Marketplace Concerns

[XenjinHattori]

Items these days are just ridiculous in price. Quite simply, there is too much gold running around unchecked. If you get even one of the early collectibles, you will almost automatically have as much gold, if not more, than someone who buys the entire set of two collectibles per year (24 items, 2 envelopes from each month).

A while back, Gaia Staff met and discussed removal of the funds for trading for a flat 2% bank fee. This quelled the prices somewhat but recently items have started creeping up again. (I am not sure if this is due to the fact that some of the items are viewed as being 'better' than others or not, but either way monthly collectibles in 2008 seem to be generally lower priced than all others, while 2009 is averaging around 26,000 and the year isn't even half done).

Now, there are other items in gaia that are worth basically more than about 90% of the monthly collectibles, and these are called 'cash shop items'. The main reason they are worth more? The majority of Gaia does not have access to that. Only Americans have access to the 'cards' that are sold to get gaia cash, and most of those that are American prefer having the monthly collectibles considering it is what they are most familiar with. Note that others can also buy gaia cash... but I don't think anyone puts it high on their priority list.

However, it's not only -that- that drives up the price. Ultimately, it comes down to greed. If I sold a Gaia-tan for 50,000 gold, would I be considered insane? Even if I didn't even like the Gaia-tan? Probably.

Finally, the Gaian world has an excess amount of gold. I am willing to bet that Gaia has at least a hundred trillion if not a quadrillion (100,000,000,000,000 is a hundred trillion, 1,000,000,000,000,000 is a quadrillion) amount of gold out there, meaning that 8 million for an item really isn't all that much. But even so, Gaia has nearly 18 million users. That means (if dealing with a hundred trillion amount of gold) the average is about 5,500 gold. And I'm making this assumption without adding item values.

Discuss.  

[Pilotslover]

There was an interesting post made down in the Site Feedback by a Dev saying that the number of items released in the RIG's is controlled.

This is what leads to the insane prices on these.

Gaia says they make more money from RIG's, people like myself have been asking them to prove it and they can't; why, you ask? Because Gaia has NEVER released RIG items in the cash shop separately, the Cash shop items tend to be somewhat limp ...

I would love to see the Gaia-tan released in the Cash shop in different colours, I think she would sell really well for like 500 Cash but Gaia doesn't seem to WANT to take this one tiny risk.  

[mamarita]

The new owners of Gaia kind of such at this. Even though Lanzer is still on the board- more like a figure head than anything- he doesn't seem to give a damn about us anymore. The only good thing that has happened is that DJ Helsing was brought back- if nothing else than to do convention tours.

As for the items- the market rose sharply after the 2% fee was introduced. I figure that I have spent at least 6000g in fees since the change- and would much prefer the 1000 vending pass to the new fee schedule. At least the prices could come down a bit- and if they made the shop items a little less expensive, the marketplace wouldn't go up as much but they over inflat the price of clothes/accessories-- take the French revolutionary clothes- geesh!  

[Zef]

The Marketplace is user-run meaning the users are the ones who come up with the prices on the Marketplace. Just blame the people selling the new rig items for being that High priced. Can't blame them for trying to get gold though.

I think it's because of mostly the 2% tax thing that the items are more high priced than before.

I am not American and I actually found these cash cards at the mall we have here. I think they are finally spreading out on these cards around the world. It took 2 years to come here, since I asked the shop owner when these "cards" came and he said it just came in April 09.

The gold you estimated might be a bit too high but it is said to be more than a trillion. since the S.O.S. actually said that the amount donated was 2 billion +

 

[XenjinHattori]

So, I guess the next amusing question I have is, "How would the prices drop"?

Pretending I were some sort of high-ranking figure in Gaia, from the three responses here, I would say the following:

A) Remove the cash shop. The majority of the items are not liked, and the ones that are drag the market prices up.
B) Remove the 2% fee for a flat fee of amount.
C) Create a 'ceiling' price. In other words, no item can be sold for more than amount of gold. If you want to sell something for more than that, put it in the "Buying and selling" forum.

Anything I miss?

Oh, and thanks for the input. Even though I can't do anything, I was quite curious about this.  

[Zef]

NeoTsure

So, I guess the next amusing question I have is, "How would the prices drop"?

Pretending I were some sort of high-ranking figure in Gaia, from the three responses here, I would say the following:

A) Remove the cash shop. The majority of the items are not liked, and the ones that are drag the market prices up.
B) Remove the 2% fee for a flat fee of amount.
C) Create a 'ceiling' price. In other words, no item can be sold for more than amount of gold. If you want to sell something for more than that, put it in the "Buying and selling" forum.

Anything I miss?

Oh, and thanks for the input. Even though I can't do anything, I was quite curious about this.

A) The Cash Shop is there so that we can actually help the site to stay alive since it costs so much to actually host the site in all of its servers + all the Gaia staff has to be paid somehow.

B) The 2% tax was included to give users gold in some sort of event such as for example the Sims 3 event. Its giving 100gold to.. estimated 15million users.. that's 15million gold just given away. Plus any other events such as the Gaia Olympics and others might include Gaia Gold because of this 2% profit... Though since they did make 2 billion gold + on that S.O.S. event maybe they can lower it to 1% :/

C) That will probably never happen since most users don't go that frequently to the exchange forum + the marketplace is there to make profit easier and making this "ceiling" will make the exchangers / users / vendors from the marketplace mad. This option has been discussed in the Feedback i think..

 

[XenjinHattori]

A) ...So basically, "Gaia is free, but we're about to go broke so we need to introduce more items in order to -not- go broke?"

C) I'm not saying set a ceiling price of 100,000. I'd be saying about 5-10 million. Anything higher than that can be done by trade -anyway- and it's not as if people who sell high/valuable items wouldn't actually make some advertising for them.  

[Pilotslover]

I like the cash shop, I don't want it to go, I want them to stop making RIG's though until they test a mass release of the RIG items.

I suggested a ceiling price down at the Site Feedback and got blasted.

And Rey, please don't make me laugh, when Gaia started manipulating the number of items released in RIG's they stopped it being a free market. They ARE manipulating the prices by limiting the supply of those items.

Don't believe me? Read this ...

Quote:

We do try to make sure that the items most people want are common enough to be attainable in the marketplace, but the RIGs also let us put out items that are designed to be extremely rare (and therefore extremely valuable). It is impossible for us to sell extremely rare items directly in the cash shop, because then we have no way of controlling the quantity, and by definition they become less rare and less valuable.

Full reply here - Controlling the market?

I think Gaia took a sharp dive when they hired their 'market expert' who proceeded to screw with things. I don't have a good thing to say about his decisions.  

[WindowOpener]

Inflation is unfortunate, and it's helped push me away from vending, but maybe I wouldn't be active anyway. Of course it's frustrating to see sky-high prices on items that could once be afforded by a reasonable amount of time just spent using the site.

Inflation's also difficult to avoid, though, if Gaia is going to continue growing. New users join, adding more gold to the economy, and the challenge is to keep removing it at a similar rate.

Gaia's economy is uniquely complex, and in my view the staff showed their commitment to managing it right when they brought on board a resident economics team. We've also seen them make periodical adjustments to gold gain in response to the data they monitor. And I'm sure we remember the recent event to bail out Ian's shop, which wasn't just smart economics in a slick topical dressing, but also responded directly to user feedback in SF. Given these things, vague complaints that the staff simply suck or don't care, sound sour and unfair to me.

The 2% fee has been mentioned already. It was intensely debated, often angrily, for weeks after it was introduced. Sagger, Gaia's economics guru, was always clear in explaining that the fee simply does not lead to higher prices, because it does not change anyone's ability to set higher prices or buy more expensive items. It only changes where some of the paid money goes. Won't people set higher prices so they 'lose less'? This is the same as setting higher prices to make more, which they could do before. So the 2% fee does not promote inflation. Market forces of supply and demand remain king.

Actually, it counters inflation because it takes a little gold out of every transaction rather than just a one-time flat fee for users who may go on to make hundreds or thousands of transactions. More gold taken out = slower inflation.

I agree with Rey Shot's point that the Cash Shop is there out of necessity. The answer to NeoTsure's question, "Gaia is free, but we're about to go broke so we need to introduce more items?" is essentially yes. Gaia's a behemoth to run, from the hardware and software to the employees and R&D, Gaia's expenses cannot be covered just by ad revenue and sponsorship deals. I don't like the idea of real cash in a virtual world, either. But Gaia goes to pains to ensure as many 'premium' items as possible end up freely available in the vend to everyone. And all the while, I'm benefiting from all the labour and R&D that other people's money is paying for.

The idea of a price ceiling in the Marketplace is problematic there are other avenues for sales - private agreement, and the Gaia Exchange. And if high-price trasnaction will still occur, what good does the Marketplace ceiling do? Even if you could put a ceiling everywhere to avoid all high-price transactions, though, this is major interference with supply and demand. Prices only rise when people are prepared to pay them. Predictions in a ceiling scenario are tricky, but a probable outcome is an increasing number of valuable items will simply never be put up for sale, and will effectively vanish from circulation.

I don't have any major complaints with how Gaia is handling its economy, and I'm not informed enough about economics to really criticise it. Beyond my simple frustration at higher gold prices, and pixels that cost money, I have to admit that things still seem rather manageable, and I don't have any better ideas.  

[XenjinHattori]

I'm not so much criticizing it as giving my own opinion... one that's probably flawed because I'm a player and not staff. I'm also trying to learn how the decisions are made on things. I'm actually a bit disappointed that things are 'rigged' if you know what I mean.  

[Zef]

Pilotslover

I like the cash shop, I don't want it to go, I want them to stop making RIG's though until they test a mass release of the RIG items.

I suggested a ceiling price down at the Site Feedback and got blasted.

And Rey, please don't make me laugh, when Gaia started manipulating the number of items released in RIG's they stopped it being a free market. They ARE manipulating the prices by limiting the supply of those items.

Don't believe me? Read this ...

Quote:

We do try to make sure that the items most people want are common enough to be attainable in the marketplace, but the RIGs also let us put out items that are designed to be extremely rare (and therefore extremely valuable). It is impossible for us to sell extremely rare items directly in the cash shop, because then we have no way of controlling the quantity, and by definition they become less rare and less valuable.

Full reply here - Controlling the market?

I think Gaia took a sharp dive when they hired their 'market expert' who proceeded to screw with things. I don't have a good thing to say about his decisions.

I was not informed they manipulated the amount given away of any item. :/

But they are just trying to "make" the item to be "rare" like it's supposed to be since its title says while you play the game "Rare Event".

But you actually did have a point. They are manipulating the amount since they do control the amount given away on the rig items. But The ones who manipulate the price are the regular users who get such item. They could have made such item 5k. But they decided to make it Very high priced since probably they did not see that many quantity of the item he/she got out in the MP. Plus they probably wanted the gold. Which is sad really :/

 

[Pilotslover]

Rey Shot

Pilotslover

I like the cash shop, I don't want it to go, I want them to stop making RIG's though until they test a mass release of the RIG items.

I suggested a ceiling price down at the Site Feedback and got blasted.

And Rey, please don't make me laugh, when Gaia started manipulating the number of items released in RIG's they stopped it being a free market. They ARE manipulating the prices by limiting the supply of those items.

Don't believe me? Read this ...

Quote:

We do try to make sure that the items most people want are common enough to be attainable in the marketplace, but the RIGs also let us put out items that are designed to be extremely rare (and therefore extremely valuable). It is impossible for us to sell extremely rare items directly in the cash shop, because then we have no way of controlling the quantity, and by definition they become less rare and less valuable.

Full reply here - Controlling the market?

I think Gaia took a sharp dive when they hired their 'market expert' who proceeded to screw with things. I don't have a good thing to say about his decisions.

I was not informed they manipulated the amount given away of any item. :/

But they are just trying to "make" the item to be "rare" like it's supposed to be since its title says while you play the game "Rare Event".

But you actually did have a point. They are manipulating the amount since they do control the amount given away on the rig items. But The ones who manipulate the price are the regular users who get such item. They could have made such item 5k. But they decided to make it Very high priced since probably they did not see that many quantity of the item he/she got out in the MP. Plus they probably wanted the gold. Which is sad really :/

By manipulating the number of items in the system Gaia IS manipulating how these items are priced.

If Gaia hadn't flooded the system with gold we wouldn't be in the mess we are today. Items costing 2 million when they're from a RIG. The Horns of The Demon isn't worth that much and they've been around for years.

I myself have boycotted the RIG's, I won't be buying any more.  

[MemoryDragon]

I personally don't mind too much about the market place. Yes, there are some really insanely priced items. They make me cry too.

At the same time though, I never even dreamed of being able to get the nightmare scarf. It took me five months in the past to raise 225k for my penguin slippers and that scarf was never gonna happen.

Now, I've already made over 2 mil in about half the time and it looks possible that I might actually get that scarf eventually. So it's got good things and a bad things attached to it.  

[LillianSaire]

SOS and the fee aren't to store gold to give back, it is to permanently remove gold from gaia. A gold sink.

When less gold is on gaia... well just look at the past. When sealed were 5K each and people thought that because they cost $2.50 that they really should be 2.5K each.  

[Ezra-tan]

=_=

Inflation is natural, especially at the rate in which Gaia is growing. It's always been a part of the economy. Gaia is also a business, and the goal of a business is to make money. People say Gaia isn't hurting for money, and should stop looking for ways to do it [the cash shop], but that defeats the core of what Gaia really is. A BUSINESS. I say kudos to Gaia for making it big. Congratulations to Lanzer for creating something so successful and fruitful. He's winning the bacon to put on his table.