Real-Money Trade: It's Like Asian She-Boy Prositutes, Only Online
Posted on
Friday, October 20, 2006
by Gary A. Ballard
If you haven't seen this article, you should. It's another mainstream press report about RMT, the practice of purchasing MMOG items with real-world dollars (or your local currency of choice). This is one of my favorite subjects, in the same way that yearly backdoor physical exams are my most cherished memory of yearly doctor visits.
It's real simple. The article estimates that the actual business of RMT is a $900 million (that's million) a year industry, and it's being run on the backs of sweatshop-level geek labor, mainly to support the MMOG habits of time-starved Western gamers. Kind of like how Wal-Mart supports are addiction to cheap, throwaway doodads made with 5-cent a week Asian labor. I'm all for the making of money. Money lets me eat, play X-Box games and live in a house as opposed to the finest in corrugated carboard.
But MMOG's are not the places to make money, they are the places to have fun with other like-minded people. And just like the web, they have been targeted by the most vile set of self-interested, lazy, money-grubbing shitheels since the dot.com bust. MMOG's are the next great rape-ready resource that requires little actual effort to rape, especially if you can rope in a Red Army of willing Chinese teenagers to handle the details.
I want my MMOG's to be places I can escape for a little while. I don't want to enter an MMOG awash with the greasy stench of greed gone unchecked, bombarded left and right with the idea that I must spend my money to keep up with the Joneses. I don't want to feel like I'm prostituting a whole roomful of young men in order to have fun in an MMOG. And I sure don't want MMOG's to feel like the banner-filled sleazepits that earmarked some of the early Internet attempts to cash in on porn, with crude come-ons promising the best gold I ever got wetly slapping against my cheek.
I want one, just one of these goddamn MMOG developers to say "Enough!" To draw a line in the sand and say, "I've taken all I can an' I canna take nae more!" I want one of them to have the balls to sue the piss out of these leeches, to finally codify once and for all in American courts the boundaries of virtual property, for better or worse. Of course, the leader of the industry, the company with the most subscribers and a revenue approaching small nations GDP, Blizzard, should be the one to do so. At the present, they are the ones most affected by it because they have the most people prone to it. They won't, because they don't have to lift a finger and they'll make money. But as the industry leader (in dollars if not originality), they should be out in front, setting examples. They won't, but they should be.
Just like SOE abdicated this responsibility when they were the leader, Blizzard will to. They'll leave it to someone with fewer resources and more to lose, someone whose risk is greater. They should be doing it now, because the longer they wait, the less likely they'll be able to have an effective legal argument for shutting down non-approved RMT operations when and if they ever try their own RMT operation.
I have no problem with RMT if it's profiting the developer, because the developer will reap the benefit but will also have to assume responsibility for frauds, failures and the like. But the leeching has got to stop, or MMOG's will resemble the worst parts of the Vegas strip, flashy lights, cheap come-ons and empty wallet hangovers.
It's real simple. The article estimates that the actual business of RMT is a $900 million (that's million) a year industry, and it's being run on the backs of sweatshop-level geek labor, mainly to support the MMOG habits of time-starved Western gamers. Kind of like how Wal-Mart supports are addiction to cheap, throwaway doodads made with 5-cent a week Asian labor. I'm all for the making of money. Money lets me eat, play X-Box games and live in a house as opposed to the finest in corrugated carboard.
But MMOG's are not the places to make money, they are the places to have fun with other like-minded people. And just like the web, they have been targeted by the most vile set of self-interested, lazy, money-grubbing shitheels since the dot.com bust. MMOG's are the next great rape-ready resource that requires little actual effort to rape, especially if you can rope in a Red Army of willing Chinese teenagers to handle the details.
I want my MMOG's to be places I can escape for a little while. I don't want to enter an MMOG awash with the greasy stench of greed gone unchecked, bombarded left and right with the idea that I must spend my money to keep up with the Joneses. I don't want to feel like I'm prostituting a whole roomful of young men in order to have fun in an MMOG. And I sure don't want MMOG's to feel like the banner-filled sleazepits that earmarked some of the early Internet attempts to cash in on porn, with crude come-ons promising the best gold I ever got wetly slapping against my cheek.
I want one, just one of these goddamn MMOG developers to say "Enough!" To draw a line in the sand and say, "I've taken all I can an' I canna take nae more!" I want one of them to have the balls to sue the piss out of these leeches, to finally codify once and for all in American courts the boundaries of virtual property, for better or worse. Of course, the leader of the industry, the company with the most subscribers and a revenue approaching small nations GDP, Blizzard, should be the one to do so. At the present, they are the ones most affected by it because they have the most people prone to it. They won't, because they don't have to lift a finger and they'll make money. But as the industry leader (in dollars if not originality), they should be out in front, setting examples. They won't, but they should be.
Just like SOE abdicated this responsibility when they were the leader, Blizzard will to. They'll leave it to someone with fewer resources and more to lose, someone whose risk is greater. They should be doing it now, because the longer they wait, the less likely they'll be able to have an effective legal argument for shutting down non-approved RMT operations when and if they ever try their own RMT operation.
I have no problem with RMT if it's profiting the developer, because the developer will reap the benefit but will also have to assume responsibility for frauds, failures and the like. But the leeching has got to stop, or MMOG's will resemble the worst parts of the Vegas strip, flashy lights, cheap come-ons and empty wallet hangovers.
posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 1:19 PM
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