill once the player reaches the highest echelons of advancement. The slowdown is seemingly made bearable by the promise of seeing more cool stuff in the future, but in reality, that slowdown kills off many players. Those who can only devote a few hours each week to playing find the day-to-day gameplay monotonous during the midsection. Furthermore, they also find those who spend entire days online easily eclipse them in terms of power and experience. These players see all the cool stuff in screenshots posted on spoiler sites, hear tales from those with more time and often cancel their subscription in discouragement.
The discrepancy between users with and without time can potentially harm more than the subscription base; the game�fs social structures also can be damaged. MMOGs offer benefits, frequently in the form of quicker advancement, for players who form guilds. Many guilds consist of groups of real-life friends who wish to adventure together. Oftentimes, a player with less time than the others in his group can fall behind, making it more difficult for him to effectively play with his guild. The guild doesn't want to spend its time worrying about lower level characters, so the player becomes a burden. Usually, he either quits or becomes an antisocial solo player who�fs not above kill-stealing and engaging in other practices that offer quicker advancement, but negatively impact the rest of the server population. I have personal experience in this area. My EverQuest guild was rocketing past me, lessening the enjoyment I got out of playing. Although I purchased EverQuest to play with my friends in our guild, our sessions were spent leveling me up so I could participate. It never happened; I cancelled my subscription. Then I sold my character for $50 on eBay.
Allowing out-of-game sales both helps players who want a good experience, but don�ft have an endless reservoir of free time, and resolves potential threats to the title�fs social structure. Users without a lot of time can circumvent the leveling process and immediately jump to the cool stuff that would otherwise elude them. Players who fall behind their guild can augment themselves by purchasing potent items or even a more powerful character. In the end, subscribers would retain more accounts, resulting in higher user satisfaction and a stronger social structure for guild actions like realm vs. realm combat in Camelot. Therefore, out-of-game sales provide a better experience for both the customer and the software company. I will now address the most obvious counter-arguments to the issue at hand.
The rebuttal most often used to defend Mythic is that the activities of Blacksnow are illegal because they�fre forbidden in Camelot�fs End User License Agreement (EULA), which players must accept before installing the title. Mythic's supporters claim the EULA is a binding legal contract that Blacksnow violated by selling items for financial gain. To say the least, the legality of EULAs is a gray area. If you take every statement in every EULA as gospel, then you believe Microsoft should have full access to your computer. You also have never played a game in a cyber-café or other LAN center, since that violates the EULAs of most entertainment software. A EULA could stipulate that a software product can only be used while standing on one�fs head and chewing bubble gum, and a number of people would not only do so, but also point a finger at those who refused. Former AVault writer Bruce Rolston wrote an exhaustive article detailing the questionable practices of game developers using EULAs to strip consumers of their rights. While the basic tenants of most EULAs have good intentions such as combating piracy, software companies refuse to stop there, using EULAs as a way of shielding themselves from any liability. License agreements have been successfully challenged in court; thus Mythic and its supporters should not so readily wave around Camelot�fs agreement.
Another argument against the sale of items and characters is that it inspires anti-social behavior. Those seeking powerful items and quick leveling are not above kill-stealing, Mythic's supporters say. While this may be true, mischievous actions can only be indirectly linked to sales of virtual property. People of all kinds play MMOGs, and many who wish to make a profit surely would steal a few kills from friendlier players to advance their goals. However, it's just as plausible that a kill-stealer is being anti-social for personal advancement; it can't be assumed that everyone who steals other people�fs kills does so for financial gain. The practice of taking what is rightfully someone else�fs has existed long before arguments over online property rights cropped up. In addition, the practice of kill-stealing can be addressed by innovative programming techniques on the part of the developers. In fact, Mythic has some of the most unique ways of dealing with kill-stealing, including distributing quest items to everyone in a group and other methods of reward balancing.
Those who maintain a ruling in Blacksnow's favor would create numerous imitator companies are ignoring the economics. A recent Associated Press article [read it] quoted a 16-year-old who sold his EverQuest character for $600 on eBay. He estimated he spent a total of 27 days working on his character. Assuming he�fs referring to the in-game clock that tracks the time spent with characters, that�fs 648 hours. Dividing his payoff by the number of hours he spent nurturing his character results in an earnings ratio of less than 93 cents an hour. Even if we assume he only worked on his character for four hours on each of those 27 days, the earnings ratio comes out to $5.56 per hour, which is little more than minimum wage. These aren�ft numbers on which to build a successful business. Perhaps it would work as a side project in spare time, but minimum wage is generally not a sum people are going to squabble over so much it becomes a problem for the larger server population. Perhaps the strongest argument in Blacksnow's favor is that virtual property sales continue to rise for nearly every MMOG on the market, and not a single major incident has risen from the activity before this lawsuit reared its head.
Reports emerged not long ago alleging members of Blacksnow used cheats and hacks to further their financial schemes. Mythic�fs supporters have seized on this, saying involving real-world money in Camelot�fs economic system encourages rampant cheating. I�fm not advocating cheating nor taking the side of Blacksnow. If they cheated or hacked, the offending members should be rooted out and banned from the game, and legal action should be pursued against them. Admittedly, out-of-game sales do provide an incentive for cheaters and hackers. Conversely, it isn�ft a good reason to justify total banishment of such transactions. Much like anti-social behavior, cheating will happen regardless of any financial gain involved. Software developers must take every precaution to prevent cheaters, whether it involves extending development time, hiring dedicated anti-cheating staff or other practices. Insofar as their public relations representatives can be believed, MMOG developers have an excellent track record at catching cheaters. Many developers believe cheating is a problem that can be detected and solved. Swedish-based developer MindArk is so confident they can defeat cheaters in their upcoming title, Project Entropia, they�fre basing part of the game�fs economic system on real-world money. This means you are free to, and even encouraged to, buy and sell items with your own hard earned cash through MindArk�fs official channels. MindArk is devoting enormous development resources to preventing cheats and hacks, and plans to have full-time staff on the same task even after the game is released. Cheat prevention can happen, and must happen, whether or not out-of-game sales are allowed to continue.
The Firing Squad gaming website once took up the question of EULAs in an editorial calling gamers "spineless" and comparing them to a rattlesnake rendered harmless by a charmer. The metaphor is a perfect fit. Mythic has charmed its customers into submission through brute force tactics, and very few have stood up to complain. Gamers should be concerned that Mythic is seeking to undermine the consumer's right to their own time. Blacksnow's case is not just about the right to sell virtual property for real money; it�fs also about how companies can dictate the way you spend your time. As Blacksnow's director of sales, Lee Caldwell, puts it, �gWhat it comes down to is, does a player have rights to his time, or does Mythic own that player�fs time?�h Accepting this behavior from Mythic and other MMOG developers simply opens the door for more restrictive and inequitable practices on the part of software publishers. Don't take this sitting down. Stand up, be counted, and show Mythic and other companies that they can't placidly walk all over your rights without a fight.
Posted by justin at October 27, 2002 04:38 PM