Virtual Worlds

5.0 Exchange Rate
Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) forms a huge portion of virtual economy. The understanding of an MMOPRG’s economy operation is helping players to generate real world money. Having various discussions about the operations relating the economy of MoSiang above, I believe everyone has a basic understanding on the methods player control the economy in a virtual world, to be more exact, in MoSiang Online. Exchange rate is the bridge to connect the real world economy with the virtual economy. Players who earned more than what they spent in the game will earn real money outside the world.

5.1 Gaming Open Market (GOM)

Buyers and sellers of the virtual currency used to trade across eBay and forums for years. Now that trade over Gaming Open Market (GOM) in dollar-to-game-currency. Players can easily survey the market price and identify who is selling how much for what price. GOM gives both buyers and sellers an added benefit of holding currency securely. They have more protection as the virtual currencies for sale must be deposited with GOM and accounts are settled through PayPal payments.

Up to 2005, the subscribers of some popular MMORPG games are something like this:

5.2 Exchange Rate in MoSiang

Few types of players can be identified, which are:

A, Players who spend time farming gold all the time and accumulate wealth. They follow the requirements step by step and change equipments when required. Mostly they do not spend real cash in the game. They form a stable target market for equipment sellers, besides provide a source of game money.

B, Players who buy and resell the cash item at higher price in game. They aim for the higher income level players. Normally these people are the medium who change the real world money into game money as they require a lot of money to retain their status in game.

C, Players who create high level and quality virtual items (armors or weapons) for the market. They really surveyed the game and have certain level understanding of the game. They make full use of the combining and PU skills and the cash items available to make the valued goods. They probably earn their real money through supplying the virtual currencies to players, from the powerful virtual items they made. They can be the example of monopoly industry in the game.

At the launch of the game, the currency is valuable as MS gold is hard to farm. When players increased and the conditions keep changed, the game market experienced inflation, and the exchange rate is different from the beginning state already. We can tell this when compare with last time. Take a “Speed Talisman 15 days (cash item)” for example, it was sold at about 32m+/- in market for now. Last time (during 15th of April 2009) the price is 6m only. That means players who buy the speed talisman at 6m that time can earn 5 times the currency if they sell it now.



Another way of proving this is through the selling of virtual currency at legal website, Aingame.com. The exchange rate will differ according to the demand by players and the market price of the game. In MoSiang, Aingame.com assigns a character in vendor state yelling and "roaring", reminding players that they can buy MS gold from their website. In this way the authority can examine the exchange rate from player's trading pattern as well.

Screenshot 1 above shows that, as at 19th April, Aingame character “roars” the exchange rate at 105m per RM110/46 Singapore $. Screenshot 2 however, shows that as at 02 October 2009, the exchange rate is now at 200m per RM100 at Aingame.com website. 1m, being sold at RM1.05 at April, is now being sold at RM0.50. The value dropped sharply in half year’s time. Players are investing in the virtual currency in a risky way. If the inflation goes on like this, the game currency will slowly lose its value. Therefore, the government (RUNUP, Official Company) needs to do something to solve the problem.



Reference:

http://www.aingame.com

http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/news/2004/01/61999