keep on their limited
shelves. B&N has always had strong community outreach programs,
and I've done some of my best-attended, best-organized signings at
B&N stores, including the great events at the (sadly departed)
B&N in Union Square, New York, where the mega-signing after the
Nebula Awards took place, and the B&N in Chicago that hosted the
event after the Nebs a few years later. Best of all is that B&N's
"geeky" buyers really Get It when it comes to science
fiction, comics and manga, games and similar titles. They're
passionate and knowledgeable about the field and it shows in the
excellent selection on display at the stores.
Barnes
and Noble, nationwide
Gold. It's all about gold.
But not regular gold, the sort of thing you dig out of the ground. That stuff was for the last century. There's not enough of it, for one thing: all the gold ever dug out of the ground in the history of the world would only amount to a cube whose sides were the length of a tennis court. And curiously, there's also too much of it: all the certificates of gold ownership issued into the world add up to a cube twice that size. Some of those certificates don't amount to anything -- and no one knows which ones. No one has independently audited Fort Knox since 1956 FCK. For all we know, it's empty, the gold smuggled out and sold, put in a vault, sold as certificates, then stolen again and put into another vault, used as the basis for more certificates.
Not regular gold.
Virtual
gold.
Call it what you want: in one game it's called "Credits," in another, "Volcano Bucks." There are groats, Disney Dollars, cowries, moolah, and Fool's Gold, and a million other kinds of gold out there. Unlike real gold, there's no vault of reserves backing the certificates. Unlike money, there's no government involved in their issue.
Virtual gold is issued by companies. Game companies. Game companies who declare, "So many gold pieces can buy this piece of armor," or "So many credits can buy this space ship" or "So much Jools can buy this zeppelin." And because they say it, it is true. Countries and their banks have to mess around with the ugly business of convincing citizens to believe what they say: the government may say, "This social security check will provide for all your needs in a month," but that doesn't mean that the merchants who supply those needs will agree.
Companies don't have this problem. When Coca Cola says that 76 groats will buy you one dwarvish axe in Svartalfaheim Warriors, that's it: the price of an axe is 76 groats. Don't like it? Go play somewhere else.
Virtual money isn't backed by gold or governments: it's backed by
fun
. So long as a game is fun, players somewhere will want to buy into it, because as fun as the game is, it's always more fun if you're one of the haves, with all the awesome armor and killer weapons, than if you're some lowly noob have-not with a dagger, fighting your way up to your first sword.
But where there's money to be spent, there's money to be made. For some players, the most fun game of all is the game that carves them out a slice of the pie. Not all the action belongs to the giant companies up on their tall offices and the games they make. Plenty of us can get in on the action from down below, where the grubby little people are.
Of course, this makes the companies
bonkers
. They're big daddy, they know what's best for their worlds. They are
in control
. They design the levels and the difficulty to make it all perfectly balanced. They design the puzzles. They decree that light elves can't talk to dark elves, that players on Russian servers can't hop onto the Chinese servers, that it would take the average player 32 hours to attain the Von Klausewitz drive and 48 hours to earn the Order of the Armored Penguin. If you don't like it, you're supposed to
leave
: you're not supposed to just
buy
your way out of it. Or if you do, you should have the decency to buy it from
them
.
And here's a little something they won't tell
shelves. B&N has always had strong community outreach programs,
and I've done some of my best-attended, best-organized signings at
B&N stores, including the great events at the (sadly departed)
B&N in Union Square, New York, where the mega-signing after the
Nebula Awards took place, and the B&N in Chicago that hosted the
event after the Nebs a few years later. Best of all is that B&N's
"geeky" buyers really Get It when it comes to science
fiction, comics and manga, games and similar titles. They're
passionate and knowledgeable about the field and it shows in the
excellent selection on display at the stores.
Barnes
and Noble, nationwide
Gold. It's all about gold.
But not regular gold, the sort of thing you dig out of the ground. That stuff was for the last century. There's not enough of it, for one thing: all the gold ever dug out of the ground in the history of the world would only amount to a cube whose sides were the length of a tennis court. And curiously, there's also too much of it: all the certificates of gold ownership issued into the world add up to a cube twice that size. Some of those certificates don't amount to anything -- and no one knows which ones. No one has independently audited Fort Knox since 1956 FCK. For all we know, it's empty, the gold smuggled out and sold, put in a vault, sold as certificates, then stolen again and put into another vault, used as the basis for more certificates.
Not regular gold.
Virtual
gold.
Call it what you want: in one game it's called "Credits," in another, "Volcano Bucks." There are groats, Disney Dollars, cowries, moolah, and Fool's Gold, and a million other kinds of gold out there. Unlike real gold, there's no vault of reserves backing the certificates. Unlike money, there's no government involved in their issue.
Virtual gold is issued by companies. Game companies. Game companies who declare, "So many gold pieces can buy this piece of armor," or "So many credits can buy this space ship" or "So much Jools can buy this zeppelin." And because they say it, it is true. Countries and their banks have to mess around with the ugly business of convincing citizens to believe what they say: the government may say, "This social security check will provide for all your needs in a month," but that doesn't mean that the merchants who supply those needs will agree.
Companies don't have this problem. When Coca Cola says that 76 groats will buy you one dwarvish axe in Svartalfaheim Warriors, that's it: the price of an axe is 76 groats. Don't like it? Go play somewhere else.
Virtual money isn't backed by gold or governments: it's backed by
fun
. So long as a game is fun, players somewhere will want to buy into it, because as fun as the game is, it's always more fun if you're one of the haves, with all the awesome armor and killer weapons, than if you're some lowly noob have-not with a dagger, fighting your way up to your first sword.
But where there's money to be spent, there's money to be made. For some players, the most fun game of all is the game that carves them out a slice of the pie. Not all the action belongs to the giant companies up on their tall offices and the games they make. Plenty of us can get in on the action from down below, where the grubby little people are.
Of course, this makes the companies
bonkers
. They're big daddy, they know what's best for their worlds. They are
in control
. They design the levels and the difficulty to make it all perfectly balanced. They design the puzzles. They decree that light elves can't talk to dark elves, that players on Russian servers can't hop onto the Chinese servers, that it would take the average player 32 hours to attain the Von Klausewitz drive and 48 hours to earn the Order of the Armored Penguin. If you don't like it, you're supposed to
leave
: you're not supposed to just
buy
your way out of it. Or if you do, you should have the decency to buy it from
them
.
And here's a little something they won't tell
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