- First of all, we believe that the ownership of property is not quite clear and did not protect players' rights and benefits. It had to be recognized that the ownership of virtual properties mostly belongs to the game companies. They set up the agreements which ensures them able to do whatever they want to those goods. We talk about this topic in the article Property Ownership and introduce some articles about this issue.
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A screenshot of submitting a stolen goods ticket
for World of Warcraft.
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Property Ownership
Who owns the virtual properties?If you are a gamer, you might answer that you own those virtual properties - including golds, gears, characters, and perhaps even the achievements - under your game account.For example, you sometimes give gifts to your friend in games. You may also trade your gears, golds, and goods in those games through the virtual auction house. What is more,you might go to the support webpage to report a stolen virtual goods, and the Game Master (GM) will deal with this issue according to the evidence you submitted.
These experiences make you feel like those goods are owned by you. However, does that have to be true? The answer might be tricky.
Read more>>
- In the next part, we talk about how gold farming hurts virtual economy. We discuss the way gold farming ruin economy in games in the article The Scarcity of Currency. It functions the vicious cycle and damage the equivalent of economy. We also introduce articles and papers about this issues and present the abstract of each of them.
The Scarcity of Currency
Mankwin in his very famous text book, the Principle of Economics, defines economics as "the study of how individuals, firms and government make decisions to manage scarce resources." This draws an important point that it was because that resources are limited that people facing trade offs and thus functions the economy.
However, this scarcity may be hurt in the virtual economy.
A very important issue in the virtual economy is gold farming. By gold farming, I mean doing the boring bits like killing monsters over and over, mining or collecting herbs to get gold (the currency in on-line games). This hurts the scarcity of currency. As so many "farmers" earning golds, the economy structure in the game is hurt, or sometimes even ruined. The farming action earns much more gold than the normal playing actions can and will making the game society experience an inflation.Because of the inflation, the game company trying to balance the virtual economy would increase the charges of services in game and decrease the total production of golds. For example, the companies would choose to increase the price of fixing gears from 1 gold 50 silvers to 3 golds. And they might drop the award of killing one monster from 89 silvers to 49 silvers. Players in this way need to kill more monsters or do more boring collecting jobs to balance their accounts, while some of the players would buy some golds from the gold farmers to save time.This increase the demand of golds, and causes more gold farmings, and establishes a vicious cycle which ruins the game's economy in the end.
Some researches and reports have been published talking about this issue. We introduce some of them here:
However, this scarcity may be hurt in the virtual economy.
A very important issue in the virtual economy is gold farming. By gold farming, I mean doing the boring bits like killing monsters over and over, mining or collecting herbs to get gold (the currency in on-line games). This hurts the scarcity of currency. As so many "farmers" earning golds, the economy structure in the game is hurt, or sometimes even ruined. The farming action earns much more gold than the normal playing actions can and will making the game society experience an inflation.Because of the inflation, the game company trying to balance the virtual economy would increase the charges of services in game and decrease the total production of golds. For example, the companies would choose to increase the price of fixing gears from 1 gold 50 silvers to 3 golds. And they might drop the award of killing one monster from 89 silvers to 49 silvers. Players in this way need to kill more monsters or do more boring collecting jobs to balance their accounts, while some of the players would buy some golds from the gold farmers to save time.This increase the demand of golds, and causes more gold farmings, and establishes a vicious cycle which ruins the game's economy in the end.
Some researches and reports have been published talking about this issue. We introduce some of them here:
Read more>>
- The last section we talked about was hacking issue. Hacking not only hurts players' property, but also the relationship between players and game companies. People being hacked may lose interest in gaming and left the games. The problem of hacking crime today is so significant that almost 20% of the game currency sold is hacked.
Hacking: A Never Stopped Issue
Hacking is a never stopped issue since the invention of the Internet. It is a crime which hurts the virtual economy so significantly.
As we introduced in the prezi introduction slides, the secondary market worth $3 billion, and the goods in this market is majorly virtual currency. However, the Wold Bank Report lately claims that 20% of virtual game currency sold is hacked.(Lehdonvirta) Consider the total amount of this market, this problem is horrible.
One of my friend's Diablo III account got hacked this summer. He lost all the golds and gears in his account, and got banned for the suspicious actions (transactions of large amount of golds and gears to other suspended account) for three days. These gears worth more than two hundred of dollars, not to mention the time he spent to get them. He was so angry and told me that he would not play Diable III anymore.So this is a lost for him as well as the game company.
Hereby we present some great articles about the hacking issue in the virtual world. It should be recognized that the hacking action does not only hurt the properties, but also people's feeling about those games. The lost of those goods sometimes makes people leave the game they played.
As we introduced in the prezi introduction slides, the secondary market worth $3 billion, and the goods in this market is majorly virtual currency. However, the Wold Bank Report lately claims that 20% of virtual game currency sold is hacked.(Lehdonvirta) Consider the total amount of this market, this problem is horrible.
One of my friend's Diablo III account got hacked this summer. He lost all the golds and gears in his account, and got banned for the suspicious actions (transactions of large amount of golds and gears to other suspended account) for three days. These gears worth more than two hundred of dollars, not to mention the time he spent to get them. He was so angry and told me that he would not play Diable III anymore.So this is a lost for him as well as the game company.
Hereby we present some great articles about the hacking issue in the virtual world. It should be recognized that the hacking action does not only hurt the properties, but also people's feeling about those games. The lost of those goods sometimes makes people leave the game they played.
Read more>>13
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