09.27.07
Kingdom Rediscovered
I look a lot cooler than I remember.
09.17.07
I Might Be Wrong: Microtransactions, RMT and… DIPS?
Since the rather inflammatory ‘talk’ regarding RMT and microtransactions at the AGDC last week, a lot of opinions and opinion-like substances on the topic have been tossed ’round the blogosphere. Now, given that my employer has been a major(?) Western player in ‘microtransactions’ for the last two and half years or so, I figure it’s high time I weighed in on this lukewarm-button topic.
For starters, we need to settle on some proper Goddamn terminology for the purposes of discussion. A ‘microtransaction’ does not necessarily occur when a player purchases an item in your virtual world, though the term’s certainly bandied about with that usage. As we all know, and as Raph Koster told us here…
The microtransaction, the common business definition is a system where… there are two flavors. One is: you actually pay a macrotransaction that converts into some point system and you eat away at the points. It’s like buying a block of cell phone minutes or a block of time, or something like that. And then the other method is: you buy something that’s really small and cheap, and then periodically the service aggregator, instead of billing you constantly, which gets expensive because they pay per transaction — they pay this fixed fee. Instead of doing it then, they let them pile up for a month and then they bill you all at once. And that is how pay-per-view works. That’s the definition of microtransaction. Notice the whole question of whether you handed your pay-per-view movie to him did not come into the equation! That’s a separate issue altogether, it has nothing to do with the billing model. Microtransaction’s just a billing model.
So stop using ‘microtransaction’ as an umbrella term, you heathens! You’re going to make Erik Bethke cry! Ahem. Now that we’ve straightened that out, let’s look at another term that gets tossed around in these sorts of discussions: ‘RMT’ (real money trade/trading). Now, strictly speaking, ‘RMT’ could probably describe the kinds of transactions that are occuring between players and developers that people are trying to describe when referring to ‘microtransactions’, but there’s a problem. The term ‘RMT’ has a lot of negative baggage associated with it, as described by the following snippet I found after Googling, well… RMT…
In Final Fantasy XI Online… reaching the maximum level (75) can take a [long time]. But leveling is only part of the game. Along the way, players have a chance to deck out their characters; they upgrade armor, weapons, and spells in order to maximize their abilities. Typically, the higher the level and the better the gear, the more expensive it is in the terms of the game’s economy. Taking the time to earn the necessary money often means a break from leveling… and in order to skip this process, some gamers out there are turning to companies like IGE or auctions on eBay to solve their gaming woes. For real money, they can purchase virtual game money — often known as “gold” (or in the case of FFXI, gil, the long-used term for money in the Final Fantasy franchise), which is then used in-game to gear up their characters. This system of buying virtual goods and/or money with real money is known as Real Money Trade, or RMT — and it is a bannable offense on most MMORPGs.
The emphasis is mine, and I feel sums up why we can’t just use RMT to describe ‘developer-direct item purchases’: RMT is most often used to refer to cash trades occuring between players, or between players and third parties. These are a whole other ball of wax and have a really bad rap amongst the developer community, which may be something I discuss in a future post. For now, though, it looks like we’re gonna have to come up with something else.
To digress a bit (with an ulterior motive), I attended a one-day conference back in June called the Virtual Goods Summit, and it covered the sorts of practices and issues we’re attempting to describe here. I’d actually never heard the term ‘virtual goods’ used with any regularity before that summit, and while ‘virtual good sales’ isn’t a bad term, I’d personally like to see something with a catchier acronym. How about ‘digital item purchases’ or ‘DIPS’? Since this is a monologue, and there’s no one here to disagree with me, I’m going to go ahead and make this my de facto jargon in future for referring to the practice of a MMOG or virtual space taking in at least part of its revenue from the rental or sale of items accessible only within the boundaries of its game world. Phew. Glad that’s settled. What an abrupt and ultimately unsatisfying conclusion! Serves you right for thinking I was going somewhere deep with this after two years of not writing a damn thing.
In future installments of this series, I’d like to actually, uh, discuss aspects of DIPS that aren’t purely semantic, such as whether they could be utilized in an existing subscription-based world, and whether the hand-waving freakoutery (HWFO, another fun acronym) regarding the acceleration of DIPS as a business model in the West is altogether deserved.
As a homework question, how do you, dear reader, feel about the term ‘digital item purchases’? Do you have a better alternative? Also, can you think of any ways you’d like to expand on the definitions I’ve given of microtransactions, RMT or DIPS?
Toss Down Some Flares…
…I just upgraded WordPress. And installed Spam Karma. Oh, and switched over to a less broken theme.
But you’re not reading anyway, are you? ARE YOU?! Ha, expect more content shortly.