Castronova explored the Everquest in terms of economic values. A lot of people pay certain amount of money to participate in the game. The price of subscription varies according to where they live. Castronova decided to do some researches on the economy that emerged in Norrath. Norrath has market conditions based on the player’s activities.
When starting the Norrath, players choose avatar’s abilities such as strength, agility. This shows that all players at the starting point have equal resources. The more effort the player make, the more valuable items player can earn in the Norrath. a lot of players participated in trading with other avatars. the economy in Norrath change in response to how players trade with others. The price also depends on the demands of players like real world economy. In the book, he explained the basic conditions by mentioning three basic problems below.
“First, Norrath must be entertaining. To be entertaining, it must be challenging. To be challenging, valuable items must be hard to get. Second, Norrath must be fair, in the sense that avatars who make similar efforts and take similar risks at similar levels should get similar rewards. A general decline in prize item prices means that later-arriving cohorts of avatars get higher rewards for their efforts than early-arriving avatars. Third, Norrath must provide avatars with interesting activities and give them the proper incentives to undertake them”. (Castronova, pg. 51)
I agree with writer’s opinion. Valuable items must be hard to get. If most of players have the same items, there are no such valuable or special items since everyone has it. So, putting the idea of valuable aspect into certain items must be done by exertion of players, and then players might feel that the items are luxurious, and precious enough to buy it. The game should be fair. The efforts that players make to get valuable items from certain monsters should be rewarded fairly. If not, the economy based on trading system will be collapsing. Third, as game itself, game must offer some interesting motivation that encourages players to get involved in various activities within games such as exchange of items, getting money, and exploring.
The most interesting of the reading was that there is an invisible hand in game market or economy. With well-made market, and systems with conditions mentioned above, the game itself automatically will meet the demands of players as equilibrium point.
Here’s my question, have you ever seen some players who made money from game? or have you ever made money from game?
I have seen many people buying items, characters, and skills from other players with actual money. When Lineage, online role playing game, was popular in Korea, people used to buy items for as expensive as one thousand US dollars. I don't buy items or characters with real money because it makes feel like a noob who cant even find good items by myself.
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ReplyDeleteI have seen many players making money from game by selling items to people in the real world. In fact, I once actually bought some game money from a person for $100 U.S. dollars when I played the game Lineage. I kind regret it now because I don't play the game anymore but I can tell how people can actually make money from playing games, though it may cost a lot of time to play the game and to be able to earn money from others.
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