Last week Blizzard, for the first time, sold an in-game mount. By sold, I mean, the kind that costs you your hard earned dollars. Yes, you pay real money for a pixelated digital piece of property. The cost of this mount was $25 bucks. While selling stuff for in-game is not new (Blizzard sells a variety of different in-game passive pets) the fact that they were selling something that was more than just a cosmetic piece of property was. This mount was called [Celestial Steed].
So what was my reaction to this? I ran home after work and signed on to make my pony purchase. I was a bit shocked, to say the least, when I saw that there were 166,445 people in front of me in line and my que'd wait time was 7 hours. Now, if you're not familiar with how Blizzard makes sales, yes, they que you to make sure the system handles everyone in turn. If all 166k people were trying to make the purchase at once, the system would crash and there would be a lot of unhappy people... they do it to prevent the bottle neck affect that can happen. Still, I had a hard time wrapping my brain around the fact that I was digitally trying to purchase a digital good and I had to wait in line 7 hours for it.
Turns out though that Blizzard wasn't too good at estimating the que and within an hour and 45 minutes I made the purchase. My husband was a little none to pleased I spent $25 bucks on something that had no actual tangibility to it. I however, couldn't have been happier with the purchase. Besides, what does tangibility actually mean these days? I can download music via iTunes, pay for it and take enjoyment in it all without actually ever *having* it.
First, I'm a sucker for pets and mounts in WoW. Most of the cooler and more interesting mounts are hard to achieve and I just don't have the play hours to work towards those. When I played my character on the Alliance side I worked extremely hard to earn enough faction to purchase a Ram mount and loved him in all his fluffiness. When I transfered from Alliance to Horde, naturally, I lost my Ram and was given the Wolf mount instead. Don't get me wrong...the wolf is cool and all but he wasn't my Ram. I needed something to fulfill the virtual void created by the loss of my Ram mount.
Second, this mount totally made me nostalgia - back to my youth and horse collecting days. When I was younger, up until high school in fact, I collected Breyer horses and every other piece of horse- like action figure I could get my hands on. I was particularly found of these clear, sparkly horses that were from the She-Ra series (like Crystal Moonbeam or Arrow, the steed of Bow) and the [Celestial Steed] reminds of that childhood memory.
The most interesting aspect of it all was the fact that Blizzard made over $2million in one day from the sale of these digital mounts. That's right...they programmed the horse...once, sold it to thousands of people and made nothing but pure profit.
Beyond that though, was the interesting implication and talks that ensued within the game itself, about what it meant to buy an in-game item for out-game money (Blizzard is not the first game to allow this as Perfect World is a free MMO to play but if you want anything interesting you purchase it; items are what you play for in any Perfect World game, time to play is free). There were cries from those who thought it was pathetic for people to spend real money on a digital item and then there were the rebuttals about how those bitching should leave mom's basement and get a job. It showed and interesting divide between the casuals and hardcore players (those who presumably had full time jobs and played causally vs those who were students or employed and played hard but had no money - that is of course a simplistic assumption that if you work you can't play hardcore). I'm of course simplifying the entire conversation but I think it's enough to get the gist.
What this shows if that there is no longer a strong dichotomy between "online" and "offline", between "in-game" and "out-game". We often think of games, game worlds and the people who inhabit them as two very distinct and different aspects of space that doesn't cross or intersect at any point. The truth however is much messier. I spent $25 of the money I make in the "real" world for an item that can only be used and enjoyed in the "virtual" world (in the most simplistic of terms). But honestly, I don't see it like that - remember, the mount has nostalgia for me and fills a gap left by the loss of my earlier mounts - it fulfills a very real feeling and emotive experience for me.
What we think of work/play, virtual/real is not so clear anymore. We need to redefine notions of what games are and what they mean to us.
More importantly though, I seriously need to figure out how to make something that takes minimal effort and time, is endless in supply, is wanted by thousands of people and makes me over $2million dollars in a day.
