The Philosophy of Xgold (The Economics of 3dxchat)

Introduction

Most multiplayer online games have an in game currency and many have multiple currencies. There's gold, silver, xp, steel, oil, dubloons, etc. You name it, it's a resource.

It's easy to see why game designers do it as well. In game currencies provide players something to strive for in a way that's easy to implement.  It needs the simplest of accounting systems to manage and the in game resources often provide players with options on how they spend it so essentially, they reward themselves. It doesn't involve the balancing that a tech tree involves for example.

The other benefit of an in-game currency is it can be linked to a real world currency making it a possible revenue stream as players purchase the currency to accelerate the process of obtaining the benefits.

Xgold

The in-game currency for 3dxchat is Xgold and that's it. There's just a single currency and  it accumulates over time via logins. A daily login accumulates it at the rate of up to 300 per day.  Purchases of xgold are available for real world money and the purchases are one way - not surprising as they give it away for logging in.

Xgold has a number of limitations, though in some respects, view these less as limitations and more design decisions. 

The first and most obvious is that there's no way to gift existing xgold on your account to another player's account. You can purchase xgold for other players and we'll come back to this but the implications of being unable to gift (or more accurately, trade) xgold in game has a number of implications.

First is that there's a limited in game economy which I have to say is a good thing. Trading in game currency for goods and services from other players may seem like a good thing but in a game like 3dxchat, that's likely to end up in one place - prostitution. There's some prostitution in 3dxchat but from what I've seen (and I haven't explored it in detail yet) it seems fairly limited and low level. Contrast this with a game like Achat where A$ can be exchanged and there, prostitution is not just common, it's mature and well refined. In 3dxchat, apart from a few brave souls who ask for the purchase of xgold, most escorts (as prostitutes on 3dxchat seem to refer to themselves) require payment in gifts. Given gifts have no further on-trade value, they represent the termination point for the expenditure of in game currency which means the value provided to the escort is simply one of status. 

My limited experience with escorts are that they don't have the same level of maturity or refinement as in a game with a freely tradable currency. When I have spoken to them some talked in indistinct terms about what they will do with gifts. In one case when I took it to the level of transaction, I get what for what, they went silent. Contrast this with negotiation in Achat where it's X A$ will give Y services for Z period of time. To be honest, sometimes it feels that 3dxchat escorts are hustling rather than escorting. Some are specific on their profile and I can only assume that's the benefit of experience.

 

The two areas that 3dxchat allows you to spend xgold are for profile and Identity.

Xgold and Profile

Spending for profile takes the form of gifts, where I expect most xgold gets used. Obviously the gift more enhances the profile of the receiver than the giver, although it can be used as a way to pay for services. Players with high gift counts are obviously longer in game than those with lower.

Profile can also be enhanced for rooms with 300 xgold (a day's login wages) can boost the ranking of the room. 

Enhancing profile using xgold is really the only way xgold can be applied in a way that affects other players (either their profile or the ranking of their rooms). In both of these cases, the spending is terminal, the xgold consumed and no longer in the system. The resulting benefit cannot be transferred onwards.

Xgold and Identity

A more costly place to spend xgold is on identity either enhancing the name tag of the player, altering the name and gender of the avatar or establishing an additional avatar. These are purely actions where users can only affect their own account and therefore consume in game currency without any opportunity to generate an onwards transaction or further in game economic activity.

Subscription versus Micro-transactions

While we are at it, xgold is a much more limited resource than A$ in Achat in terms of what you can do with it. Again I personally consider this a good thing. In 3dxchat, you pay a subscription and you get access to 100% of the wearables, 100% of the body modifications, 100% of the actions. Achat you get very limited starting amounts of each and then are expected to make up the rest in micropayments. To top it off, there's no in game source for A$ except other players. I thoroughly recommend the 3dxchat approach.

Summing this up

It feels that 3dxchat is driven by the subscription model rather than an unpleasant Micro-transaction model. Overall, you can get into the game a lot faster given all of the in-game options are available to you. The lack of ability to transfer xgold and the lack of Micro-transactions makes me feel that the subscription model is what drives the game meaning players can jump in to the full virtual world experience much more quickly.