Idea Article: Auction Houses

This is an interesting article I stumbled over a while ago while perusing the inter-web, figured I'd share it.

Do auction houses suck?

Once upon a time, there was a game set in a science fiction universe where the economy was very important. Its name was not Eve.

In this game, players could, if they so chose, run a business. They could

designate a building as a shop
hire an NPC bot to stand in it
give the bot items to hold for sale
specify the prices at which those items would sell
customize the bot in a variety of ways
make use of advertising facilities to market the shop
decorate the shop any way they pleased

With this basic facility, emergent gameplay tied to the way that the crafting system worked resulted in players who chose to run shops being able to do things Ike build supply chains, manage regular inventory, develop regular customer bases, build marketing campaigns, and in general, play a lemonade stand writ large.

The upshot was that at peak, fully half the players in Star Wars Galaxies ran a shop.

Full Article

That was a great article. I think auction houses suck sometimes. When there is a system like SWG has, auction houses can't compete. But on games where nothing of the sort exists, auction houses tend to work better than a trade channel being spammed to hell all day.