For sellout I mean this. He commented on a thread on Grimwell.

—

Raph:
For that matter, I made my feelings known about it back when I was on UO.

Short-form:

– the fact that people want to pay real money for virtual stuff is a massive validation of the emotional power that online world can possess.
– the level playing field is a myth, and these generally aren’t competitive games anyway.
– your achievement is not diminished because someone else took a shortcut. I know this hurts deep in the gut somewhere, but it’s still true.
– any design approaches to removing RMT tend to involve ridiculous design compromises. Removing all forms of trade? No thanks.
– these are worlds anyway, not games. They embed games. You can eliminate RMT on an embedded game on a case by case basis, but trying to remove it from a world is pointless.
– look to Korea and their current biggest business model (hint: it isn’t subs). They are the harbingers, and they got over this already.

I tend to agree but about the third point I’d say that the achievement is conditioned by what others do. If everything is solo-accessible, okay. But if the achievement requires multiplayer (or PvP), what other players do affects my experience as well. There’s no need to discuss the specifics of the virtual economy, just try to build a group to do a mudflated quest: it won’t be possible. The virtual-real economy is a direct mudflation process and it has an effect for everyone living in the same environment.

And about the fourth point I agree that it’s pathetic to try to fix the consequence of the problem when it is already obvious. But, for sure, it’s not pathetic to fix the origin.

He goes on but I won’t criticize since I have different ideas and our directions become different aims, not directly comparable (for example I believe that trading can and should be removed to be rebuilt in other ways and yes, you can get rid of scarcity.)

I don’t think the issue is capitalism.

What is the difference between outfitting a guildmate, and RMT?
What is the difference between twinking, and RMT?
What is the difference between gifting a newb with some goods, and RMT?
What is the difference between handing over phat lewt to a pretty female avatar who promises to have hot netsex with you, and RMT?

You’re going to say “money.” But I’m going to say “there isn’t one.”

Because if the gripe is the alteration of the game world, then it’s already been altered. Trading opened the door to all of this. There was no level playing field in the first place. Any demeaning of your achievement already happened.

If the concern is farming specifically, then yes, I agree. But farming occurs quite independently of real money. It exists because there is scarcity in the game world and demand for the scarce good. Do you want to get rid of scarcity? I didn’t think so.

The question really needs to be “what part of a game world is being altered here?” I haven’t gotten any good answers yet.

My answer to the last question:
“The game is at loss.”

(but he knows already that one)