Learning to Love Virtual Item Sales
Speaker(s): Andrew Schneider (Live Gamer), Steve Goldstein (Ping0)
Time: 3:30pm - 4pm
QA
Q: Loans?
A: Nooo!
Socioeconomics in Online Worlds
Moderator: Michael Zenke (Slashdot Games)
Panelist(s): Eyjólfur Guðmundsson (CCP Inc.), Craig Sherman (Gaia Online), John
Bates (MindArk)
Time: 4:15pm - 5pm
QA
Q: Is RTM (Real Money Trade) a cover-up for bad design? Players paying their way out of boredom?
A: The market is big... Look at the number of Youtube users vs WoW. //answer didn't make much sense to me, but there it was.
Q: The three most important factors of success for Gaia?
A: 1)Listening to the users. And making changes that we think are "wrong", taking the advice from players //exact opposite of what Bartle recommends
2)Communication with the players. For example we needed to explain why we needed to have in-game advertising. The players understood, but needed the discussion.
3) Luck. Users found us despite we didn't advertise much.
Evening
I found my colleagues from Gotland University and had a wonderful reunion. How I have missed them!
After dinner i went to the Marriot to catch up with the wonderful bunch of people i got to know at project horsesoe - it turned out to be a nice evening with lots of game grammar!
