Real money in games

I thought this was interesting, and since there's only about one post a week on this forum anymore, I thought I'd throw it out there.

Blizzard's Diablo 3 is to feature a real-money auction house, so you can buy junk with in-game money or real money, and likewise sell things for game money or real money. which should have the effect of turning the game basically into an RCE, even though it's not described that way - because if x item is worth $2 usd, and x item is worth 1000 in game money, then it follows that 1000 in game is worth $2. There will be a fee for selling an item and a fee for withdrawing real money, and there might be a subscription as well.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Diablo-3-Rob-Pardo-Auction-House-DRM-Battle.net,13154.html

I'm glad that the border between real and virtual money is increasingly falling by the wayside.

Hard times for AW. Hurry up devs!

Salvo82 has the right idea I think. Two or three years from now the idea of game money having real money equivalent is no longer going to be novel. If anyone's done their homework on this, Blizzard has. They've realized they're not going to limit themselves to $15/month, when players will pay many multiples of that (and already do through "illegal" gold sellers), especially if those players think that they can turn a long-term profit out of it.

AW needs to get the game out and build a sustainable playerbase here pretty quick, or they're likely to become irrelevant.

if blizzard really jump on the band wagon it could spell the end of the first couple of "rce" games.

Pokemon

Just thinking about the general trend in how games make money here....

I see Diablo's real money auction house signalling the beginning of the end of microtransaction business models in games. A microtransaction model sells items directly to the player, and is the most common form of free to play games these days. This has never really been popular with gamers, though, because it's completely play to win, feels unfair, and since the game will produce as many of that item as people are willing to pay for, it's not really a rare item any more, hence more supply, less demand. You're essentially paying to skip to the end, and when you've reached the end, you're done with the game. If I have the best sword and there's nothing more to work for, chances are, I'm on to the next game, that's just gamer psychology.

The diablo model (although the pricing structure is unclear), is much better, since the game maker has still found a way to profit from player transactions, while still keeping rare items rare, and this will give the game potentially unlimited replayability because there will always be something better out there to work for. Blizzard knows that if you increase player's zeal for the game, it's very natural for the players to shell out more and more money.

That being said, I think the true RCE model in Afterworld where everything is real money from beginning to end, is still more advanced and forward-thinking, and potentially profitable. Plus the replayability is potentially infinite, especially if they could get a working plot going - some sort of territorial conflict over resources as we're expecting. Between a plot, a supremely high level cap, and the potential to grab a little of the money out of the game, AW is really the first game I feel like I could conceivably play indefinitely, especially since I'm maybe 1400 hours in and still a freakin' noob!

An interesting article also on developing social structures in a few upcoming games...

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/11/21/three-crazy-ways-politics-are-taking-over-mmos/

Profit by micro-fees have been around for ages (Second-Life is one I can think of straight away).
The AW model already has this in place.

Diablo will encounter the same issues, that AW has, in regards to maintaining a healthy corporate bank balance.

Their solutions/restrictions will be an interesting view into what might happen in AW when withdrawal is allowed.