How would this create jobs?

Why would the publisher pay people to play to generate sellable items? They can just create them at will and reap all of the profits themselves.

Quote: Original post by shadow66ca2000
I am setting up a meeting with a canadian government offical in the next week or so.

Tell us how it goes. Whether it goes one way or the other, we could probably learn something from your experience. Good luck.

So, 250,000 people make money, and the other players are all losing money? I'm not seeing how this is *creating* jobs, and who would want to continue playing if you're not the one making the money? Seriuosly, where do you propose the money will come from if the game company has to be paid, the servers have to be kept running and online, and players are being paid... if everyone is getting paid, how is money magically getting there? If it's from non-money making players you're crazy to think people would spend that much money on a game to pay people salaray.

that would be a good idea for a publisher to just create all the items by themselves and reap all the rewards. However, there are laws in place that would forbid that. What would happen is that it would create a monopoly in the game. and from our friends at Mircosoft we found out that monolopies are bad. I also looked at second lifes idea as well. To me Second life is not a games. To me its a tool that just allows somebody to create items to sell. You have to look at MMORPGs today as well. You pay to play every month. In the end there is no way for a player to make a profit, so you are losing money. In the game I have you still pay the monthly fee, but thats the lowest amount of money you can lose. It all depends. I am working off a model of something I created that allows players multiple ways to make money both from quests and having in game jobs. I look at Vegas idealogy of allowing people to win. Like why doesn't Vegas just take 90% of what people spend. If that case nobody would even go. Therefore, if I created a game that had real money and only I (publisher) would reap the profit then nobody would play.

I dont know as much about business as you (might) know. But I figured:

250,000 users
x $5.00 monthy fee seems reasonable.
-------
$ 1,250,000 income monthy from users (aka workers?)

and lets say, each user on avg buys $40 a month of that in-game-junk.

250,000
x$40.00 junk
-------
$11,250,000 monthly.

hrm, lets also say 50,000 copies are also purch every week, and the company sees a full $20 out of the retail sale (i think thats very high).

50,000
x$20.00
-------
$1,000,000

about $12.25 million dollars a month. income for the company.

8,162 people could be employed as 'game-players' and they could make about $1,500 a month.

leaving $0 for said company, less people getting paid less money (game-players) would make the company make more, and thats who you really need to convince isnt it (after the government thing).

I dunno, seems like it could work if you kept the whole idea of getting paid while you play, kind of a secret. Because then everyone would want to be a 'game-player', and not just a user paying the monthly fee to pay 8,000 people to play the same game and get paid.

Oh, and I don't think I would take a paycut down to $1,500 monthy and just play the same game all the time. When I was addicted to UO, I played for 10 hours some times.

Okay, so maybe it could be done. I just dont think it could last very long, just like the afformentioned payed-to-surf.

Good luck either way!

Quote: Original post by shadow66ca2000
lawsuits would be offset right at the beginning of when they signed up because all players would read the disclaimer explaining the details of how lawsuits will be avoided.

ROFL. Welcome to The REAL World. Basic tenet of law in all english-speaking countries: just because you have no rights doesn't prevent you from filing a lawsuit; in fact, it positively encourages you to (to "test" whether the removal of those rights was, in fact, legal in the first place).

Quote:
Real world taxes would have to be worked out with the government.

Games companies are brown-trousering at the very thought of govt involvement. Do you have ANY idea what life is like if you are classified a "financial instituation" by western govts? I guarantee that every single games company would terminate their MMOG's overnight and refuse to develop any more.

Quote:
However, inflation can be held to reasonable rates with restrictions and help from an economists.

LOL. Dude, economists are so incapable of doing this that they are currently approaching MMOG developers *asking* them for ideas and *asking* to try out their 100-year-old theories and "finally find out whether they work or not, because no-one really knows at the moment".

Quote:
Gambling laws is something I have been thinking about as well. However, there are tons of Online casinos and they seem to operate pretty well.

It gets better! No, online casinos are a true pain in the ass. Not so much as being a FS instituation (bank, adviser, etc), but still HORRIBLE.

Quote:
Money laundering would be hard to see happen I think.

And better. Money laungering has already put one fledgling MMOG out of business, about 4 years ago (well, IIRC the game was pretty crap too). Turns out the govts weren't exactly happy with the arrangements...

Quote:
I already saw on enteral lands that somebody bought a property there for $26,500 now who would spend that type of money on a virtual property unless they knew that they could make there money back.

I'll tell you who: the marketing dept. How much free publicity did that 26k buy them? For an ad campaign, that was CHEAP.

Piece of advice: it's great to have ideas, but you have more self-doubt and be less blind to the myriad flaws in your plan.

/me is a little worried that I've worked under most of the stricutres listed above at one time or another. Why do I keep doing jobs that involve heavy-handed govt or paperwork? I hate the hassle...

Economics 101.

If all parties make a profit(...), the value of their trade will reduce to the point it is worthless. (edit - very very quickly)

It might also help to know that people who buy game items on ebay are m00ks.

Are you a bank? No? Are you a foreign country or a multinational corporation with the assets to back up your "money"? Also no? Then good luck issuing any sort of currency with any fiat behind it. This idea won't hold its own in any circumstances, since either you'll see lawsuits, banking regulations, business regulations, taxation issues (how to those people record their income tax?), and other legal hoops.

Stick with virtual money trading for virtual stuff, without trying to affect the real world. It's a flat-out bad idea.

It seems resonable.

You could collect taxes, on peoples assets. You also get money from selling eland to people (like for a couple of $ per meter.)

You then get that money, and you give it back to the game. In the form of stuff that monsters have. (you could say go and give the big dragon a huge chunk of gold to protect), You also keep seme of that in game money for yourself. (but not much of it.)

Now what yo uneed, is the differentiation of items.
For eg. a lv204 Wizard could make a magical shield that is much more powerful then a lv200 wizard could make.

Also, you allow items to be scripted, with how powerful it is determined by who made it. For eg. you could have the equaivilant of a minefield on some parts to stop dragons.

Also, you could have something like the spell system of "restless sleep" i think its called.

You basically get a whole bunch of symbols together, and based on your stats, changes the environment.

So you could make a thunderstorm, burn down a building, ect. By tying in the scripting system to the rest of the game. (ie. changing the weather patterns).

From,
Nice coder

nice coder is thinking along the lines I am. Of course, certain people would make more money than others. It all depends on how much time and effort you put into the game. I am not a bank , but I am contacting them to work on this idea. Inflation can never totally be controlled, but there are ways to help control it. If you have to setup ways of money circulation then and interest properly then inflation can be controlled. Game laundering will be illegal in the game of course. Like I have been looking at both sides and I keep saying to myself how this would make money and how would players make money. I realized that taxing will have to be added in the game there will be fees for players to sell items in the game. I know the idea could work as long as it is done right. I know there will be mistakes, but I want government support both with ideas and money before I even start to think about full production. The problem is that you cannot ignore the government. Mircosoft tried to say to hell with them and they were hammered in a law suit.