taxation inside video games?

http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/January-February-2006/feature_dibbell_janfeb06.msp Extremely interesting link. The author talks about the idea of selling in game items, currency, etc. over either online auction sites, such as ebay.com, to people you know, or whoever you decide to sell your in game stuff too. His thought is should those items and the money being collected for them be taxed as if they are coming from a department store? I thought it was a fascinating idea. This guy played an MMO game over a years time and earned 11,000 dollars from selling stuff over ebay.com. He then reported his income to the IRS and read the appropriate information regarding the taxation of his money. He then realized that in the listed taxable incomes you were supposed to be taxed on the income you make in game and out. which then brings up his point of why tax in game gains if you aren't making any real currency from them. Very interesting and a must read!

world of warcraft

The game forementioned has 9 million+ players. It is a RPG, role playing game, and has many fascinating aspects to it. There have been episodes done by South Park, the Simpsons, and even Family Guy portraying their characters in gameplay and the effects of them playing a game similar, or in South Parks episode they play the actual game. There is definitely hype behind this game, good and bad. many people play, therefore many people enjoy the game. There is a $15 a month fee for different aspects of the game like maintenence, patches for problems, etc. So in essence along with the original purchase of the game, 9 million+ players are paying $15 a month for this game, giving them a grand total of 135 million dollars each month. That's a heck of alot of money. So it's definitely understandable why people are so fixed on either hyping up the game or putting it down as a horrible addiction and a game that is ruining our culture.

As many of the articles from before have shown there is a definite difference in opinion on this game. Many companies are actually thriving on the fact that this game is in existence, along with other games they service, world of warcraft is probably their largest amount of customers. I am of course talking about the businesses that sell gold and sell power leveling. So is this game a bad thing to those companies and those peoples lives?

More fun stuff

There have been two commercials right now that have been posted by World of Warcraft with Mr. T, William Shatner, and one more on the way with Verne Troyer (Mini Me). http://worldofwarcraft.com/downloads/movies.html Very funny videos there too along with the commercials.

Youtube.com definitely has some funny videos dealing with video games and their content. And honestly i don't know how the people who create the videos do it. Pretty neat stuff.

There was actually a report on CBS's early show a week or so back. http://search.cbsnews.com/?source=cbs&q=world+of+warcraft has a large amount of pander about addiction of one game, world of warcraft. It's one of those deals i believe that when there's money involved, there's controversy. More in the next post.

Judge Judy

This is funny actually. There is a couple who isn't a couple anymore and the girlfriend is filing to get some money back that her ex boyfriend owes her. Well... It got taken to Judge Judy and turns out one of the reasons he was gotten rid of was he played the computer game World of Warcraft. It goes along with the addiction blogs and the blogs about people needing help. The link to where you can see Judge Judy talking with these people is at http://www.wowinsider.com/2007/10/23/judge-judy-world-of-what/ But what it comes down to is even if you play games either on the computer or on a system will you have the motivation to either find a job if you are in need, do schoolwork, etc. Sometimes the answer is no. Lack of motivation can come from many sources that aren't linked to video game playing. The video game playing is just a means of almost relieving the stress that builds up. So, this is a funny video of Judge Judy and it's pretty self explanitory.

Video game playing?

This is a curious thing that people do, and my friend is actually about to do this as I'm writing this. There are sites, www.videogamegold.com, www.Pvp-Depot.com, and many many others that actually use your character's account and level it, play it, until a desired spot in the game. This happens with most Online RPG games. The logic? To get a higher lvl without as much of the work. Lazy of course but thats what happens. My buddy is paying $50 to get his guy from lvl 51 to lvl 58. What a waste. He's going to give his guy to the company tuesday and get it back thursday.

These types of things happen very often. Seems to me it's almost like paying someone to do your homework for you. Getting the grade without the work. That is how I feel about it.

Guitar Hero 3

This is a game that people might say is safe to play. But guess again. The in game content really isn't too horrible, it's actually great for hand-eye coordination. My friend who plays guitar with me in our band got the game and he's actually gotten better with rhythms and keeping on time. But the addictive factor is insane. The game has been out since October 28th of this year and already kids are engulfed with playing. The biggest hint of the addiction factor is the community website http://www.guitarhero.com/ There are scores on there for all the online players and the platforms they play it on. A kid has the top score of 102,497,107 points which means he had to have played this game non-stop since the day it came out. The closest competition to him is an Xbox player who has 97,384,487. The closest player in the Wii category has 51,551,24, so he has twice as many points on his platform than at least the next best player. That's scary if you ask me because i've played this game and it's not even that fun. But I play real guitar and the songs on the game are much more fun to play on that than on the game. I definitely cannot imagine the amount of hours this kid has put into the game. Should he be doing homework or going to school?

Addictinggames.com

This is a site that is full of short, easy games that take your mind off boredom and at the same time keep you hooked for a long, loooong time. http://www.addictinggames.com/ In case you didn't want to spell it out yourself. They have a huge selection of games, categories the games fall under, and new games that get added to their list every single day. One of the funny things that happened was when my girlfriend was showing me the site, and helping me see how it would be great for this blog, she had a problem with getting off of it. The answers i was getting was "just one second" or "after this." That's what this site does to people! These games aren't long enough or technical enough to really present a problem but there are a large enough number that in order to play all the games you'd have to spend a long time playing. Just thought that was a very interesting site to include.