Who owns your virtual life?

The Participation Problem

The problem for MMOs is two-fold: the first is that you’re not being a sold a product that ends, you’re being sold an experience, and one that you and other players play part in creating. The second is that there is a general trend towards people sharing, creating, remixing and messing with elements of popular culture. Regulating both of these, especially with an old-school attitude, is very tricky.

MMO players play a significant role in creating the game, to the point that the creation of the game could be considered a partnership. Blizzard might provide the polygons and the servers, and script a few missions, but the intrigue, the stories, the emotional involvement, are all made by the players.

What contributes more to the game’s sense of fun – the polygons, interface and horde of AI bad guys you fight, or the fact that using VoIP, you and people from all over the planet execute a flawless ambush with the kind of teamwork that makes Argentina’s 24-pass goal look passé, before making off with some top quality loot to enrich your guild’s coffers,and then having a good chuckle about with your comrades it on the forum? One, the other, or both?


Still, the Blizzard ToS doesn’t stop this kind of fun from happening, so what’s the problem? Well, for starters, the fact Blizzard doesn’t recognise player contribution – or at least, doesn’t give it parity with their own creations – means they can behave in a draconian way, such as when they (briefly) threatened a player with a ban for setting up a gay guild.

The attitude also feeds the economics problem. In Second Life, you own your stuff, so selling it is no problem. In WoW, you don’t own anything, so you can’t sell it.

And yet buying and selling currency and characters is an accepted part of the game for many players – when I searched Google to read the WoW ToS for this article, the tenth result was an EBay auction for a level 60 mage assuring me it was all above board. The lack of official action seems crazy, especially given how well organised professional gold-farmers are (the MMO blog Terra Nova has a fascinating in depth look at this.)