Raph

Heh, I wasn't answering the article, but the thread. :)

I do agree that we form attachments of varying degrees to tokens, by the way. So I agree with the article. But I think that's a much more complex area, whereas I consider the avatar issue pretty black and white -- there's no shortage of studies and science around it.

My core point was that those who think that they are chess pieces are outright wrong, at the very least in terms of how the human brain works and how other players react to the avatar.

Psst, try over at GigaOM.

We wanted to make it public specifically so that it could garner comments and get adjusted, of course, so thanks for the feedback. :)

"For example: the ToS guarantees players a right to their property within the game. On the other hand, it guarantees world creators the right to destroy their worlds at any moment for any reason with no liability to the players in them."

A right to own their *intellectual* property. IP is not represented by the bits and bytes on the server -- that is merely a manifestation (a "fixing in form") of IP.

"In another place, we're told that Areae and world creators won't spy on us -- unless doing so is "reasonable.""

Unfortunately, we can't use blanket language here because the law says that while we can ignore certain kinds of things, it's illegal for us to ignore gambling, for example.

"The ToS also promises that users can't be discriminated against based on sex, race, or national origin. Where is sexual orientation?"

Fair point. We don't want to list every possible sort of discrimination, but we do want to be inclusive, too.

"There's also a part that says the document should never infringe on other rights "retained" by the world creators. Doesn't say what outside (or inside) volition can grant those other rights, though!"

I assume you mean #9:

"The enumeration in this document of rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by world creators."

There are many rights provided by law, for example.

I do think that all things considered, this is a pretty small list of adjustments. :) Thanks for writing it up!

It wasn't really "thanks to me" -- I helped get it off the ground, but really the credit goes to the many EQ2 and SOE team members who helped the project out long after I was gone.

"If designers emphasize gameplay over simple epic item collection in the first place, there's no reason for RMT at all."

I have to admit I am unsure, as a game designer, that this is the case. I think there's always some portion of people who just want the status, and not the process. It might be because of limited time, wanting to play with friends, interest in only the high-end gameplay, or outright desire to have bragging rights. But i think it is awfully hard to design around.

Randy Farmer does have a design of an RMT-proof game system. It's kind of a scary game design for an RPG, I suspect. :) Bottom line, the way to prevent buying of gold and items is to not allow players to transfer gold and items. :)

Real Money Trading. I think. :)

As I pointed out in today's blog post, "strategy guides" used to be a bannable offense too. Multiboxing. Chatting spoilers. Powerlevelling. And so on.

The guy who did the video works for TV. :) So he just did a very slick sort of TV-style presentation. It wasn't that anything we showed was all that sensitive.