1

Kim Angkasirisan
Mr. Aaron Neugeboren
English 1001
15 June 2016
Doing Business with Online Role Playing Games
People buy and sell things in the virtual world. Often, people use MMORPGs (Mass
Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) for this purpose. Players will play their roles in the big
community second life (virtual world) to clear the quests or tasks in each story of the game.
Players could meet the NPC (Non-Player Character) and the strangers from the other side of the
world. They may be good or bad. You could not know. Some people get a group of friends from
MMORPGs and hang out together in real world and some people found a true love. However,
there is bad people camouflage with the society in virtual world and waiting for an opportunity to
rob the prey with low possibility to find the criminal, so be sure before interacting with someone
who you do not know. Now, let is get in the topic.
Virtual world also called as Massively Multiplayer Online World (MMOW) is a computer
based environment populated by many users who can create their own character. Interacting by
the activities and communicate with others in the virtual worlds. But these virtual world still
divided into difference games and servers with one big difference from real life. Which is there is
a big difference between the populations of male and female because males are usually play
games more than females. This games and servers are like many worlds in many galaxies in real
life. Your character cannot interact with other character across the game or server. This also
include the items that cannot be trade to other server or game. These items in MMORPG can be
trade easily with its own currency. The in-game currency of MMORPGs are copper, silver, and
gold. A hundred of copper is equal to one silver and a hundred of silver is

Doing Business with Online Role Playing Games

equal to one gold. At very first level of the game, it is really hard to find a gold. This kind of
game usually has a trade operation as an auction house, so the trade begins.
Talking about trade, people may think about exchange the ownership of goods or services
from one person to another usually for the benefits or for free if you are friend. Same as virtual
trade, players are classified as two types, normal player and merchant player. Normal players are
playing game for fun with friends while merchant players, in other word greedy player, keep
everything in the game, and drop of sweat of them, to worth for money. For example, game
accounts, currency, equipment, weapons, and fashions. These players have a calculation in their
brain in every minutes on virtual world need to be worth and have no loss at all. But do not they
think what they do would negatively affect the game system, encouragement of normal players
and economic.
From the freelance that like to play games become a business man with their own store in
the cyber world, advertising their work via social network or the games. At this stage, not just
goods are kept for sale but also services. The service is usually the labor work that play game for
the hirer for the purpose such as boosting the levels or ranks, or clearing the quests or tasks.
The reasons why people like to buy and sell goods or services on virtual world are going
to divide into views of merchant players and views of normal players or customers. First as a
view of merchant player, this freelance is a part-time work that they can do what they like which
is sitting in front of the computer and play games. It is not worth as other jobs but it is better than
playing game for fun without getting any money although the gamers think it does not a waste of

Doing Business with Online Role Playing Games

time. However as a view of customer, everyone want to be cool, different, and higher than other.
This is the main reason that people like to buy or invest the money with the game. So, the
customers would put the money even they can afford or not, if they are too addicted to games, to
make them feel higher than other. This really make the MMORPGs divide the class of player,
top-up and non-top-up. The players with better wealth could have a better character with rare
weapons, equipment, and fashions that make them have an easier gameplay. While non-top-up
players would need much more time and effort to find a currency to be used to buy an item that
looks cool like top-up players.
This make each item in MMORPGs has different value. The items price are measured by
how easy or hard to find an item and the potency of it. For example, if the item has only one in
the server, it may has a price as high as 100,000 Baht for the collectors even it is just a virtual
goods and it cannot be used in real life at all. Some item may not has a value at all and you can
remove it without any regret if you could get it commonly. So this kind of game MMORPGs are
usually classified the value of item basically the lowest tier as normal or basic and represent by
white color. Next tier is called as common or advanced and represent by green color. The
following tier is called as rare or special and represent by blue color. And next tier is a high grade
of item and this tier may called in different way in each MMORPGs for example artifact, unique,
epic, very rare, or super rare, represent by color like red, purple, orange, light yellow. The items
are not just priced by grade but also how much of it has been forging. The items are enhanced
from (+0) to (+1), (+2), and (+3) and can be add up to (+10) or (+20) depends on the game to
make the items have more power. So overall, the price of item is calculated by level of

Doing Business with Online Role Playing Games

an item, the grade, and forging. The seller and buyer set up their own price from this rubric to
think of how much items worth.
Currency of the game also has the rates to real money currency the same way it works
with THB to USD. The rates are calculated by MOMI (Money-In Money-Out), the money that
players get from daily gameplay and money that use to buy goods or services. At very first day
of the new MMORPG is opened, it is usually has a rate about one gold to one baht because the
gold is very hard to find but after the game opened for years the rate could get about 50 golds to
a baht because the game has more higher level players and the currency was so easy to find. In
this case as the merchant players, they want to sell the lower rate of gold to baht to get more
profits even it does not affect the merchants much because they can find the gold easier as the
rate come up. But as the normal players, they need to play game more to be cool and this could
lead to the player stop playing the game. The higher rates of gold make the best benefit to top-up
players, as the same money they use in game, they would get more currency. So the game need
some people to take care of this imbalanced problem.
In the real life, government are involved in the economic with producers and consumers
same as MMORPGs. In the case, the government is usually the game companies who has all the
right to control the virtual world, and GM (Game Master) as a government representative. Their
job is to convince people to play their game because that is where they get salary. But they also
need moral and ethics. The game with this good GM would be more successful. They need to
make the strict rule to the cyber-crime. Usually MMORPGs have a rule that players cannot trade

Doing Business with Online Role Playing Games

items for real money in game because it has high risk of deceive but players still have other
medium, social networks, to trade and go against the rule. Also the control of economic because
sometimes merchants set the makeup price of item too high than the normal players could afford
that would cause an inflation any time. Society needs good people to continue on.
In conclude, you may get a big view of advantages and disadvantages of doing business
on the virtual and the reason why do they need to do. Some people need friends, some people
need to escape from real life, some people want a work, and some people want to be popular but
the world could not survive if the world lack of good people.

Bibliography
Alireza Tavakkoli, D. L., & Sr., M. W. (2014, April 12). Insights from Massively Multiplayer Online Role
Playing Games to Enhance Gamification in Education. Retrieved from Directory of Open Access
Journals: http://www.iiisci.org/Journal/CV$/sci/pdfs/SA750NZ14.pdf
business. (n.d.). Retrieved from
BusinessDictionary.com:http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/business.html
Juho Hamri, V. L. (2010). Game design as marketing: How game mechanics create demand for virtual
goods. Journal of Business Science and Applied Management.
Lijun Li, L. Y., & Huang, X. (2009, January 6). Research on Competitive Pricing Models Based on
Bertrand and Stackelberg Game under Electronic Commerce. Retrieved from Direct of Open
Access Journals: https://doaj.org/article/811abd5f67ed430c9cdd078314225b1b
Virtual Reality in Business. (2016, January 9). Retrieved from Virtual Reality Society:
http://www.vrs.org.uk/virtual-reality-applications/business.html
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (2016, May 12). Bertrand competition. Retrieved from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_competition
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (2016, April 14). Virtual economy. Retrieved from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_economy
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (2016, March 31). Virtual world. Retrieved from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_world
Wkipedia, the free encyclopedia. (2016, April 29). Virtual goods. Retrieved from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_goods