Virtual World of Online Gaming

▪ 2007

      Virtual worlds generated billions of real dollars in 2006 as millions of players around the world fought, bought, crafted, and sold in a variety of online environments. The most populous, Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft, drew seven million subscribers (with more than five million in China alone). This total represented more than half of the massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) community in 2006, and it brought in more than $1 billion in retail sales and subscription fees for Blizzard. MMOGs differed from traditional PC games in a number of important ways. First, Internet connectivity was a prerequisite for all MMOGs, as the games could be played only after one logged in to the server that hosted the game world (popular MMOGs required dozens of such servers to accommodate their larger player bases). Second, the social aspect of interacting with thousands of players worldwide frequently overshadowed the game content itself. A 2006 study found that almost a third of female players and nearly 10% of male players had dated someone they met in a game. Third, most MMOGs operated on a subscription basis, charging a monthly fee in addition to the initial purchase price of the game software. Some companies offered frequent downloadable “patches” of new game content to make these monthly fees more palatable to players, while others offered their games free of charge to players who were willing to tolerate a stream of in-game advertisements.

      Though World of Warcraft and other MMOGs utilized the advanced graphics and high-end processing power typical of the current generation of PC games, online gaming had its roots in some of the earliest computing technologies. By the late 1970s, many universities in the United States were linked by ARPANET, a precursor to the Internet. The structure of ARPANET allowed users to connect their computers to a central mainframe and interact in what was close to real time. In 1980 ARPANET was linked to the University of Essex, Colchester, Eng., where two undergraduate students had written a text-based fantasy adventure game that they called MUD or “multiuser dungeon.” When the first outside users connected to MUD through ARPANET, online gaming was born. Soon other programmers expanded on the original MUD design, adding graphic flourishes, chat functions, and player groups (or guilds). These basic features, as well as the fantasy setting, carried over into the next generation of online games, which were the first true MMOGs.

      The first wave of MMOGs included such games as Ultima Online (debuted in 1997), the South Korean blockbuster Lineage (1998), and Sony's EverQuest (1999). Growth for these early games was relatively slow but steady with the exception of Lineage, the explosive popularity of which was mainly due to the early and widespread availability of high-speed Internet connections in South Korea. This popularity did not come without a price, however. A number of Korean players died of exhaustion after marathon gaming sessions, and a 2005 South Korean government survey showed that more than half a million Koreans suffered from “Internet addiction.” Game companies funded dozens of private counseling centres for addicted gamers in an effort to forestall legislation, such as that passed by China in 2005, that would force designers to impose in-game penalties for players who spent more than three consecutive hours online.

      By the time World of Warcraft debuted in November 2004, the global gaming market was ready for a change. With the notable exceptions of EVE Online, a game of interstellar corporate intrigue, and the superhero-themed City of Heroes, the market was saturated with “swords and sorcery” fare. World of Warcraft's attention to humour and team play and its shallow learning curve brought in millions of casual gamers who had never before tried an MMOG. This widespread success brought its own challenges for Blizzard, however, when the company temporarily suspended the account of a transsexual player over freedom of speech issues. While that incident seemed to have been the result of a terrible miscommunication on Blizzard's part, it did open a dialogue on the nature of online worlds. Were they like private clubs, where the management could restrict both membership and speech? Or did they fall under the scope of a public accommodation, where discrimination was expressly prohibited by U.S. law?

      Another issue that game publishers had to face was the rise of secondary economies outside their game worlds. Ultima Online designers were the first to observe this phenomenon at work when a castle in their game world sold for several thousand dollars on the online auction site eBay. This was the beginning of a market valued at more than $1 billion in 2006. Players spent hours earning in-game wealth, hunting for rare weapons, and gaining power and prestige for their characters so that the fruits of their virtual labours could be exchanged for real cash. The buyer and seller would agree on a purchase price; the funds would be transferred electronically; and the two would then meet in the game world to complete the transaction. Some Chinese companies turned this into serious business, employing hundreds of “gold farmers,” who played the game in an effort to hoard resources that would be sold to players in South Korea or the United States. Most MMOG companies sought to control this behaviour by banning the accounts of suspected gold farmers (Blizzard closed 18,000 such accounts in October–December 2005). Sony co-opted the secondary market when it launched Station Exchange, a service designed to facilitate the buying and selling of virtual goods in its EverQuest games. Thus far, however, Linden Lab was the only company to design a game around a virtual economy. That game was Second Life.

 In many ways similar to The Sims, the top-selling PC game of all time, Second Life was less a game and more a virtual world. Though The Sims Online was a relative failure when it launched in late 2002, Second Life became a runaway success. The difference was in the economic models adopted by the two games. Whereas The Sims Online was criticized for its lack of any clear goals for players, Second Life offered players the opportunity to use the game world and their own talents to make as much money as they possibly could. For a monthly subscription fee, players received an allowance of Lindens (the in-game currency) that officially exchanged with U.S. dollars at a rate of approximately 250:1. Players could then purchase in-game items, customize those items by using 3D-imaging software, and resell them at a profit. For some, crafting items and managing virtual real estate in Second Life became a “first life” business. A German couple, acting through their in-game persona Anshe Chung, earned almost $200,000 in 2006 by developing and marketing property within Second Life. Many groups were eager to target one of the fastest-growing communities on the Internet—Second Life's population hit one million in October 2006, and its numbers were increasing by some 10,000 a day. Starwood Hotels built a resort on a virtual desert island; BBC Radio 1 opened a concert venue to online music festivals; Toyota gave away a model from its Scion line; and Virginia politician Mark Warner conducted a town-hall interview with a Second Life reporter. As the game became more like reality, some players joked that they were in need of a “third life.”

Michael Ray

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