Cashing in on MMOGs
According to In-Stat, a research firm based in Arizona, USA, the Asia-Pacific online gaming revenues in 2005 stood at $3.2 billion — and the figure is expected to grow to $6.8 billion in 2010. This is why companies are investing money and resources to create and publish new massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs). But the big boys aren’t the only ones cashing in on this sunshine industry.
The players, the games’ customers themselves, who invest time and money to play these games, are making money off this form of electronic entertainment as well.
How do they make money?
Most online game players play for fun but some devote their gaming time and train hard so they can participate in online game tournaments.
Training requires knowing every aspect of the game from memorizing every corner and alley on a map, to maximizing the damage range and efficiency of virtual weapons and skills. But sometimes, good common sense and a bit of cunning go a long way.
RR Florida, a third-year high school student, participated in the IP e-Games RAN Online
For winning the grand finals, he pocketed P50,000 in cold cash. Two other players won P30,000 and P15,000.
Level Up! Games recently participated in the Ragnarok World Championship where the Philippine team snagged third place, beating the German team. This team already won prizes when they won in the Ragnarok Philippine Championships.
Online gaming tournaments will be a major draw for competitive and enterprising players. Increasingly, more game publishers are putting out big prizes to reward the best local players and gear up for competition in the international gaming scene.
Selling virtual items for cash
While participating in online tournaments does have its appeal, some players prefer to make money by selling virtual items for real cash. Most online game publishers are against the trading of virtual items for real money, but in spite of their warnings, these types of transactions are actually happening.
On the global level, World of Warcraft has more than nine million subscribers and the trading that happens in-game and offline can rival the GDP (growth domestic product) of small countries.
As more gamers play the game, the need to get high-level characters and better weapons becomes paramount. Virtual items and accounts were being sold for real cash and thus, “gold farming” was born.
On our homefront, some players dabble in this kind of trading and sell their accounts, gold acquired in-game, and other virtual items through online auction sites.
In the past, the Ragnarok Online currency, Zeny, was being sold in Internet cafés and online sites — P100 will net you 100 million Zennies. Today, Gold, RAN Online’s currency, is the hot commodity. Enterprising players sell 100 million gold for P1,300 to P3,000.
PHP trading, the local equivalent of “gold farming,” finally took hold in the Philippine online gaming industry.
RAN Online game accounts and virtual weapons are being sold in local auction sites like Bidshot.com. High-level RAN characters could fetch as high as P40,000 and a lot of players buy these accounts.
Virtual items for cash are set to become a huge business and companies that have Wall Street backgrounds and professional teams are focusing on this new market segment.
One of them is IGE, a diversified service provider operating the world’s largest secure network of buying and selling sites for MMOGs’ virtual currency and assets on the Internet.
According to the IGE website, some experts believe that the market for virtual assets will overcome the primary market, which is projected to reach $7 billion by 2009, within the next few years.
This is the reason why IGE is into the business of selling virtual items for real cash. On a local context, some companies are also thinking of legalizing these transactions to service these special interests.
Hiring gamers to play your characters
Another way players make money from online games is “piloting.” While some players dedicate half of their waking lives playing online games, some don’t have the time to play it on a weekday schedule. Work normally gets in the way of playing, but the need to advance their characters’ level and get the premium items, weapons and armor is too good a lure. So what do they do? They hire “pilots” to play their characters.
Piloting entails players to get other gamers to play their characters. Normally, pilots get paid from P100 to P2,000 a day and the longer they pilot characters, the higher the fee.
A part of that fee goes to paying the Internet café, the cost of accessing the game and purchasing virtual items. Whatever’s left is for the pilots.
Most players in the online gaming community believe that such activities take away the role-playing elements and interaction of the game. But others beg to differ and say it’s a necessity for them. While other players have time to play the game on a full-time basis, professionals and employees who are interested in playing these games are constrained by their work schedules. Hence, they hire other players to play their characters.
Making money requires skills and understanding
While most online game companies and communities are against this type of trading and practice, the players who engage in them, on some level, gain some real-world skills and understanding.
These players aren’t making money through selling drugs or committing any crimes; they are profiting from a form of entertainment that they enjoy and indulge in.
They learn about supply and demand, and ultimately, economics. They learn about marketing and distribution and even organization because players can’t do these by themselves.
In order to gain a clientele, they build their networks and do social networking to make lasting relationships with other players. They learn professionalism by being trustworthy and dependable.
These are the realities created by online gaming and we either cultivate it or let it progress naturally. It’s all up to us and the industry.
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