I didn't believe it but it's true...

[avevale_intelligencer]

People are selling EVE Online money on Ebay.

You send them real money--I've seen up to a hundred quid quoted--and in return they send you Monopoly money (in vast quantities, true, but a hundred million nothings is still nothing).

James Branch Cabell was right, and Nyronds are truly redundant.

Comments

[katyhh.livejournal.com]

That is just *so* weird ...!

[armb.livejournal.com]

In many online games, there are time consuming but fairly reliable ways to make money. You are paying for someone else's time to use them, in order to make your gaming experience more fun (not everybody finds buying a powerful character instead of working up fun, but clearly some people do).
(I recently read an online SF short story about it, with characters getting hired through an online guild to break up a competitors sweatshop, and ending up getting involved in real-life politics and unionization.)

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Oh, I see the logic, as far as it goes. We pay other people to do work for us, why not pay them to play games for us as well?

I just see very little difference between that and printing off a bunch of Anatolian zlotniks and setting up a stall in the High Street...

The story sounds interesting. Do you have a link?

[bardiclug.livejournal.com]

To me it's really a symptom of the failure of online game to actually realize the player-based economy that works. Often, gamers find themselves frustrated that they can't progress in the game, due to the lack of funds, and there seems to be no presented gameplay method for resolving the issue. Other people figure out the loopholes in the game play, and have the time to either sit and farm away, or have the specific tradeskill whatsit that everyone will pay for.

Secondly, it's a symptom of a "gear based" progression. Now, I'm not sure if EveOnline is gear based (as I've never played it) but I suspect that if there's money, there's stuff to buy.

Anyway, just my opinion. It's often less frustrating for a player to part with some cash than it is to try to run around and find loopholes in a game in order for them to be successful. The alternative is to stop playing, which is also a good choice, but many players would rather pay someone else for their time, get the cash they need, then play the game on their own terms.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Paying people to play games for you has been around for centuries -- what else is professional football and other sports? The difference with this is that after someone else has got the points / tokens / money you need you then take over and play it yourself. I don't have the time to play games (I don't have enough time to do the other things I want to do), but if I did I wouldn't want to spend a year or whatever working up to the point where I could do something interesting if I could cut that out with cash..

[armb.livejournal.com]

You can buy muscle by taking steroids instead of training for years. You can buy better oxygen capacity by paying someone to extract some of your blood and reinject it immediately before a competition instead of training at altitude for years.
(Sports like F1 racing allow/require you to spend money on performance in different ways, but not as a shortcut for doing things the legal way.)

[armb.livejournal.com]

> Do you have a link
I meant to say "and I can't remember where now", but if I do, I'll put a link here.

Aha - http://www.boingboing.net/2004/11/14/corys_latest_short_s.html was probably where I saw the link, http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2004/11/15/andas_game/index_np.html is the story.

[armb.livejournal.com]

And here's life imitating art, or something.
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/006536.html#006536

[hrrunka]

Real life imitates art, I guess...

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20030818

...or maybe art imitating real life?

I'm sure I saw another similar storyline in the same strip, but with larger sums involved...

[demoneyes.livejournal.com]

Or if you want to get truly recursive, we had at least one person in our Eve corporation who played Eve to make Eve money which he sold to get real money which he then used to buy Eve time cards which he used to pay his subscriptions to play Eve so he could make Eve money to...

People also sell rare Eve ship modules (or even ships) or experienced characters for realworld cash - totally against the game's user agreement (and they crucify anyone they catch doing it) but it does happen.

There are also rumours of people (mostly Russians) using (in-game) illegal macros to do absentee-mining and selling the ore to make in-game money which they then sell to make worthwhile amounts of real money. Again, they crack down on them if they catch them, but with 10k people on line at a time, it must be hard to get them all.

Of course one could also claim Eve money - "isk" - *is* real money - if you doubt me, go look up the list of currencies available in MS Excel... (*grin* and yes I know the actual reason it's there!)

[armb.livejournal.com]

One could claim that if it's freely tradeable for real money, then it is real money....

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Only if you can also trade it freely for a real-world cheeseburger.

[armb.livejournal.com]

If you can trade it freely for dollars or pounds, you can trade them for a cheeseburger. In fact (AIUI) the trade isn't really free, and at the moment I'd say it's probably a bit less of a real currency than various Eastern European currencies were back in the days of the Iron Curtain.

Interesting paper on the EverQuest economy: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=294828
To some extent I suspect this just shows that if you apply definitions of economic terms to things they weren't really intended to cover, you get unrealistic results. I haven't actually read the whole paper though, just seen commentary.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Or Germany between the wars. "Big Mac and fries? That'll be one million ISK, sir..."

[armb.livejournal.com]

And if, say, the company running Eve suddenly announce they will be moving onto a new game and money won't carry over, then the real world value of Eve money will collapse even faster than that.
Other interesting comparisons might be mining company tokens that can only be spent in the company store which is the only store in town, and cigarettes in prisons.

If I'm redundant ....

[soren-nyrond.livejournal.com]

.... where's my dole cheque, My Captain ?

Signed
Soren, your Lieutenant and binnacle-polisher.

Re: If I'm redundant ....

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Don't look at me, I'm in the same boat. Ask the humans...