RMT and Web mmogs will rock you

My thoughts after the mocking prologue.

Koster: I know I’m pissing everyone off by being a know-it-all loud mouth, buuuut! I TOLD YOU SO LAST YEAR! HAHA! World-wide webby gaming is the real deal, we got lots of users playing online doll house and you better start making those dress up games for the new kiddos and stop feeding the same crap to the losers living in their parent’s basements! You need to have an open mind about it and evolve into this market or you will all be left behind - in the unemployment line. Someone has to unite these fields and since I’m bored talking about traditional based worlds I’m on a mission to conquer all the virtual spaces! SUITS LINED WITH MONEY POCKETS, throw your money at my AREAE EMPIRE AND BE ENLIGHTNED – IM RAPH MOTHER FUCKIN’ KOSTER, former game designer of – ugh… um… those board games I designed in my bedroom. Hmmm, what have I done that the larger player populous that don’t read my blog actually give a shit about? Anyways! I’M SO POWERFULLY BRAINED. *bwahahaha*

Jacobs: I won’t have none of this webby froufrou! Web based games are rife with RMT, screw em’ screw em’ ITS BAD, IT’S THE MARK OF THE HYRDA GREEDY MONEY BAG BEAST! These games will all fail. In fact, you are all going to hell for selling game items, your players will develop warts on their genitals and the WAGGH Gods will reign down from the heavens and kill a puppy if you ever mention web based games again! These so called games aren’t true mmorpgs and never will be!

Bethke: Hay you guyzzers, you do all this fantasy mmorpg stuff and you do is wrong, wrong wrong, WRONG, WOOOOOOONG! My games are soooo much better becauz you can pay for anything! I can’t wait to go home and buy another pony in my game – limited time offer – special foil shiny hoofs – for an extra 10 cents you can buy a 2 headed pony, oh and another nickel, you can get one with a wing and if you want the other wing on the other side, it’s only another 25 cents! Nickels and Dimes! Nickel, Nickel, Nickel! Dime, Dime, Dime! Paying for items and levels is the bestest designings ever! This is what ALL PLAYERS want. You don’t pay for a subscription to go to the gas station do you? HAH HAH HAH HAH! I am true master game designer.

Blakely: *sighs* Such, hostility among my esteemed colleagues – relax guys. I think there is a middle ground between web based games and traditional mmorpgs. There can be a game for everyone, we can all exist, be happy. You know what? OMGBBQ at my place later! We can sing songs about dragons and paying for rainbows and flying lolercatz – rock out with me my brothers. On second thought, I wonder what Smed is driving today.

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Can you answer the greatest question dealing with RMT - No? These game industry head honchos did, which ended up being an entertaining debate of sorts. The Virtual World News transcript from the AGDC panel: What are the biggest Online Gaming Opportunities? is definitely worth reading if you’re familiar with the above industry taskmasters and curious about their opinions/thoughts on what role web based gaming / RMT is having.

I guffawed a lot reading this panel, which inspired me to write the above funny. I really like Jacobs, his staunch anti-RMT stance is extremely important because we will see more RMT based games than traditional subscription based models in the future. We need more leaders taking up the helm against RMT, (no, not you McQuaid, go away) defending the culture of non RMT designed mmogs - yes, it is a culture - or it will die out. Granted, my perspective has changed a bit since my frequent pontificating tirades against RMT in fantasy based mmorpgs. I don’t mind SOE’s Station Exchange alternative on select servers – where as I was aghast and dismissed it at first – and even boycotted their games, which wasn’t too hard – maybe it was an excuse? I still wouldn’t play on a RMT server, but it does stem grey-market activity from occurring on legit servers and that is a good thing since game designers and coders are too lazy to design/code the RMT fixes that won’t fuck up the economy. Most of them can’t get the other important parts right yet…

Do I want to play a RMT web based or mmorpg game? No, it would have to be a really good game that I tend to gravitate towards (MTG) to even consider it and I prefer real cardboard cutouts over virtual ones any day of the week. Even web games are going to flop like mmogs – brand is going to play a huge roll and more piles of money will be needed for development to even stand a chance for success, it may take awhile for it to get to that competitive point, but it will happen. When it does, the genre will be flooded with generic doll house; grow a pet; mtv social chat spaces for teenie boppers; grow your epeen pvp grind virtual dollar store clones. The web masses will grow weary from all the nickel and diming and find something else – something free. Because, I believe user created muds (games) will make a resurgence in web form someday, when, when the tools arrive - and they will, or we are all doomed.

One problem supporters of the traditional subscription models are facing as more mmogs enter the market is not wanting to pay for more than 2 or 3 subscriptions at a time. How about the RMT model where I pay a fair price by the hour and not micro transactions? That sounds like the better deal to me, but I would have to move to China if that’s how I wanted to pay-to-play a mmog. Oh well… I’ll stick with simultaneously subscribing to 1 or 2 mmogs (maybe 3, maybe… It’s difficult to justify that cost for paying 3 unless they are all like Eve with offline progression - that’s definitely my limit though and I can barely play one now) at the most while the other mmogs I would play every now and again, if they offered a true value model (the ones that aren’t worth 15 or the all access plans that wont let you pick and choose a package at different rates) will get absolutely nothing from me in return, so what should they do?