The Great Digital Gold-Rush

We said the core of the problem is unbalanced trade. Say I'm the real-world trader and you are the player. I'm giving you one million gold but you don't give me anything back because in real-life you have given me the five dollars or 10 dollars or whatever. That had to be addressed. It sounds like a very easy solution, but it isn't. That's the key to why we were successful, because we realised it wasn't going to be easy. We looked at what areas of the game were affected by removing unbalanced trade, and every time something was affected we tried to introduce something even better in its place.

Take trade. Now if I give you a million gold you have to give me something of around the same price back. We see this as a limitation, as we are taking something away from the players. So let's give them something in exchange. And we introduced the Grand Exchange, a unique way of trading that none of the other MMOs have. It's not a traditional selling house that you find in other games. We wanted ours to work like a stock market. For example, if everyone tries to sell pens then the price of the pen is going to go down, but if everyone tries to buy a pen then it's going to push the price up. Our prices react dynamically to the needs of our players. Also, in the old system you have to stand in front of the other person if you want to trade. From now on you don't have to, you don't have to be in the same world, you don't even have to be logged in. And that's how our approach works: we look at what we are going to take away from the game and introduce something better.

We're really happy to say that people love us. There was a bit of uproar, obviously; players were very upset in the beginning. But we introduced the change in December and by the end of the year fan-sites had articles saying it was a harsh but necessary change. Even some saying it was really taking the game forward; really thinking long-term rather than just short-term. So we were able to win over players pretty fast. We were really afraid we were going to lose our members over this change, because other games had in the past. But we are very, very pleased to say that we have lost practically none of our members.

On the other hand, we pretty much won over real-world trading immediately. Two days after the big release you were practically unable to find any bots in the game, instead of the many hundreds that were there before. The prices of gold on many real-world trading sites was jumping quite high [because little was left], but most simply shut down because they couldn't do business any more. It was a pretty massive success, so I was very pleased about that.

There are still some issues when real-world traders find a loophole or find a bug. But we are no longer running after them. Both from gameplay and business perspective, RuneScape is massively different, with a very limited loss in players. I think that's down to the care we put into the project. Down to the communication. We felt it was very important to inform our players about everything we were doing, and we keep developer diaries on our website.

Last but not least I have to bow to our player community, because I myself was surprised at how adult they were and how well they were able to understand the complexity and depth of these changes and why they were necessary.

There were a few issues that people were still upset about, giving a gift, for example. But we are already working on system where you can lend items, and working on filling in those last gaps.

Anyone who is developing a new game should take this into account from day one. Surprisingly, current MMOs...I have friends all over the industry and I know they don't try do anything about this, which to me is shocking. Anyone in the market needs to have a serious look at what they are doing. World of Warcraft, for example - they are doing fantastic business and I know they are hiring more and more people to tackle the issue. But there is going to be a point where you just can't compete with the real-world traders. You have to tackle the issue at a core level, and I'm confident that it is the only way for the whole MMO industry to get out from this. I'm quite sure other companies are going to follow our lead one way or another.

That's a very, very interesting idea, and the only thing I can tell you now is that we have some amazing products going live next year - a new MMO - and we are tackling this issue at a core design level. I think you summed up a very reasonable way to approach this.

I think there are going to be different models. There are going to be companies that sell things to players for money. There are going to be other companies that go the way of Sony and say I'm not selling anything but players can sell to each other. Then there are going to be other companies who think if you subscribe to the game then you should enjoy it fully without spending extra money. But those games need to have different game design approach. I don't think there is one single solution.

Don't [laughs]. Everyone is an adult and knows what they are doing, but the thing many don't seem to realise is that these games are tailored around the experience of getting through the game, and if they buy their way through then they are going to miss out. They are going to lose out on what the whole game is about.

It's not where you get, but how you get there. The gameplay experience is not about being level 60 or level 70, but the experience you have on the way there. To be honest, I think instead of real-world trading, games have to be designed in a way that they provide enough fun while you are getting there. If I am incapable of providing you with enough fun while you collect that 1000 gold for a steed, then the game is not good enough.