Minecraft server ballin

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o hai guyz

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Jan 15, 2010
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I recently took over a Minecraft server that had a ton of players but was making diddlysquat (<$30/day) and implemented some new things that quickly boosted it to about $200/day. There is a lot of emphasis on the in-game money system and I implemented some real-world moneymakers into the in-game structure that basically encourage people to try to rack up as much in-game money as they can. They can earn in-game money by playing and performing usual Minecraftey tasks, but they can also buy it with real money if they don't want to spend time grinding. In-game money is used to buy things like houses, items, weapons, tools, girls (you can marry other players for a price), etc.

The 3 biggest moneymakers are:
1) Showoff items: Character/house customization things that serve no purpose other than to show off for other players.
2) Gambling: Players gamble all their money away in casinos, betting on in-game fights, etc.
3) Payment plans: Players can buy expensive items/houses on payment plans (with in-game money) and payments are automatically deducted from their account. If their account balance is ever negative, they are banned from the server until their balance becomes positive (either by getting a friend to give them money or by buying in-game money with real money).

Not surprisingly these 3 things are also big moneymakers in real life. I'm trying to think of some more things I could integrate that would be successful (thought about other real-world things like insurance but wasn't sure how to implement that without people abusing it ... or drugs/sex). Any ideas? Even if you don't know anything about Minecraft you can still feel free to post some ideas, the system of trading real money for in-game money to spend on virtual items is pretty simple (note: in-game money can't currently be traded back to the server for real money).
 
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Never played Minecraft but have played a lot of other games

Charge them to

1. Form a guild or a crew
2. Buy a minion or pet that will protect them or offer some sort of game bonus
3. Game modifiers such as XP, Gold, or Equipment/Loot that modify/increase the amount/chance of getting X thing in the game for X period of time.
4. A fee to enter lottery to win things
5. Purchase resources you don't want to grind out
6. Pay completion of Quests and boring tasks
7. Pay to unlock hard to attain content
8. Custom status or title on their character / things they own
9. A trade house / auction that costs money to list featured / broadcast to the server
10. Service that sacs another player and his buildings. Pay to attack them or have something attack them.
11. Purchase immunity from dying
 
very cool, im always fascinated by companies selling virtual money...zynga etc
i used to play WOW, so i spent some bucks on a better mount and some swords etc.
 
I did this with Everquest back around 2001-2005 or so, and it worked really well. I made my money in a couple of ways:

-Acquired lots of in-game currency by keeping "mules" parked in the games bazaar zone. I had multiple computers set up with 1-2 on each server. You could manipulate the markets pretty easily because certain things were pretty rare, so you could often buy all of them that were for sale and then raise the prices. Granted, that was harder on items that had a 1 per character limit, but it was still doable. I had notebooks full of the average prices and I would sit in my circle of computers and buy any time something big was significantly lower than the average. Then, it was just a matter of sticking it in my "store" and waiting for someone to buy it at the higher price. I'd leave them on all night and while I was off at class and I'd come back to millions more in gold than when I left. I sold the currency acquired through my own exchange, thus ensuring I got the best rates for it in real world money.

-Provided liquidity for people by exchanging real/fake currency.

-Created an "agency" where people could come to me if they needed specific types of characters to help them with things (a high level tank to round out a group, a healer for a dungeon crawl, someone to help people powerlevel, etc.). Then, I would go to a group of people I had assembled and see who could help that person out and I would take a healthy cut of the fee. It was popular with people who had real jobs and didn't have a ton of time to make connections in game or level up the long way.

-Something I didn't personally do but a friend did on Ultima Online - set up multiple computers running macros for various tasks and "rent" that computer time out to people who don't understand how to do it. He would charge a setup fee to get the basic task configured, and then people would pay based on how many hours the computer would be running that task plus any resources needed to do it (and sometimes, he would just log in on their account to do it for them so their character would acquire the skills, if that is what they were after).

I don't mess around with online games anymore because they're just too addictive and I don't need any more reasons not to get out of the house. I had Minecraft installed for about 2 days before I removed it from my computer and forced myself to go do something fun in the real world :)

Still, I've found that most games are surprisingly uncompetitive in terms of building a business. Most people who are really driven to make money are off doing it in the real world...and the gaming culture often frowns on the idea of profiting from games, so what little you do see is usually very fragmented or unprofessional. A lot of people who are really good at the game will end up selling their accounts/items later for a decent amount of money, but it generally takes something a little more organized to get better than a minimum wage return for effort invested.
 
I always found making money on games really interesting. I think it would awesome to do, but I know I'd just end up getting addicted.

For some reason I can't wrap my head around people making really good money on these games, but it sounds possible, especially when I read articles like this: Second Life's First Millionaire - BusinessWeek
 
stefanie said:
I did this with Everquest back around 2001-2005 or so, and it worked really well. I made my money in a couple of ways:

-Acquired lots of in-game currency by keeping "mules" parked in the games bazaar zone.
Click to expand...

Yep. Playing everquest back in highschool was when I made my first online monies.

First I was just doing it just for in game money and gear. I noticed the price differences on items in the Bazaar. Some users were just impatient or didn't know what an item was worth so they were quick to sell it at a low price. So I started buying low and selling high. Once you get some money going it snowballs pretty quick as there is better gains when you buy low and sell high on bigger items.

After awhile of selling, I came up with an idea to run a casino. Now I'm not
sure if I was the first one to do this idea, but I hadn't seen other people doing it. The game had a action where if you type /roll 1 1000 (or something like that) you would then roll a dice and it would say what number you rolled out of 1000. People used this in order to figure out who would get rare loot drops when killing mobs in a group. Well I used it to run a casino in the Bazaar. I would say something like.

"Bazaar Casino at the Horse Stables - Roll 1/1000 - 700 and above doubles your money - 950 and above quadruples it - Rare Fungi Tunic for a roll of 1000" "Come and try your luck!"

Then people would come over. Open a trade with me and give me the money, roll the dice and see what happened. It was great. I made a ton of in game money from this. One of the funniest things was the people who just instantly became addicted to it. I had guys who would come over and start gambling small, they would lose a bit, but then get in a few wins and they were immediately hooked. Some 30 mins later they would be completely gambled out of all their money. But this wouldn't stop them, many of them would then ask me "Hey do you accept items for gamble?". So by the end of their gambling spree they would be sitting there with a naked character and 0 money. It was so funny, I was just laughing my ass off.

I just made sure to always pay up when people won, even if I was out for a huge gamble. This way I kept my name good and people trusted me as the casino. I even ended up having other people run the casino for me while I was offline. Other users popped up trying to do the same. But by the time they came around, I had made so much money and established trust as THE casino that A: no one could handle bets as high as I could and B: people only trusted me.

Well eventually Everquest actually stopped allowing casinos in the Bazaar... So that ended.

This kind of turned me off from the game, so I went online to see if I could sell all this gear and gold I had made. I was really surprised at how I could and the huge market there was for it online. At that time I had never really thought about making real money from the game. After selling my gear and gold, I noticed certain items would always sell for more money online then what their in game gold was worth to buy them. So I would buy gold online, use that gold to buy the in game items which sold the highest online, sell them online, use the money to buy more gold etc.

Eventually I got out of it. But that's what got me started in online marketing. And it taught me so much about basic marketing principles, selling low buying high, establishing a name people trust etc. It was a great education for me at that age and a fun start.
 
I'm thinking about how to incorporate an insurance system into the game, where players can insure high-value items against loss/theft. For example, you buy a $50 sword, and then you buy insurance for it for $5 a month, so if someone kills you and you lose it you can get another one. I'm not sure how to prevent fraud though, because in this game if there is any possibility to cheat, people will do it. I already know some people will hide their items and say they lost them, or they'll let their friends kill them so they can get more items for free. Since it's just a game, nobody will care about "insurance fraud" and they'll just try to find ways like this to get around the system. Any ideas?
 
Gambit said:
For some reason I can't wrap my head around people making really good money on these games, but it sounds possible, especially when I read articles like this: Second Life's First Millionaire - BusinessWeek
Click to expand...

I remember seeing some "strange addiction" show, I think it was on nat geo..

But this guy was selling like sex furniture and sex toys or something like that in second life lol and had already made a couple mil off of it.
 
Crazy fucking guess way out on a limb here, but dating offers and camsites.

agtzfmxvbHNlcnYzNHITCxILU3RvcmVkSW1hZ2UY840LDA
 
i'm thinking about making adult games and everyone can buy/sell stuff in it??? what about facebookadultgame.com????
 
am I the only one that doesn't get minecraft? I just don't understand why so many people like it. I never tried it but looking at the youtube videos it looks like zero fun. But props to you for making money off it.
 
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