you, these Gods of the Virtual: they
can't
control it. Kids, crooks, and weirdos all over the world have riddled their safe little terrarrium worlds with tunnels leading to the great outdoors. There are multiple, competing interworld exchanges: want to swap out your Zombie Mecha wealth for a fully loaded spaceship and a crew of jolly space-pirates to crew it? Ten different gangs want your business -- they'll fix you right up with someone else's spaceship and take your mecha, arms and ammo into inventory for the next person who wants to immigrate to Zombie Mecha from some other magical world.
And the Gods are powerless to stop it. For every barrier they put up, there are hundreds of smart, motivated players of the Big Game who will knock it down.
You'd think it'd be impossible, wouldn't you? After all, these aren't mere games of cops and robbers, played out in real cities filled with real people. They don't need an all-points bulletin to find a fugitive at large: every person in the world is in the database, and they own the database. They don't need a search warrant to find the contraband hiding under your floorboards: the floorboards, the contraband, the house and you are all in the database -- and they own the database.
It should be impossible, but it isn't, and here's why: the biggest sellers of gold and treasure, levels and experience in the worlds
are the game companies themselves
. Oh, they don't
call
it power-levelling and gold-farming -- they package it with prettier, more palatable names, like "accelerated progress bonus pack" and "All Together Now(TM)" and lots of other redonkulous names that don't fool anyone.
But the Gods aren't happy with merely turning a buck on players who are too lazy to work their way up through the game. They've got a much, much weirder game in play. They sell gold to people
who don't even play the game
. That's right: if you're a bigshot finance guy and you're looking for somewhere to stash a million bucks where it will do some good, you can buy a million dollars' worth of virtual gold, hang onto it as the game grows and becomes more and more fun, as the value of the gold rises and rises, and then you can sell it back for real money through the official in-game banks, pocketing a chunky profit for your trouble.
So while you're piloting your mecha, swinging your axe or commanding your space fleet, there's a group of weird old grownups in suits in fancy offices all over the world watching your play eagerly, trying to figure out if the value of in-game gold is going to go up or down. When a game starts to suck, everyone rushes to sell out their holdings, getting rid of the gold as fast as they can before its value it obliterated by bored gamers switching to a competing service. And when the game gets
more
fun, well, that's an even bigger frenzy, as the bidding wars kick up to high gear, every banker in the world trying to buy the same gold for the same world.
Is it any wonder that eight of the 20 largest economies in the world are in virtual countries? And is it any wonder that playing has become such a serious business?
#
This
scene is dedicated to Secret Headquarters in Los Angeles, my
drop-dead all-time favorite comic store in the world. It's small and
selective about what it stocks, and every time I walk in, I walk out
with three or four collections I'd never heard of under my arm. It's
like the owners, Dave and David, have the uncanny ability to predict
exactly what I'm looking for, and they lay it out for me seconds
before I walk into the store. I discovered about three quarters of my
favorite comics by wandering into SHQ, grabbing something
interesting, sinking into one of the comfy chairs, and finding myself
transported to another world. When my second story-collection,
OVERCLOCKED, came out, they worked with local illustrator Martin
Cenreda to do a free mini-comic based on Printcrime, the first story
in the book. I left LA about a year ago, and of all the things I miss
about
can't
control it. Kids, crooks, and weirdos all over the world have riddled their safe little terrarrium worlds with tunnels leading to the great outdoors. There are multiple, competing interworld exchanges: want to swap out your Zombie Mecha wealth for a fully loaded spaceship and a crew of jolly space-pirates to crew it? Ten different gangs want your business -- they'll fix you right up with someone else's spaceship and take your mecha, arms and ammo into inventory for the next person who wants to immigrate to Zombie Mecha from some other magical world.
And the Gods are powerless to stop it. For every barrier they put up, there are hundreds of smart, motivated players of the Big Game who will knock it down.
You'd think it'd be impossible, wouldn't you? After all, these aren't mere games of cops and robbers, played out in real cities filled with real people. They don't need an all-points bulletin to find a fugitive at large: every person in the world is in the database, and they own the database. They don't need a search warrant to find the contraband hiding under your floorboards: the floorboards, the contraband, the house and you are all in the database -- and they own the database.
It should be impossible, but it isn't, and here's why: the biggest sellers of gold and treasure, levels and experience in the worlds
are the game companies themselves
. Oh, they don't
call
it power-levelling and gold-farming -- they package it with prettier, more palatable names, like "accelerated progress bonus pack" and "All Together Now(TM)" and lots of other redonkulous names that don't fool anyone.
But the Gods aren't happy with merely turning a buck on players who are too lazy to work their way up through the game. They've got a much, much weirder game in play. They sell gold to people
who don't even play the game
. That's right: if you're a bigshot finance guy and you're looking for somewhere to stash a million bucks where it will do some good, you can buy a million dollars' worth of virtual gold, hang onto it as the game grows and becomes more and more fun, as the value of the gold rises and rises, and then you can sell it back for real money through the official in-game banks, pocketing a chunky profit for your trouble.
So while you're piloting your mecha, swinging your axe or commanding your space fleet, there's a group of weird old grownups in suits in fancy offices all over the world watching your play eagerly, trying to figure out if the value of in-game gold is going to go up or down. When a game starts to suck, everyone rushes to sell out their holdings, getting rid of the gold as fast as they can before its value it obliterated by bored gamers switching to a competing service. And when the game gets
more
fun, well, that's an even bigger frenzy, as the bidding wars kick up to high gear, every banker in the world trying to buy the same gold for the same world.
Is it any wonder that eight of the 20 largest economies in the world are in virtual countries? And is it any wonder that playing has become such a serious business?
#
This
scene is dedicated to Secret Headquarters in Los Angeles, my
drop-dead all-time favorite comic store in the world. It's small and
selective about what it stocks, and every time I walk in, I walk out
with three or four collections I'd never heard of under my arm. It's
like the owners, Dave and David, have the uncanny ability to predict
exactly what I'm looking for, and they lay it out for me seconds
before I walk into the store. I discovered about three quarters of my
favorite comics by wandering into SHQ, grabbing something
interesting, sinking into one of the comfy chairs, and finding myself
transported to another world. When my second story-collection,
OVERCLOCKED, came out, they worked with local illustrator Martin
Cenreda to do a free mini-comic based on Printcrime, the first story
in the book. I left LA about a year ago, and of all the things I miss
about
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