They got game

Talented players make good money selling characters on eBay. Are they denigrating gaming -- or turning it into a profession?

By Moira Muldoon

Jul 13, 1999 | "Great Money Maker!" cries one ad. "Ultimate Money Maker account!" enthuses another. EBay is thick with advertisements hawking characters that can earn gamers status in the virtual world -- and some cool, hard cash. For folks who inhabit the worlds of massive multiplayer role-playing games EverQuest or Ultima Online, auctioning talents on eBay has become a fun way to make fast bucks. Build up a character, earn some platinum pieces and sell them all to the highest bidder -- for hundreds, even thousands of dollars.

"Ruekilla" (his gaming handle) is a 24-year-old student who says he "made $1,747 in two weeks by selling platinum, then the next week sold my character for $1,500." He has sold four of his own creations, because he was "getting out of control" and spending too much time playing. "People need to make extra cash somehow," he says. "This is a quick, easy way to do it, and if you earned it, you can sell it."

Earning items like platinum or precious jewels is part of the fun of a role-playing game, or RPG. To play EverQuest or Ultima Online, you first buy the game itself and then establish an account that allows you to enter the online multiplayer world. Then, you choose a character and begin wandering the world. Along the way, you build up experience, gather items like platinum pieces by killing monsters or doing good deeds, forge alliances with other characters and so on. Through such efforts your character can gain new skills (like the ability to craft armor) and magic spells, as well as the ability to move into higher levels of the game. But it can be quite time-consuming to build a high-level character -- which is why some people are opting to buy ready-made accounts instead.

Twenty-one-year old "Jim" (who, like most of the gamers interviewed for this story, prefers to remain anonymous) is an administrator for an Internet service provider -- and an EverQuest fanatic. He says he plays as much as 60 hours a week and claims to have reached level 24 in less than a day -- an extraordinary feat. Jim has played so much and gotten so good, he's now trying his hand at building characters for people who are either too lazy, too impatient or too busy to build their own. And he's charging real-world money for his services.

So far, he estimates that he's made about $2,000. He has "personally built about six [characters] now," but says that more than "20 total have passed through my hands." Three friends pitch in and help when he's too busy. And, he says, there is a waiting list of about 30 people who want him to build characters for them too. Jim is considering taking a vacation from his regular job to concentrate on gaming; he figures he "could easily make $10,000 in a month if I had the time."

Jim wants to build the characters now, while the market -- and his services -- are hot. EverQuest formally launched in March; so it's had time to become popular, but not enough time for most players to fully develop their skills. But Jim expects that before long, "more and more people [will] become experienced and stronger and able to obtain the things they want" all by themselves. So, he's looking at "character building" as a short-term career; he figures three months from now the demand will have dwindled. But, at $10,000 a month, he could put away a chunk of change before the market slows.

Next Page: Outrage when a game master sells his work

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