1. The Commodification of Play in
Diablo 3 –
Understanding the Real Money
Market Place
Patrick Prax
Uppsala University
Patrick.Prax@im.uu.se

2. •Diablo 3 and the real-money
auction house (RMAH)
•Prosumption, produsage
and playbour
•The RMAH and
•Real-money trade
•Game business models
•Game design
•Game Design as Marketing
•Cases
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4. The Real-Money Market Place
• Load your Battle.net account with money
• Buy or sell virtual items for real money
• Buy Blizzard products, games,
merchandise, DLC, from that money
• There is a fee for trading (1$ or 15%)
and cashing out (15%)
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6. It has to make money
• Blizzard forces people online
– excluding many (>100 000 according to
Extra Creditz) from playing - reducing sales
– Accepting rubber-banding and other
performance problems (like servers braking
down at launch)
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7. Prosumption, Produsage and
Playbour
• Production and Consumption/Use at the
same time
– Facebook and other social media, In MMOs
happening during normal play
• Play and labor
– Grinding, Farming, unpleasant mechanical
play to gain an advantage
• Do not really fit…
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8. Commodification
of Play
• Commodification of leisure
• Work logic permeating the game, play, and
the emerging social interactions
• Breaking immersion and any residue of a
magic circle
• No equal start, not different place
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9. Real-Money Trade
• Normally outside of the
game
• In Everquest included
after launch
• The RMAH is a RMT
platform with a tax.
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11. Game Design as Marketing
• “MMO operators are able to adjust the
environment in which their products are
sold and marketed, and the rules
according to which the products are
used, not to mention their role in creating
the environment to begin with. […]
business models and service design,
including game design, could be
integrated and aligned from the start.”
(Hamari and Lehdonvirtä, 2010)
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12. Cases
• Natalya’s Wrath
• Community Reaction, Forced
Participation
• Item affixes and drop rates
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13. Natalya’s Wrath
• “Result: 20s of (near)
immunity […] THAT is
OP.” –Forum poster
• “We're a bit
apprehensive because
we really don't want to
keep fiddling with
people's items, even
though this makes the
set quite good.” -
Bashiok, Blizzard
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Community Manager

14. Community reaction
• Before launch:
• “Finally we can make money of our
gaming!”
• After:
• Forced to participate, no way to progress
otherwise
• Breaks immersion, best way to play is to
go work and earn money
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15. Social Results
• No forced effects on behavior, but an
influence.
• Betray the aim “Gameplay first”.
• Ties into the discussion of business
models like micro transactions and game
design.
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16. Thank You
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17. The Commodification of Play in
Diablo 3 –
Understanding the Real Money
Market Place
Patrick Prax
Uppsala University
Patrick.Prax@im.uu.se
Copyrighted material used under fair use. If you own an IP and want me to take something out
please contact me. Thank you. Patrick.prax@im.uu.se