play money
DIARY of a dubious proposition



BY JULIAN DIBBELL
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PLAY MONEY now at Amazon THE RUMORS ARE TRUE:
PLAY MONEY IS NOW A BOOK.


(And you can buy it at Amazon.)

Friday, February 27, 2004

Living the Dream  

And so it begins, again.

Wife out of town, all other professional commitments set aside, I end this project the way I started it, and the way I meant to run it all along: working around the clock. My daughter's still with me, and she still owns the hours when she's not asleep or in day care, but the rest of the time I'm right here at the computer, buying and selling a whole lotta nothing.

These next two weeks are critical. I mean to focus now on preparations that may not be real profitable in the short term but could help put me over the top in the final month of the challenge: exploring the markets, setting up a Web storefront, placing advertisements. I'll keep you posted as the campaign unfolds.

Meanwhile, my first strategic decision is this: it's all about suits. Suits of armor, that is, which funnily enough is also how I got the ball rolling here, selling 100% lower-reagent suits to Mr. Big for gold. Their eBay price has dropped by almost half since then, and Mr. Big can't really be bothered with them anymore, but for me they've turned into a nice little business. Nothing major, but the margins are pretty sweet (I can buy a lower-reagents suit for about $5 worth of gold and sell it for $20, minus fees), and as a core competence, suits definitely give me room to grow. There are now a number of marketable suit configurations -- high resistance for player-versus-player action, high luck for hunting monsters -- and such is the genius of UO's current loot-production mechanics that as one configuration saturates the market and falls off the high end, others will start emerging to replace them.

All very sensible business considerations, yes. But there's one other thing that draws me to suits. Unlike the gold I've been almost exclusively dealing to keep my hand in the game these last few months, suits are not pure exchange value. People don't just turn around and spend them on something else -- they use them, live with them. And because of the complexity of UO's item-modification system, each suit is entirely unique, composed of qualities and quirks that sum up to a whole whose essence only a connoisseur can judge. I'm not a true connoisseur myself yet, but there are times now when I get my first look at a lower-reagents suit someone's offering me and know it, I swear, just as intimately as any 20-year veteran of the garment trade knows a jacket from the feel of its lapel between his fingers.

And the day I can do that with a nine-piece dyeable all-70s resists mage suit -- man, that's the day I can retire with dignity. Here's hoping it happens in the next 90 days.

9:49 AM



Wednesday, February 25, 2004

Market Watch  
Another weekly UO eBay market snapshot, based on average sales figures for the preceding 14 days:

Market sales total: $175,153 (+2,325 from last week)

Market sales total, annualized: $4.6 million

Market volume total: 3,857 sales (+10)

Exchange rate: $14.01 (-0.20) per 1 million Britannian gold pieces

Price of an 18x18-tile mansion: $151.61 (-5.05)

My gold holdings: 89.87 million gp ($1,259.08)

My dollar holdings: $1,792.27

My profits, last 12 months: $3,588.92

(Numbers crunched with help from HammerTap's DeepAnalysis, an eBay market research tool.)

7:53 AM



Sunday, February 22, 2004

Going for Gold  
A while back it became clear to me that if I was to meet my goals here I would have to rise -- and rise mightily -- through the ranks of the UO merchants of eBay. Specifically, I calculated that I would need to join the top 5 sellers, clawing my way up from 65th place.

Five months later, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that as of last Wednesday's Deep Analysis of the eBay market, I had come all the way up to 13th place, with $1,521.72 in sales racked up for the previous two weeks.

The bad news is that my earlier calculations were a bit, well, optimistic. They rested on the assumption that, like the top sellers, I would eventually be doing as much as 80% of my sales outside of eBay -- and so far it's more like 5%. Assuming an ongoing profit margin of 30%, in other words -- and assuming I have any chance in hell of earning the $4600 one-month take-home that has become my final goal -- I am going to have to post sales figures of about $3600 a week for 4 weeks running.

And who will I have to beat to make that score? Only everybody. The number-one seller -- a six-year veteran of the business -- currently makes about $3350 in weekly sales.

I am so screwed.

11:12 AM



Wednesday, February 18, 2004

Market Watch  
Another weekly UO eBay market snapshot, based on average sales figures for the preceding 14 days:

Market sales total: $172,828 (+1,604 from last week)

Market sales total, annualized: $4.5 million

Market volume total: 3,847 sales (-5)

Exchange rate: $14.21 (-0.27) per 1 million Britannian gold pieces

Price of an 18x18-tile mansion: $156.66 (+1.63)

My gold holdings: 81.3 million gp ($1,155.27)

My dollar holdings: $1,942.27

My profits, last 12 months: $3,588.92

(Numbers crunched with help from HammerTap's DeepAnalysis, an eBay market research tool.)

7:29 AM



Monday, February 16, 2004

The Home Stretch  
Dear readers:

Time is running out for me and this nutty little project of mine, and I must thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for the kindness you have shown in keeping your traps shut about the fact. There is no longer any ignoring it, however: the April 15 deadline I set myself is now less than two months away.

Will I make it? Can I? Take a moment to review the terms of the proposition set forth atop the left-hand column of this page. You will see that in their strictest sense, I have already failed. The income-tax return I file in April will of course pertain only to money made in 2003, and as I've already reported, my profits from the sale of imaginary items last year amounted to a measly $3131.42, or a little more than 6 percent of my income.

Where there's a weasel, there's a way, however, and as a greater weasel than I might put it, this all depends on what the meaning of "truthfully report to the IRS" is. Consider, too, the stipulation that "I earn more from [this project], on a monthly basis, than I have ever earned as a professional writer," and note the ample wiggle room in the phrase "on a monthly basis." So: While the good folks in the U.S. government may not want to know on April 15 just how I earned my money in the preceding three and a half months, there's nothing to stop me from telling them, is there? And if during some one-month period between now and April 15 I make more from selling imaginary items than I ever made on a monthly basis as a writer ($4600, let's say, considering that my writing income has approached but never attained the magic figure of $55,000 a year), then I may "truthfully report" that, may I not?

OK, so this is the moral equivalent of cheating at solitaire. And yes, I do feel a bit dirty, thanks for asking. But there's no time to dwell on that now. I've got work to do:

Between this day and April 15, the Play Money enterprise must earn me during some one-month period a minimum of $4600 -- measured not in gold pieces or other virtual inventory but in cold, hard U.S. dollars deposited to my PayPal account or otherwise in hand.

One month. Forty-six-hundred dollars.

Go.

2:38 PM



Wednesday, February 11, 2004

Market Watch  
Astonishing growth in overall sales -- the market total has risen steadily over the last month for a total gain of over 30 percent. This could be just a seasonal uptick after the Christmas slump, I guess. But the sales number is growing faster than volume, which means the average item price is getting higher, which in turn might mean lots of things but to me suggests mainly one: The artifacts market is heating up.

Ah, artifacts. Plucked from the monsters of the new dungeon Doom, these rare, powerful weapons and armor are the rarest of rares, sometimes only one to a shard. Indeed, when they first started popping up in the game, just a year ago, they were too rare to even register on the economic radar. Now, though, there seem to be just enough of them out there to fuel desire for more, yet not quite enough to sink the prices much -- which range from $100 for the humble Leggings of Bane to as much as $800 for the coveted Ornament of the Magician. After a long slide toward commodity pricing, in other words, the UO market seems to have rediscovered its first love: luxury.

I better get off my butt and get me a piece of this while it lasts.

Now here it is -- your weekly UO eBay market snapshot, based on average sales figures for the preceding 14 days:

Market sales total: $171,224 (+11,338 from last week)

Market sales total, annualized: $4.5 million

Market volume total: 3,852 sales (-35)

Exchange rate: $14.48 (-0.10) per 1 million Britannian gold pieces

Price of an 18x18-tile mansion: $155.03 (-0.76)

My gold holdings: 58.65 million gp ($849.25)

My dollar holdings: $1,600.47

My profits, last 12 months: $3,588.92

(Numbers crunched with help from HammerTap's DeepAnalysis, an eBay market research tool.)

6:34 PM



Monday, February 09, 2004

My $85-an-Hour Job  
A reader writes:

Hello, I enjoy your site, and use Ultima also to make "spare" cash on the side since I consider it a hobby. Yet I must ask you take something into effect and that is your time. Time is money and when you consider a sale and stuff you only have ebay and/or paypal considered as costs. Yet think about who/what you do and what you could make with the time you spent. (I know there are MANY other variables to consider) but this would make your posts a bit more interesting at least I think so. Maybe dont throw in the cost of your time, but at least throw in the time (estimate) took for a certain item you sold.

Fair enough.

First, though, let me explain that I have so far refrained from breaking down my UO income on an hourly basis for the same reason I try to avoid calculating my hourly wage as a writer: I don't like to depress myself. Two-dollars-a-word has a nice, round, George-Plimpton-at-the-top-of-his-game sort of ring to it. Ten-fifty-an-hour (no, believe me, I write very slowly) has more of a gym-teacher-moonlighting-at-the-Dairy-Mart thing going on.

Having dared to do the math, however, I am pleased to report that as a UO retailer my wages seem to be verging on Beverly-Hills-plumber-fixing-your-basement-leak-on-a-Sunday territory.

Consider the numbers on a recent wholesale currency purchase of mine. Yesterday I received 45 million Britannian gold pieces for $405, or $9 per million. The seller lives in Russia, a country that PayPal appears to have blacklisted, so paying for the gold involved a 20-minute trip to the local Vietnamese grocery store, which happens also to be the nearest MoneyGram agent. Arranging to pick up the gold and then actually picking it up in game probably involved another 20 minutes. The score so far: 40 minutes, $405 in the hole.

By the end of the day today I had already sold off 25 million of the gold, in two lots of 10 million and one of 5 million, for a total of $334.97. Subtract $28 for PayPal and eBay fees, figure about 15 minutes for each transaction (including listing the eBay auctions, corresponding with the buyers, making the deliveries), and the tally is now 85 minutes, $98.03 in the hole.

Now, assuming the sales continue at more or less this rate, the remaining 20 million will net me $245 and cost me another 45 minutes in transaction time. Sum total: 130 minutes, $175 profit. Or roughly $85 an hour.

OK, let's not kid ourselves. I'm leaving out all kinds of overhead (UO subscription fees, unsold eBay item fees, time spent reading UO information sites, time wasted talking to "potential" customers) that could easily bring that wage down to $50 an hour or even halve it. What's more, that one deal may be my sole source of UO income this week, and multiplied by 52 weeks that's not a whole lot of per annum.

Still: $85 an hour. Can I break out the Cristal now?

10:32 PM



Wednesday, February 04, 2004

Market Watch  
Another weekly UO eBay market snapshot, based on average sales figures for the preceding 14 days:

Market sales total: $159,886 (+22,274 from two weeks ago)

Market sales total, annualized: $4.2 million

Market volume total: 3,887 sales (+364)

Exchange rate: $14.58 (+0.19) per 1 million Britannian gold pieces

Price of an 18x18-tile mansion: $155.79 (-22.32)

My gold holdings: 95.15 million gp ($1,387.29)

My dollar holdings: $1,262.66

My profits, last 12 months: $3,588.92

(Numbers crunched with help from HammerTap's DeepAnalysis, an eBay market research tool.)

7:16 AM



Tuesday, February 03, 2004

The Staggering Genius of Etherealnod  
Last week, in the midst of the biggest UO land giveaway in many a moon, real estate prices actually went up, and I, befuddled by this surprising turn of events, promised that the first reader to send in a plausible explanation would be awarded "an entire Play Money entry devoted to his or her genius."

Well, the winner goes by the name of etherealnod. And while I'm tempted to devote this entry not to his genius but to my dumb-assed failure to grasp the obvious, I hereby give it up to the man for helping me to see the light. To wit: If prices are rising even while supply rises too, then what, boys and girls, must be rising even faster than supply? That's right: demand.

Or in etherealnod's own words:

You're looking at it from a purely economic standpoint, but you have to also incorporate the "game" once again, when you're talking about the general population. Basically, the falling houses induce people to start playing the game again, because they think that somehow, this time it will be different, or that this time they'll have a nice house, or something; so they pick up the game again, install it, and buy a house, or other UO goods. Hence the increase of worth in the real world. When the people stop playing again, then the cost will drop by a lot...

What's nice about this explanation is that it doesn't just account for game-world economies. It also speaks to the real-world economy, and the wayward gusts of hope and desire that blow through it, stoking demand when by all rights the human beings that comprise the market should have long ago learned better than to keep hoping and desiring.

No wonder supply-side economics won out over the old Keynesian imperative to stimulate demand. In the long run, controlling the production of widgets seems a far simpler thing to accomplish than inducing people to pick up the game again and think that, somehow, this time it will be different...

6:38 PM



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