Station Exchange White Paper

[Smed]

We released a white paper detailing a lot about our Station Exchange service. Here's a link to the interview, and at the bottom you can find the link to the white paper itself. I'm interested in opinions on this board.

Smed

Gamasutra.com - SOE's Station Exchange - The Results of a Year of Trading

[findar]

Over 50,000 auctions were opened during the first year, and nearly 40,000 of those were completed. Revenue for the company, for the first year, was $274,083, with the majority of that unsurprisingly coming from commissions on completed auctions.

Every month, roughly 1500 players participated in commerce on the Exchange, with a total of 9,042 players registered for the service by the end of June 2006. This is roughly 25% of the player base across the two servers SE serves.

this is what seems most confusing to me. wasnt the point of these servers to allow such trade, yet only 25% took part in it ?

[Braen]

Originally Posted by findar

this is what seems most confusing to me. wasnt the point of these servers to allow such trade, yet only 25% took part in it ?

I bet a lot of people started on those servers not knowing that the service was.

[Samflam]

I wonder how tempted you are to open up this service for all servers. Maybe not in this game, but in future SOE games you must be considering it. There's too much money to be made.
The pragmatic side of me realizes secondary sales go on regardless of the company's stance, but the idealist in me finds it sad to see a company embracing it.
In my opinion it's only a matter of time before most developers decide to go this route. It's just sad to see it happen.

[Plorkyeran]

Originally Posted by findar

this is what seems most confusing to me. wasnt the point of these servers to allow such trade, yet only 25% took part in it ?

There's actually quite a few reasons I can think of for not actually using it:
1) Player is an idiot who doesn't read server descriptions
2) Player wanted the option to legally buy money, but never ended up actually doing it (if EQ2 players are anything like WoW players, a server full of gold buyers would be trivial to make vast amounts of money on)
3) Player with multiple accounts, and only traded on one of them
4) Alts/abandoned characters. It sounds like someone who rolled a character on a SE server and only made it to level 2 would be counted as a non-partipating person, dragging the percentage down.

[Trebla]

I very seriously doubt Mr. Smedley is looking for anything other than "Great job, way to take the market away from IGE." But I doubt you'll get a solid majority that will say that (though I've been wrong before).

There was a very large amount of debate and controversy when we announced it. It became a non-event when it launched.

Quite possibly because of people like me who cancelled their accounts as soon as it was announced as a solid plan. It's not that I disagree that taking business from IGE is bad, but sanctioning it is essentially sending the message to the player base that if it's ok on one server, it's ok on all of them. So why go to a SExchange server when currency is cheaper through third parties on normal servers?

It's not like the impact on the game hasn't been discussed to death. You know you're compromising the actual game play experience by doing this. It's the pot argument, some people smoke it, some don't... but just because it's illegal. The instant you legitimize it it becomes more widespread. I doubt there are reliable numbers available from third party sites, but I'd love to see how sales on non-Exchange servers changed when the service was launched.

Anyway, I've said my piece. I know many disagree and I may even be in a pretty small minority, but that's how I feel. Design a game from the ground up with currency exchange in mind and it's a different story (I believe SoE announced one), suddenly allow it in a game where resource availability is now removed from designed gameplay mechanics and it's just trouble.

[Creediki]

To me the main problem with the game company being a party to secondary transactions is that it is a serious conflict-of-interest. Companies will be able to increase their profits by introducing in-game content that is both helpful and annoying to farm.

Just the seemingly innocent addition of a rare-spawn that is on an hourly basis caters to people using money, since demand will peak in the evening, and fall off during the day. People able to purchace the time of people playing during the day will use the service. The core issues of, "Why does when I play affect my chances at x", is brushed under the rug.

Wow is taking the right approach by tweaking the mechanics to both make farming/selling harder, and reducing the desire for people to make such exchanges by lowering repair costs, and increasing money drop rates.

No game company that allows itself to profit from the revenue stream of the transactions will be able to resist the lure of introducing more and more opportunities for people to purchase their way to greatness in the game.

[Lyrical]

Originally Posted by Smed

We released a white paper detailing a lot about our Station Exchange service. Here's a link to the interview, and at the bottom you can find the link to the white paper itself. I'm interested in opinions on this board.

Smed

Gamasutra.com - SOE's Station Exchange - The Results of a Year of Trading

With certain limits, I have no problem with SOE delving into RMT. I find it interesting that the 33 to 37 year old age group spent the most on RMT. Since I am in this age group, I can see why. In Eq1's heyday, many of us were single and didn't have many real life obligations. now many of us (hopefully) are married, have kids and have jobs with higher responsibility. There are times when I am expected to work late or fly on a business trip on the other side of the country for a week at a time. That's not good for gaining dkp in your typical hardcore raiding guild. People in my age bracket are time poor, but have more cash than your average 20 something gamer. I can't camp stuff for days with no sleep anymore, but I can afford to buy items, coin or charachters.

As long as SOE limits this activity to certain servers, I have no problem with it. Personally, I won't play on these servers because of the stigma attached to them (and buying virtual items and chars), but if someone wants to do it, more power to them. The funny thing was, that if SOE did this through a third party company so no one knew about it, it would probably have more success. Maybe I am not saying it so well - I want to buy virtual items and chars and have no one know about it. I suspect many gamers are like me. You lose a bit of "street cred" if people know you buy virtual items and chars.

Anyway, that's my two coppers before all the retards come flying into this thread complaining about corporate greed.

[Dildo Faggins]

Originally Posted by Creediki

To me the main problem with the game company being a party to secondary transactions is that it is a serious conflict-of-interest.

Agree completely. Dont even need to elaborate past this. Any company that does this and wants to profit off it is going to get a serious reconsideration by me on wether i should be playing that game. Perhaps it can be done well, but that requires TRUSTING the company. Needless to say, trust is not something you can normally associate with mmos developers.

[Lyrical]

Originally Posted by Creediki

To me the main problem with the game company being a party to secondary transactions is that it is a serious conflict-of-interest. Companies will be able to increase their profits by introducing in-game content that is both helpful and annoying to farm.

Just the seemingly innocent addition of a rare-spawn that is on an hourly basis caters to people using money, since demand will peak in the evening, and fall off during the day. People able to purchace the time of people playing during the day will use the service. The core issues of, "Why does when I play affect my chances at x", is brushed under the rug.

Wow is taking the right approach by tweaking the mechanics to both make farming/selling harder, and reducing the desire for people to make such exchanges by lowering repair costs, and increasing money drop rates.

No game company that allows itself to profit from the revenue stream of the transactions will be able to resist the lure of intriducing more and more opportunities for people to purchase their way to greatness in the game.

That is the flip side of the argument, and a very valid point. At what point does company-sanctioned RMT trading go from helping players like me with very little free time, to exploiting players like me? It seems like a fine line that can be very easily crossed.

[Fuvi]

"There are 40,663 players on the two SE servers as of June 2006."

SOE Game Card - 90 day from Sony Online Store : $44.99

During 1 year if those 40k players were only paying because of playing on the SE servers, not other servers or other games, they would spend ~$7.3 million on subscriptions. Even if only 1/3 of that is from people who primarily play on the SE servers, Station Exchange is ~11% extra revenue from that player base. What the white paper doesn't describe is the additional expenses in order to generate that revenue. If there is one extra full-time employee with benefits because of Station Exchange there went 1/3 of the revenue.

"Station Exchange is not an extension of game play. It is a utility. It offers a fundamentally different approach to play: a means of skipping the boring parts."

First part is false, the option to purchase characters and coin existed long before Station Exchange. The 2nd part is true, other than re-sellers people are generally paying money because they feel they would need to "work" at the game to reach the point they would have fun and by spending RL money can complete that work in far less time flipping burgers than repetitively killing mobs, harvesting or crafting.

[Miele]

I'm against RMT because it discriminates people and that shouldn't happen in a game where skills and time investment are the 2 main parameters to base on for a measure of success.

Of course I'm not so naive to think RMT is ending anytime soon, unless serious laws are made about it.
Personally I can live without buying things, for me the enjoyment of these games comes from achieving things by myself or with my friends, not buying what I couldn't obtain.

The current MMOs game design is catered towards this, we saw it in WoW Naxx era, where a lot of players couldn't play long enough out of raids to mantain their ability to play (horrible design) and in EQ2 where plat buy the most important things aka spell/arts upgrades.

I wish RMT wouldn't have been endorsed by SoE, but as long as it's not a standard procedure on all servers, I'll deal with my chinese farmers as I always did (train them to death) and keep enjoying the game on normal servers. I was quite pissed off when SE was announced, I can't help saying it drove me to WoW. In WoW I noticed how Blizzard didn't really care about the phenomenon, to the point where automated bots farmed stuff for months before some of them got booted (not all of them).

Nowadays I accepted the fact farmers are a constant in MMOs, if one day IGE and the like will be declared illegal, I'll be happy, for now... meh, I don't care too much.

On the other hand I stopped long ago entering e-peen contests for gear and what not, so who has what it doesn't bother me, as long as I can achieve something without having to rely on RMT, I'll keep paying my monthly sub to whoever gives me the most fun.

[Shodai]

From the release...

Every month, roughly 1500 players participated in commerce on the Exchange, with a total of 9,042 players registered for the service by the end of June 2006.

Unless I am reading something wrong, SoE had 9 thousand people participate during the time period in question. If we are to assume that EQ2 has 150k subscriptions, we can hypothesize that around 6% of your fan base has a general interest in these activities. Now, the 94% who are not interested have all been subjugated to what many will consider "an ill-conceived money-grab" that is apparent to anyone with half of a brain. This is very likely to decrease customer loyalty. Furthermore, by offering this service you break the illusion/escapism effect these games offer and expose it as a vapid time-waste. This realization leads to customers losing interest and dropping out of your subscription base. John, have you ever been playing a game and decided to use cheat codes, only to find out later that by cheapening your game experience you lost interest faster? The same applies for people who buy gold.

In my professional opinion as an MBA, you succeeded in generating a tiny revenue stream while creating a risk that has far reaching effects across your player bases' & potential future user psyches. You were already on tenuous ground with many of the PR/design blunders of Everquest, the extremely poor launch and game design of EQ2 1.0, and Sony's waning popular opinion across all of its business segments. A good amount of those people who stuck with EQ2 after WoW's launch were your die-hard fans--the people who spread popular support and word of mouth. The moment you disenfranchised your hardcore base (by showing your greed at the expense of virtue) you opened yourself to a world of risk. However, since the risk is long-term and not necessarily quantifiable or observable short-term, I am assuming the plan went ahead due to the common desire for short term revenue generation with no thought for long-term ramifications.

While I would love to flesh out this reply I just don't have time. However, I would like to propose that, instead of trying to capitalize on the black market, you sit your VP's down and find legitimate ways to create new revenue streams that do not have far reaching, negative implications upon SoE's dignity & popular opinion. Long-term you are only going to hurt your companies reputation and push your hardcore (and vocal) fan base away...many who may deplore these shady practices. Short-term money grabs are company killers.

[forge]

Times have since changed when it comes to buying characters and items. In early EQ times you'd get made fun of for buying character or platinum. Those days are gone now that a more casual WoW crowd is here. If you didn't have time to get mats in highend WoW you simply bought gold from IGN, or other places. Casual people do it, and hardcore alike. It was openly talked about in my WoW guild. No one was ashamed of it, people did it because it saved them time they could better spend everywhere. The problem I see for you Smed is this following chart.



A lot of the views on this board are going to vary here on this point. But I've personally always been against no drop/binding/bop items. I've always believed that it creates more of a market when you can buy any item if you can find a seller for it. You won't be able to get the best dragon loot if there are no sellers. But if there are and you've saved the money, why not. Most dev's seem to be strongly against this. Standing firm on the you have to put in the time to get the reward. You have decent sales for both money and characters but very little in the way of items. Most likely for the reason I stated above. There simply are not many hot items which you are allowed to trade. There is alot of money to be made by SOE if you'll be able to sway future developers from the no drop religion.

[whaerf]

In my professional opinion as an MBA, you succeeded in generating a tiny revenue stream while creating a risk that has far reaching effects across your player bases' & potential future user psyches. You were already on tenuous ground with many of the PR/design blunders of Everquest, the extremely poor launch and game design of EQ2 1.0, and Sony's waning popular opinion across all of its business segments. Those people who stuck with EQ2 after WoW's launch were your die-hard fans--the people who spread popular support and word of mouth. The moment you disenfranchised your hardcore base you opened yourself to a world of risk. However, since the risk is long-term and not necessarily quantifiable or observable short-term, I am assuming the plan went ahead due to the common fallacy of short term revenue generation.

In my professional opinion as a guy on the intra-nets, from the opinions we see when polls are taken about RMT, they could argue there was more risk in continuing (pretending?) to fight it than opening SE.

I'll always look for games where time/skill are the only "allowable" tools for progression, but it seems like a lot of people are in the "I have a life so I'll just buy gold and everyone's happy" camp.

I'll grant one thing, it didn't seem like much revenue for the effort/publicity that went into it.