It’s Friday afternoon and I’m faced with a dilemma: either carry on doing some handover work for before I leave my job or finish a post about RMT that I’ve been working on for ages.

It’s a no-brainer really!

If there’s one, particularly thorny subject in the world of MMOG’s, it’s the controversial topic of RMT (Real Money Trading). A month or so ago, (now ex) SOE employee Dan Rubenfield stoked the fire in a post pointing out that RMT was here to stay, like it or not, and MMO companies should start selling gold and items themselves. This prompted a round of discussion all over the joint. More recently, Scott Jennings linked to an article and survey (seemingly sponsored by IGE - a “gold trading” company with an obviously vested interest in supporting RMT) which spawned a comment fest debating the merits and demerits, virtues and vices of RMT. This particular feedback extravaganza got me thinking and this is my (belated, amateur and un-requested) take on the whole subject:

RMT, it seems to me, is comparable to taking performance enhancing drugs in athletics for these reasons.

How so? Well, firstly, there are rules that prohibit both. An MMO player found to be engaged in RMT is therefore acting against the “EULA” and can be banned by the game operator in much the same way that an athlete who provides a positive sample and is discovered to have taken performance enhancing drugs would be suspended from competition by the governing body of the sport. Therefore the practice of RMT in MMOs is, like drug taking in sport, cheating because it contravenes the rules of the games.

A little aside: the subject of rule breaking was raised in the comments over at Broken Toys. A (particularly arrogant, condescending, intellectually snobbish and generally out of chracter) comment from the (usually erudite) SirBruce referred to Lawrence Kohlberg’s stages of moral development. This was a total non-sequitur as essentially the topic of RMT is not about social psychology, jurisprudence or moral philosophy but it is about the philosophy of games and sports were the rules are absolutely arbitrary but are necessary to defining the nature of a game. To play a game is to agree to follow the rules (even in the card game “Cheat!”) and breaking the rules is cheating.

Secondly, there is nothing implicitly wrong with either RMT or taking performance enhancing drugs in sports. RMT is accused of upsetting and destabilising the virtual economy of the persistent game world but this isn’t exactly true. RMT upsets the economy because there are people who do not want to cheat and want to play by the rules. If the EULA of a game permitted RMT then I believe that economic stablisation and balance will follow (as much as these virtual marketplaces are every stable and balanced!). Similarly, performance enhancing drugs are not intrinsically bad for the athlete. People hear about the physical side effects of anabolic steroids but this ignores the fact that the list of banned substances in track and field events, for example, includes caffiene and pseudoephedrine (the active ingredient in the decongestant Sudafed) as well as other common medically prescribed substances.

Relating this back the first point about the rules of the game, it’s necessary to understand that the rules against drugs in sport are arbitrary in much the same way that, for example, the rules governing the use of starting blocks in the 100m event are. They are not to protect the athletes from harm - if that was a guiding principle for rules of a game then training would be banned as would most sports. (Please don’t point out the obvious fact that some rules - no high tackles in rugby or punching below the belt in boxing - are designed to protect those taking part.)

Mike, over at “The World Takes” points out, however, that rules (or laws as he puts it, although I prefer to think of them as rules - it being a game and not society) are only as good as the enforcement. He posits that someone can get away with cheating, then they will, unless the rules are enforced. I feel I have to agree with his point. The same can be found in athletics. No matter what doping controls are introduced, people are always going to take performance enhancing drugs in the hope that they can get away with it.

If enforcement is going to be a problem, then why not simply permit RMT? After all, there are virtual “games” (although I use this term loosely as they are more virtual sandbox environments when compared to more traditional games such as World of Warcraft or Everquest) such as Second Life and Project Entropia that not only permit but fully support and encourage RMT. Recognising that players will find ways to trade items and characters through such mediums as eBay, SOE have also set up Station Exchange for Everquest 2 players which provides them with an officially sanctioned and “secure” marketplace for items and character transfers.

But this does not detract from the fact that, when a game EULA stipulates that RMT is against the terms and conditions, to engage in it is still cheating. Even if, as some people (see debate at MMORPG.com and comment at PlayNoEvil) tend to argue, the game “permits” such behaviour (by which, I gather, they mean that the design of the game encourages people to look for short cuts to in game wealth and success, or ways to “avoid” the grind). This is, to be frank, a convenient way of trying to shift the blame and responsibility elsewhere. It’s like saying “Well, I took performance enhancing drugs because training for 4 hours, twice a day, seven days a week was just boring and I wanted to be able to compete at Olympic level in a few weeks, not years.” Track and field events can’t be altered so that they don’t “permit” drug taking and the nature of MMOs

A while back, Amber asked how it might be possible to stop RMT. The simple answer is - it’s not. The more complex answer actually does go back to the point that people have made above: change the rules of the game. Many modern MMOs seem to stem from certain capitalist ideas, including the concept of a fully functioning virtual game economy. In game currency is in high demand and the best or most exclusinve items often cost a lot. So people with not enough time to be able to get a huge amount of money, pay “farmers” real money for in game money so that they can get the equipment they need.

How could you stop this? You could remove any type of in game currency? Although that would significantly impact any type of crafting from the games (such as was and still is in Star Wars: Galaxies). Or you could remove the items, make them untradeable or simply make them less desirable or essential to the game. After all, no demand = no supply. But, judging by the considerable number of pro/con arguments about “uber” items on the discussion forums for the upcoming Age of Conan, many players are materialistic enough to believe that items maketh the game. The answer is never going to be simple and, quite frankly, I don’t think we’re going to find a solution for sometime - not, at any rate, until the next generation of revolutionary MMOG designs come through.

In the meantime, remember this: if RMT is against the game EULA that you agreed and signed to, then buying characters, game currency or items with real money is cheating, just like the use of performance enhancing drugs in sports.

Just. Say. No.