Paying for Nothing: WoW vs MTGO
In both World of Warcraft and Magic the Gathering: Online the user exchanges real world money for some internet based, "virtual" service. Each of these games, WoW and MTGO seem different in their exchange of money for some virtual service. But I think it is important to get past the psychological and semantic differences of these pay models and look at the actual differences, if there are any, in terms of money, time, and content. So, what are the differences? Are they significant?
With World of Warcraft a user pays a monthly subscription fee to play. For the sake of simplicity we will say that this fee is $15 per month. A user pays this fee and then has access to the game for that amount of time. Characters are stored indefinitely (a user's information is not deleted after a period of time).
With Magic the Gathering: Online a user pays not for "play time", but rather purchases packs of cards or individual cards via the Marketplace. There is no monthly fee to play; rather there is the fee of buying the cards with which one plays. Cards are stored indefinitely (a user's information is not deleted after a period of time)
That is how World of Warcraft and Magic the Gathering: Online function, basically, with regard to the exchange of money for some virtual service. Now, the question is, are these different with regard to money, time, and content? (For the purpose of this discussion we will ignore illegal activity.)
WoW players pay a monthly fee to play. MTGO users buy cards. But this may be only a semantic difference. For example, if we have a MTGO user and a WoW user who each only ever play for 30 months paying $15 per month we have two users doing the same thing with regard to money, time, and content. Each user has spent $450 over the course of 30 months and obtained the content this allowed them to obtain.
There are, however, differences in the thing for which each user pays. WoW users pay for chunks of time. MTGO users pay for content. So, a MTGO user could pay $30 for cards (content) and play for 30 months, whereas a WoW user, paying $30, could only ever play for two months. Also, a WoW user is limited in the amount they can pay per month. A WoW user can only ever pay $15 per month for playtime, whereas a MTGO user could dump as much money as they desired into the game per month.
It is important to note that neither user has anything. The WoW user no more has her Savory Deviate Delight than the MTGO user has her Wrath of God. Any and all ownership in these games occurs at a level of abstraction within a virtual community, and as such ought not to be included in this discussion. But what we can talk about is the utility of the things for which one pays in each game. For WoW, a user pays for time during which they can play and access as much content as they desire. For MTGO, a user pays for the content (cards) to which they have access and they have an indefinite period of time in which to access this content.
These, I think, are the fundamental differences in these two styles of gamepay. In WoW, a user is paying for time in which they can play the game. In MTGO, a user is paying for content within a game to which they have unlimited access. In terms of money, time, and content I think these game differ only insofar as an individual chooses to use them. It is not the case that there is some fundamental difference between paying for content and paying for time, but rather the difference is only found in the utility each of these things have with regard to the game being played.
Discuss!
9 comments:
having not read the discussorant, and knowing full well it's bait for me.. (I've only got 15 min at break, man.. )
I simply say.. you toy with forces you cannot control, Jay.
This conversation, it WILL consume all.
You're like those guys on PA who start their post, "I didn't reading the first three pages of this religion thread, but let me just say..."
You know what we say of those guys? Because it is not, "they are invited to my birthday party."
Man.. I'm only saying what I can see as plain as day.. this conversation is a maw, the likes of which NOTHING good comes from.
beyond that? 's not like I wasn't commenting upon the post.. I'm simply.. discussorant? .. did I do that on purpose? becuase.. that's brilliant...
distracted, sorry. Work comp is slow to log into blogger. 15 min. eats a break.. so.. you know. fully sane..
in other news, tangential to this.. hitting Nick's at 4.. hope to be home before 5, but that depends on if I lag or not.
There is one inherent difference. If a user collects an entire set on MTGO, said user can, through the actual providing company, convert that set to physical cards, which have monetary value.
And that's something that I like to ignore because it's a tangent to the game itself, in the same way that if you go to a Blizzcon you can get a pet murlock.
Being able to turn the internet cards into real cards through that full set printing, I think, adds a lot of baggage onto the conversation because then we start talking about real cards / virtual cards.
It's just easier to talk about WoW and MTGO as games, square that away, and then start talking about the real world aspects of each.
but converting real world cards into physical cards is just that, a real world aspect of the game. You can easily compare that to the "illegal activities", within WoW, trading virtual resources for real resources.
Yeah, but the conversion is a very minimal part of the game. A user isn't buying cards online for the express purpose of collecting a full set and getting a printout. And if we start to include real world benefits (Selling cold, getting playsets of cards, selling cards) then that even more complicates the issue of differentiating the two payment models.
And even the card conversion itself is complicated. Because it's not as if they are printing the cards you own and giving them to you, because the cards as they exist in game are not "your cards" in the sense that my foil Cromat is my card. It's in my closet, I can touch it. I can manipulate it.
The virtual cards are just that, virtual representations used within the virtual community within a context of other virtual cards.
The hurdle to get over is the link between virtual cards and real cards, as if the goblin welder in your pocket is somehow akin to the goblin welder on your MTGO account. And that's in no way how the cards exist or function in MTGO.
I have to go potty.
... I started reading the previous post, assuming it was Kyle, becuase I saw the K.. and I was deeply, DEEPLY confused.
I picture kyle as more of a lakersgrl0435
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