 |
THE RUMORS ARE TRUE:
PLAY
MONEY IS NOW A BOOK.
(And you can buy it at Amazon.)
|
Tuesday, September 30, 2003
Den of Thieves: The BBC Almost Gets It
Our friends at the Beeb have come sniffing around the neighborhood again, this time with an article about virtual theft and the law -- headlined Does Virtual Crime Need Real Justice?
We've tossed that same question around ourselves of course, both here and on Terra Nova, and if you've been keeping abreast, you won't find much in the way of news in the BBC article. The hook, such as it is, is the astonishing report from Korea a while back that of 40,000 "cybercrimes" investigated by police there this year, over half have involved online games, many of them apparently also involving theft of virtual items. Old news, perhaps, but still a wonder to behold.
Somewhat less wonderful -- though interestingly problematic -- is the article's attempt to make sense of the legal status of such thefts, and in particular of their status as thefts of real property. Here we get a quote (or, I suspect, a misquote) from my old Stanford colleague Jennifer Granick that in a few short words captures the essence of what so mystifies the uninitiated about virtual economies:
One problem she sees is that the auction sites and online stores that sell characters, money and artefacts from games are not good guides to the actual value of the goods in questions.
A player keen to advance a character they have invested hours of time to develop may be happy to splash out hundreds of pounds on a particular item, but the man in the street is unlikely to share this view.
"[This] notion is simply daft," writes Clay Shirky, all righteous indignation (and the center of a lively discussion) over at Many2Many. "Things are worth what people are willing to pay for them -- that's how markets work."
Shirky is right, of course. This is indeed how markets work -- and why to an economist the market price of UO's ultra-rare Ornament of the Magician is indistinguishable from its value.
But the market price in fact only opens a small, if pivotal, window onto what "things are worth." It tells us what two people, a buyer and a seller, agreed to be the value of the thing in question. The world outside the market might value this thing much less or not at all, but for the market's purposes -- and for the property laws that exist to serve those purposes -- the rest of the world might as well not exist.
This is why market values and public values so often diverge -- and why the gap between them can at times grow as wide as it has in the case of the virtual-goods market. It's also why, sooner or later, American law will almost certainly follow Korean law in recognizing virtual theft as real theft -- and why the rest of the world will still be scratching its head.
2:17 PM
Wednesday, September 24, 2003
Market Watch (Multimedia Edition)
Did I not promise you that Market Watch was just going to get better and better, more action-packed, more number-rific, more info-dacious all the time?
I didn't?
Oh. Well anyway I think you'll like the new charts:
Next week, perhaps, I'll offer some thoughts on what the charts might be trying to tell us. In the meantime, here's another weekly UO eBay market snapshot, based on average sales figures for the preceding 14 days:
Market sales total: $124,051 (-5,801 from last week)
Market sales total, annualized: $3.2 million
Market volume total: 3,395 sales (-42)
Exchange rate: $16.16 (+0.73) per 1 million Britannian gold pieces
Price of an 18x18 house in the new Malas region: $214.44 (+18.56)
My gold holdings: 70.7 million gp ($1,142.43)
My dollar holdings: $755.25
My profits, year to date: $1,140.84
(Numbers crunched with help from HammerTap's DeepAnalysis, an eBay market research tool.)
11:29 AM
Sunday, September 21, 2003
Bottom Line
Now, you might think, with all the self-congratulatory press releases I've been issuing here of late, that the project is going swimmingly. Think again. If this were just a bid to attract attention, I'd be breaking out the champagne, definitely. But lest we forget, this is supposed to be a business, and as such, it's a travesty.
In the three months since I began trading in earnest, I have taken in about $2400 in revenues and paid out about $850 in costs ($450 to buy accounts; $400 on eBay, PayPal, and other transaction fees). Of the remaining $1550, I'm holding about $800 in reserve, for operating funds. That leaves $750, which I have generously ceded myself by way of the occasional transfer from my PayPal account to the joint checking account. $750. Three months. Need I point out that in the United States of America in the year 2003, $250 a month is not a living wage?
Don't worry, my two-year-old is not starving, or even wanting for a new fall wardrobe. My wife remains gainfully employed, and I haven't exactly given up the day job myself (which of course is part of the reason my UO income remains so piddly). But there is more than sustenance at stake here. Indeed I have staked my honor, or something, on the claim that by next April I will be making more at this than I have ever made as a writer. And even assuming I find the courage to kick away the life support and make a fulltime effort of this, the weak cash flow thus far has made me start to wonder if the UO economy is actually capable of taking me where I aim to go.
Well, is it? Time to do some math. Let me come right out and say that it won't take a huge income to beat my best year writing: I could do it with less than $60,000. The question, then, is this: How many people actually make that much wheeling and dealing in the UO market? Does anybody?
Let's go to the charts. The DeepAnalysis program I use to crunch the weekly eBay market numbers can also break the figures down by individual seller, and while the sales numbers alone can't tell us exactly how much income the sellers are taking home, educated guesses can be made. A 20-percent profit margin seems to be a safe assumption, for instance, judging from my conversations with other sellers. Additionally, the top sellers tend to have their own online retail storefronts (UOTreasures, UOEmporium, PlayerItems) where they may do three or four times the business they do on eBay. What kind of eBay numbers do we need to see, then, to infer an income of $60,000? Well, with a 20 percent margin, total sales would have to be five times $60,000, or $300,000. And if eBay sales represent a third of that, then total eBay sales would have to be $100,000, which in turn implies a weekly sales figure of about $2000.
Who grosses over $2000 a week? According to the latest DeepAnalysis figures, only one seller, the top dog, with $8,433.81 in sales over the last 14 days. The next three sellers -- with $3,744.60, $3,662.78, and $3,318.32, respectively -- don't quite make it. But assuming these low numbers reflect the seasonal slowness of late summer, let's say these guys are in the $60K club too. That means all I have to do to meet my goal is claw my way up from 65th place into the Top 4 of the 800 or so merchants currently plying the UO trade.
Heh. And to think I was afraid this might be difficult.
1:10 PM
Wednesday, September 17, 2003
Market Watch
Another weekly UO eBay market snapshot, based on average sales figures for the preceding 14 days:
Market sales total: $129,852 (+614 from last week)
Market sales total, annualized: $3.3 million
Market volume total: 3,437 sales (+107)
Exchange rate: $15.43 (+0.20) per 1 million Britannian gold pieces
Price of an 18x18 house in the new Malas region: $195.88 (+17.73)
My gold holdings: 60.3 million gp ($930.43)
My dollar holdings: $515.99
My profits, year to date: $1,140.84
(Numbers crunched with help from HammerTap's DeepAnalysis, an eBay market research tool.)
3:27 PM
Tuesday, September 16, 2003
Castronova: Terra Nova Goes Nova
Lest I be seen to have blown my own horn here one too many times, I'll let Dr. Edward Castronova do the blowing this time:
Hey, he said it, not me.
8:49 AM
Friday, September 12, 2003
Broker! Broker! 10-4 Good Buddy
Exciting news, dear reader: As of yesterday, I am officially a member of the august Markee Dragon team of Ultima Online brokers. For those of you not in the loop, this is roughly the UO market equivalent of getting a seat at the New York Stock Exchange. The Markee Dragon brand is about as trusted as it gets in this game, and being an MD broker will both raise my profile and shore up my sense of fiscal responsibility. Not that it needed shoring up, ahem.
What it means for me otherwise I'm not entirely sure. This much at least, though: As my name and reputation rise in the UO market, it makes less and less sense to try to keep my trader persona separate from my blogger persona. Herewith, therefore, I am tearing down the Chinese wall that has hitherto divided them. I am changing my eBay ID from runic_outfitters to play*money (playmoney and play_money were both taken) and will be going by the handle PlayMoney on the Markee Dragon site as well. Likewise, I will soon have permanent links posted here to facilitate the purchase of gold and other items from me (but you can get a head start by clicking here and here).
In short, I will be leveraging the attention capital locked up in the blog side of the enterprise to drive revenue growth on the trading side, and leveraging the customer base on the trading side to drive high-value eyeballs back to the blog side.
Hmm. Not sure I have the business-speak down quite yet.
Let's just say there's going to be a lot of synergy around here. Going forward.
8:05 PM
Wednesday, September 10, 2003
Market Watch
Another weekly UO eBay market snapshot, based on average sales figures for the preceding 14 days:
Total sales: $129,238 (+12,453 from last week)
Total sales, annualized: $3.3 million
Total volume: 3,330 sales (+284)
Exchange rate: $15.23 (-0.02) per 1 million Britannian gold pieces
Price of an 18x18 house in the new Malas region: $178.15 (-3.38)
My gold holdings: 72.8 million gp ($1108.74)
My dollar holdings: $170.78
My profits, year to date: $1,140.84
(Numbers crunched with help from HammerTap's DeepAnalysis, an eBay market research tool.)
11:33 AM
Tuesday, September 09, 2003
How Much Do I Suck Again?
A little while back I was surprised to find myself pilloried, in the gentlest of ways, by the fine listeners of NPR's "The Connection." It's not that I hadn't heard the criticisms before -- buying and selling game items for real money is cheating, undermines the games' egalitarian promise, and so on. What surprised me, I guess, was the consensus. Why couldn't there have been just one person out there who wanted to call up and give me props for providing such a useful and economically stimulating service?
I think I know why, finally. It came to me the other day, in conversation with one of the major professionals in the UO market, a man who has been at it for five years and knows from being pilloried. The controversy about our line of business, he reminded me, has been there from the beginning. "It's like there's two kinds of people in the world, the ones who think this is unfair and bad for the game and all that, and the ones who think it's just fine and nobody else's business," he said. "And it's probably Democrats on the one side and Republicans on the other."
So there it was, the root of the problem: politics. Which explains why the generally left-leaning NPR crowd found me so distasteful, but in turn introduces an even more troubling question: How did a generally left-leaning person like myself end up on the wrong side of this line?
Don't get me wrong. One of the things I like about virtual worlds is the way they invite us to look at social problems afresh and follow them to whatever conclusions they demand, no matter how unsettling. (My best-known essay, A Rape in Cyberspace, was in large part the tale of how virtual reality forced me to realize that freedom of speech is not the infallible golden policy rule I had hitherto thought it to be.)
But this one is a hard pill to swallow. Me, allied with free-marketeering, business-friendly, money-talks Republicanoids? Against pro-equality, pro-little-guy, pro-gressive defenders of MMORPGs as the last, struggling refuge of utopian social experiment? Surely there is another way of looking at this. Surely there is a left-liberal analysis of the situation in which I don't look like such a putz.
I'm thinking of something along the lines of ex-Clinton economist Robert Shapiro's artful retooling of Castronova's EverQuest paper as proof of the wisdom of middle-of-the-road Clintonian economic policy. It can be just as forced and transparent, I don't care. Only not so, you know, middle-of-the-road and Clintonian. A perfect job, really, for one of you postmodernist neo-Marxist types (I know there are still a few out there).
Just don't try to tell me that eBaying UO items is, like, all subversive because it reduces the essential and at times sublime virtuality of modern capitalism to a parody involving orcs and dragons and men in tights. I already thought of that, for one thing. And besides, while true, it doesn't really solve my problem, does it.
3:22 PM
Wednesday, September 03, 2003
Market Watch
Another weekly UO eBay market snapshot, based on average sales figures for the preceding 14 days.:
Total sales: $116,785 (-275 from last week)
Total sales, annualized: $3.0 million
Total volume: 3,046 sales (+148)
Exchange rate: $15.25 (-0.51) per 1 million Britannian gold pieces
Price of an 18x18 house in the new Malas region: $181.53 (-11.90)
My gold holdings: 60.1 million gp ($916.53)
My dollar holdings: $447.18
My profits, year to date: $1,140.84
(Numbers crunched with help from HammerTap's DeepAnalysis, an eBay market research tool.)
9:49 PM
Monday, September 01, 2003
Play Money Flies Down to Rio
Next and final stop on our Summer 2003 Worldwide Whistle-Stop Publicity Tour: exotic Rio de Janeiro, where the leading daily, O Jornal do Brasil, has seen fit to profile me and my virtual trading at some length on the front page of its Internet section.
My feelings about this are decidedly mixed. It so happens that I spent a full year of my early adulthood living in Rio, reading the good old JB every morning over milky coffee and cheese bread, and to see my existence so amply documented in its pages (they even excerpted most of a 500-word Play Money entry, for God's sake) is what the good folks at Visa call priceless.
On the other hand, if I'd had my choice, all those years ago, of the accomplishment that would someday put my picture on breakfast tables all over Rio, I'm not sure I would have picked something quite so -- what's the word? -- ridiculous.
9:24 PM
|
