In the recent release of the Station Exchange Whitepaper it
has been revealed that two individuals (players) have made over $37,000 in U.S.
funds during the first year of its existence. The rest of the top 10
“entrepreneurs” all sacked $11,000+ to $18,000+. Not a bad supplemental income
for playing video games.
The selling of virtual items via third party
sites and services has for a long time now been criticized and battled by
publishers and gamers alike. Despite everyone’s best efforts though (including
E-Bay now banning such auctions) it is apparent that this is a loosing battle
and the demand is just to huge. In June of 2005 Sony Online Entertainment
decided to experiment and see if they could capitalize on this and make it
profitable for themselves as well as their customers.Enter Station
Exchange. Station Exchange is a virtual goods auction site put in place by Sony
for people on select EverQuest II servers to sell their in-game currency, armor,
other items and even characters (avatars). It should be noted that this service
was also proposed to the Star Wars Galaxies community as well and was met with
very negative feedback so it did not see the light of day for any SWG
servers.
The Sony auction site offers everything a third party site
normally would accept that it makes all transactions secure and un-revocable.
Which is something third party sites could not do. Gone are the days of you
paying $2,000 for an avatar only to have the seller change the password on the
account after the auction closes and keeping that money you just sent him via
PayPal. The Station Exchange program does this by removing the item up for sale
from the sellers inventory and holding it until the auctions completion. Once
the auction is over and payment made (through Sony) the item or character is
delivered to the buyers account.
Station Exchange is more of an
experimentation to source out new for SOE than a way to stop third party illegal
actions. Kind of a “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” mentality. Even so, the
whitepaper does point out the following additional benefits SOE gained through
the program.
Quote:
| The
introduction of Station Exchange did, however, have a marked effect on SOE’s
ability to mediate problems that arose as a result of illicit trading via third
party auctions. Prior to the introduction of Station Exchange, 40 percent of
customer service time was spent on disputes over virtual item sales. Since the
debut of the Exchange, the overall customer service time spent has dropped 30
percent. |
From June of 2005 to
June of 2006 1,870,000.00 total (with a daily average of 2,588.00) dollars
passed through the Station Exchange service. Out of this total amount Sony
received $274,083 which is comprised mostly of a 10% closing fee per auction but
also includes $1.00 (items and coins) and $10.00 (characters) listing fees.
While this was never meant to be a huge “cash cow” for Sony, that $274,083
effectively translates to 1,522.683 new game accounts paying $15 per month for a
period of twelve months and is money in their pocket that they would not of
otherwise had.
Of note is the not only the top sellers and the revenue
they received (as mentioned in the start of this article), but that the top
buyer spent $19,000 during the first twelve months buying items. This person
also does not appear on the “top lists” for any of the sellers categories. Which
means they are either buying the items and playing the game (making use of
purchased items in-game) or, they are making bad investments and can not
“offload” what they bought.
The whitepaper also goes on to tell of the
top zip codes for buying and selling which shows an unforeseen
outcome.
Quote:
|
A
more granular look at the top buyer and seller zip codes reveals some unexpected
results. The top buyer and seller zip codes, by number of auctions as well as
value of auctions, are all in PA.
Some 1,121 buys totaling $18,685 were made from Levittown, PA. One
of the earliest planned suburbs, it now has a median household income of
$52,123. Given the small population of Levittown, it is likely that one or more
entrepreneurs there are attempting to earn a regular income through real money
trading on Station Exchange. (Levittowners are down $5,172 for the year, with
696 sales totaling $13,513 as of June 2006.)
Tiny Northumberland, PA, population 7,463, also saw heavy buying and
selling, accounting for $41,000 in purchases and $40,000 in sales. It was
followed closely by Antioch, TN with $39,000 in purchases and $27,909 in sales.
None of the top 20 zip codes showed a profit
for the first year, although the June 2006 end date may not represent a full
year of trading for these sellers.
|
So, what could this possibly mean for us,
the players? A possible new business model for one. In his blog after the
posting of this whitepaper John Smedley (President of Sony Online Entertainment)
talks about Real Money Trading and the future of MMO games.
Quote:
| After
having seen Station Exchange running for over a year now, I’ve come to see RMT
in an entirely different light and I believe the real future of RMT is actually
a really bright one if we can work on our game designs in such a way as to make
it a cool part of the games. Imagine an MMO without a subscription fee that has
Station Exchange built into it. However, the game is designed in such a way as
to only allow the sale and transfer of non-game impacting items. What if an
in-game tailor had the toolset to actually put cool designs on clothing and
literally make them custom for different players, and then that person could
open a virtual storefront on Station Exchange. That’s the kind of cool thing we
see in the future and frankly it’s the direction we want to steer things. To
create an ecosystem for players to make money from these games while they’re
having fun. |
For more information
on this subject (and plenty of graphs) you can download the full whitepaper here.
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