Quote from: MPOE-PR on June 14, 2013, 06:50:26 PM

Quote from: Deprived on June 14, 2013, 06:21:25 PM

There are also massive design decisions which have to be made in terms of game-play. If you're going with the item-mall idea then you first need to determine which model of it you'll use. All of these comments are my own views - not based on forum discussions. I see item-malls as being split into two types:

I think through the workings of forum magic, what was originally a distinction, contrast and opposition (RCE vs Item Malls) has been conflated into a nonsensical identity (RCE = Item Mall).

For the record and for everyone's benefit: RCE (short for real cash economy) is a Bitcoinesque way of running game universes where instead of the developer/operator playing Bernanke and issuing endless quantities of game "gold", the available gold is strictly related to funds deposited by players. Thus being an efficient hunter is more important than being a BIG hunter. There's few examples of such games being developed, specifically because pre-Bitcoin there were a lot of problems with handling of game currency. Bitcoin superbly resolves all these, and it'd be ridiculous for it not to be used for the one purpose it's actually been made to satisfy. We're like a bunch of people using a hammer for anything but nails, currently.

Item Malls are mostly unrelated, offering the player base the option to buy more or less gameplay-enhancing items for USD. We generally agree it's not a great model, which is why the specification was made that as far as possible we prefer RCE (ie, a completely different model) and I think re-reading the discussion with the distinction clearly in mind will be very helpful.

My point wasn't that you were going to use item-malls - but that deciding upon a revenue model does also restrict game-design choices and so can't be decided upon entirely seperately. I used item-malls as an example because that's what the other poster had posted at length about.

RCE, for example, pretty much rules out single-player offline games. RCE means games need to either be player vs house or player vs player - as the key resource has to be both limited (in terms of creation - not in terms of some maximum ever issued) and redistributable.

I totally agree that Bitcoin and an RCE model are an obvious pairing - isn't there some gambling-based MMO that already does that (which isn't an argument against someone else also doing it)?.