Korea starts taxing RMT

 Posted by (Visited 8061 times)  Game talk
Jun 262007
 

RMT Taxation starts in Korea from 1 July 2007, says this translation of the original Korean article. It only applies to those who have a certain volume of transactions — folks doing more than 6m won every six months (around $6500) will have the mediating party (e.g., the RMT company) collect the tax, and folks over 12m won in a half year have to get a business license.

Apparently, this is a deal cut by the RMT companies…

Jun 262007
 

You’d think there weren’t many examples. And you’re right. But when you do find it, it looks like what Stephen Totilo and N’Gai Croal are doing with their dissection of Manhunt 2 (The MTV version: part one, part two; the Newsweek/MSNBC version: part one, part two, hopefully more to come).

Not having played the game, it’s near impossible for me to comment on the game itself. I’ve publicly commented that much of the Rockstar output seems to me to simply enjoy pushing buttons and boundaries, rather than really reach for social commentary or redeeming value of any sort. Today at lunch, I had the odd experience of describing Manhunt (the original) to a table full of people — and oddly, the description sounding more artistic than the actual game was.

Lots of comparisons to film are used in the discussion between Croal and Totilo; the question comes up as to whether Manhunt 2 is comparable to a Bonnie and Clyde, a Natural Born Killersor whether it’s just the equivalent to a snuff film. In the end, we probably won’t get to decide, because pre-emptive censorship (both from the governmental and the platform-holder side) means that debates like the one that Croal and Totilo are having simply won’t be had. And that in itself seems to leave us all impoverished, regardless of the quality of the game.

Sherwood Dungeon

 Posted by (Visited 22568 times)  Game talk
Jun 242007
 

I’ve mentioned it before, and of course Gene hangs out here on the blog from time to time. But now that Adobe has put up a case study of Sherwood Dungeon, it seems like a good chance to remind everyone that this browser-based Shockwave MMO has quietly amassed 1.3 million unique players a month, with 4000 PCU. It’s ad-supported, I believe. Oh yeah — and despite stuff like physics systems, mocapped anims, and so on, this is a small enough shop that Gene’s email is posted on the website.

As it happens, my daughter got hooked on Adventure Quest (featured there at MaidMarian.com as well) while I was away at the Virtual Goods Summit. Within minutes of my walking in the front door, she told me that she wanted to spend $20 on microtransactions for something. I told her no. 😉