Xbox Live: The Black Marketplace

If you go to eBay and search for “World of Warcraft accounts” your query will result in roughly 100 or so results. Feel free to replace World of Warcraft with any other MMO you can think of, Guild Wars or Everquest for example, and chances are you’ll get similar results, for similarly ludicrous prices. In some cases, characters or items go for more than the price of the actual game, or the monthly fee to play it. And the thing that most astounds about these accounts for sale is that people will actually spend their money on a level 60 paladin instead of actually leveling their own character up to such a righteous position. This makes me, and likely hundreds of other true gamers wonder to themselves, why?

As most people know, it’s for the same reason the Xbox Live gamers among us had to put up with people who used stand-by, put up with people who modded, and people who basically decided to be all-around pricks when playing online. These people lack either the skill or the motivation to work through the frustration that comes with losing in order to reap the rewards of winning – namely bragging rights and general satisfaction with themselves as gamers. And in their quest for ultimate bragging rights, some sense of superiority, or even just the appreciation of their peers, many will go so far as paying the outlandish prices that these accounts will sell for.

After looking at this state of affairs long and hard, I began thinking about Xbox Live, the Xbox 360’s version of the online service in particular. For those of you unfamiliar with the Xbox 360’s new online set-up, along with your Gamertag, you’ll also get a Gamercard, which helps distinguish you from other gamers on the service outside of name alone. On the Gamercard, you’ll find a Gamerpic, Reputation rating (out of five stars), and the thing that made me begin to ponder this situation, the Gamerscore. Every Xbox 360 game comes with Xbox Live Achievements, which after being completed, will raise your Gamerscore.

Ideally, the Gamerscore and achievement system is meant as a means to enable players to find those with a similar level of skill or experience at certain games, in addition to facilitating community building by having players ask each other just how a certain achievement was unlocked. While it certainly serves such purposes, the most immediate benefit of the Gamerscore is the potential for bragging rights. Gamers are inherently competitive – its the reason why many of us enjoy multiplayer games more so than single-player experiences, and why years ago we spent hours replaying the same game for the simple pleasure of besting our own personal scores. While not a perfect indication of a player’s skill at any given game, the number of points amassed serves as some proof that they’re at least adept enough to reach certain levels of success, be it merely completing a game, or more challenging pursuits such as racking up a certain amount of points, wins, or what have you.

As is plainly obvious from the sales of MMORPG game accounts, it is entirely possible that we could see a burgeoning “black” market where people sell Achievement-packed high reputation Xbox Live accounts over eBay or other internet auction sites. It’s true that this wasn’t a problem with the Xbox Live on the original Xbox, yet one must remember that the original Xbox Live offered nothing outside of a name for your account, as well as the fact that it required a credit card for online play. Xbox Live on the 360, however, gives you the option of using your credit card or purchasing the account with Microsoft Points, the currency that Microsoft is issuing for the micro transactions over Xbox Live. With Xbox Live no longer requiring a credit card, and gamerscore providing a compelling incentive, and the ability to change gamertags to erase the proof, what’s to stop entrepreneurial gamers with the time and skill to rack up achievements from selling Xbox Live accounts for profit. At only $50 a pop to start an account, its not hard to imagine desperate gamers paying between 75 to 100 dollars for accounts with build-in credibility.

An account with a full gamerscore for Perfect Dark Zero could potentially sell for quite a bit of money.

There are some limiting factors however, that should help to keep the transfer of Xbox Live accounts under the endemic status seen in the MMORPG character and item market. Unlike an MMORPG, where once your stats and level are up, they remain that way forever, the Achievements on Xbox Live work a little differently and require a bit of work to keep up appearances. As more and more new games come out, and other gamers continue to boost their Gamerscore, those who went through the trouble of purchasing a fully decked out account will be forced to simply watch on with horror as their once majestic Gamerscore soon gets buried by those who actually play hard. This of course makes the high price for that fully decked out Xbox Live account completely unwarranted. That said, each individual game does have a cap – there are only so many points you can gain from it. For many, being able to point at a certain game and claim superiority is a source of pride, and fuel for trash-talking, and the ability to brag about being able to complete a challenging task – and bask in the awed response of their online peers, would be worth quite a bit of money.

If the sale of World of Warcraft accounts is any indication, I see no reason why Xbox Live accounts would not sell reasonably well. I really hope such a thing doesn’t happen, but due to the more open design of this generation of Xbox Live, I have no doubt we’ll be talking about such situations within the next year, as the Xbox Live userbase grows. Whether or not Microsoft chooses to intervene and hinder such online sale remains to be seen, although its likely that they would step in at some point once the cumulative damage dealt by such a market reaches a certain tipping point. That said, precedent indicates that once a market has been created, it takes a great deal of time, effort, and money to keep every avenue of consumption in check until the demand finally dissipates. Just take a look at the US Government’s war on drugs, or the history of prohibition for an extreme example of the kind of nightmare that can arise from trying to deny an existing consumer demand. Microsoft may want to think about taking steps to prevent such a situation before it starts.