Archives for business-models category
This week, Linden Lab announced that it was going to start charging listing fees and minimum commissions on its Second Life Xstreet Web-shopping adjunct in the near future. Within hours, vendors took down thousands of products, many abandoning the service entirely in favor of alternative services.
It’s unclear just how many vendors have abandoned the Xstreet SL system, but it apparently was enough to temporarily overload the Web-sites of third-party sites such as Slapt.
Continue reading Linden Lab to raise Xstreet fees, loses vendors, products
Filed under: Business models, Culture, Economy, News items, Opinion, Second Life, Virtual worlds
Linden Lab to raise Xstreet fees, loses vendors, products originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Posted on November 20th, 2009 at 5:00pm by Tateru Nino
Filed Under: business-models, culture, economy, linden-dollars, linden-lab, opinion, second-life, sl-policy, slapt, virtual-worlds, xstreet, xstreet-sl
“Companies should just stop gold farmers.” It’s a consistent complaint in many games, with “gold” replaced by your game’s currency of choice. As complaints go, it’s right around “somebody should do something about all the problems” in terms of overall utility, but heck, no one likes the practice and it should just be eliminated, right? Well, as Scott Jennings has pointed out recently, it’s not quite that easy.
As Lum points out, there are several common misconceptions about the entire process. Among them are the idea that the game company doesn’t step in because they’re getting kickbacks, which is pointed out to fail the simple test of Occam’s razor. When developers want to get more money from an existing game, there are usually better ways to run it, such as the Champions Online model or the Dungeons and Dragons Online approach. He also tackles the infamous statement that the farmers are paying customers and therefore the company has even less incentive to stop them.
So if everyone hates RMT, why is it still around? The article briefly touches upon it, but We Fly Spitfires had a recent post that articulates more specifically: more people buy gold than would necessarily admit it. Since no one will admit to it, no one ever asks, and as a result there’s a large culture of silence that publicly despises it and privately takes part. In short? As long as there’s a customer base, the farming will continue. Food for thought all around.
Filed under: Business models, Culture, Economy, Exploits, Opinion
Why RMT won’t go away originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Posted on November 20th, 2009 at 10:00am by Eliot Lefebvre
Filed Under: business-models, champions-online, co, culture, ddo, dungeons-and-dragons-online, economy, exploits, gold-farming, lum-the-mad, microtransactions, rmt, scott-jennings, we-fly-spitfires
Subscription fees are a fact of life for us MMO players. Most of our favorite games come with one, and it’s usually 14.99 nowadays. Ages ago, we could remember paying the 9.99 a month for our games, before that slowly rose to 12.95 a month and then became the current plateau of 14.95 a month.
Sure, we always have the option of playing more money up front to pay a reduced monthly cost, thanks to the miracle of multi-month subscription plans, but today’s question isn’t about that. It’s about your thoughts on the subscription fees. What do you think is a fair price to charge?
Now don’t be silly and say free, because we all know servers don’t run themselves and bandwidth isn’t free. While we’re not all in the know about the cost to a blockbuster MMO, we do know how much we’re willing to shell out for our games. What’s the price you’d like to be able to shell out?
Filed under: Business models, Culture, Opinion, The Daily Grind
The Daily Grind: What’s a fair price for subscription fees? originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Posted on November 19th, 2009 at 8:00am by Seraphina Brennan
Filed Under: business-models, culture, opinion, subscription-fees, the-daily-grind
Filed under: Business models, MMO industry, News items, Second Life, Virtual worlds
Virtual environment operator Linden Lab has partnered up with 888 Holdings plc’s Gisland/Dragonfish division to provide payment processing for non-US Second Life customers.
A spokesperson for Linden Lab told us, “We’re working together with Gisland on a cashier interface and other tools that will give Residents more payment options and make it easier for Residents to pay in a wider range of native currencies than they can now. Gisland will also help Linden Lab implement appropriate anti-fraud measures as we expand these payment options. In addition, Gisland will assist Residents directly with payment-related issues, including failed transactions.”
That last part is fascinating, as that would be something of a first insofar as Second Life payments processing goes, as is the tantalizing hint of expanded payment options – something that is of considerable interest to users outside North America.
Continue reading Linden Lab partners with Dragonfish for non-US payments processing
Linden Lab partners with Dragonfish for non-US payments processing originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Posted on November 18th, 2009 at 9:00pm by Tateru Nino
Filed Under: 888-holdings-plc, business-models, dragonfish, gambling, gisland, linden-lab, m-linden, mark-kingdon, mmo-industry, second-life, virtual-worlds
Filed under: Fantasy, Historical, Business models, Launches, New titles, News items, Free-to-play
You’ve taken part in the endless debates online about pirates versus ninjas. Admit it, you have. Well, add cowboys, knights, wizards, and nurses into the mix, and you’re nine-tenths of the way to Lost Saga, a new game launched by OGPlanet. Billed as a massively multiplayer online fighting game, it features a variety of different gameplay modes and “heroes” that combine for what looks like an entertaining and frantic experience. Character types run the gamut, from soldiers to assassins to (you guessed it) pirates and ninjas, each bringing a small collection of different abilities to the table.
It might sound a bit simplistic, but there are some interesting features such as the option to change heroes mid-battle — in essence a quick class change whenever needed. The game also features some interesting battle modes beyond the prosaic Deathmatch style, such as Boss Raid, which allows one player to take the reins of an intensely powerful boss while the other players struggle to take said player down. And let’s not forget that the game is also free-to-play, so you can satisfy your curiosity without commitment. Lost Saga won’t revolutionize the industry, but it looks to be quite a bit of fun, so you might want to check out the official site for more information and to sign up.
Lost Saga launches originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Posted on November 18th, 2009 at 8:00pm by Eliot Lefebvre
Filed Under: business-models, f2p, launches, lost-saga, new-titles, news-items, ogplanet
