The Alphaville Herald

Interview with Mick, from Online Game Bucks

by Alphaville Herald on 08/03/04 at 12:29 pm

In The Alphaville Herald we have met some small currency dealers and some fairly large ones (six figures), but by comparison Online Game Bucks is just huge. Having started exclusively as Simolean dealers, they now sell currency in nine games, and they currently have 32 employees. By some outside estimates their annual sales revenues are around One Million Dollars US, much of it sold through their eBay store. In this interview we talk to Mick, the founder and boss of Online Game Bucks. While he is circumspect about sales, he does say that in the first two months of this year that they made $63K US, after expenses (32 employees!) and taxes. That makes the million dollar sales figure sound about right…

Urizenus: Mick, I understand that online game bucks is a pretty big operation now. 30 employees or something like that?
Mick: 32 employees now, [but that is only] 8 more people than what we started with.
Urizenus: oh wow. So you started big. Did you start with just tso or multiple games?
Mick: I started with just TSO
Urizenus: When did you start?
Mick: I started playing tso in November 2002, I started selling a little soon after, and we launched our site in January 2003
Urizenus: Did you generate your own simoleans or did you have a supply partner?
Mick: We started generating our own [soon after we opened].
Urizenus: When did you branch out to other games?
Mick: The first sign of TSO dying out — about 6 months later.
Urizenus: What other games do you sell in now?
Mick: Star Wars Galaxies (SWG), Dark Age of Camelot (DAOC), EverQuest (EQ), Final Fantasy XI (FFXI), Ultima Online (UO), Diablo 2 (D2), Second Life (SL), and Shadowbane (SB).
Urizenus: Is TSO a small part of your business now or is it still significant?
Mick: Well it has not been the major part of our business for awhile, but the last couple months it has picked up quite a bit.
Urizenus: What was the effect of the elimination of the maze object for you?
Mick: Its affect for us making money or the customers?
Urizenus: For both.
Mick: For us making money it really had no major affect. We had our own computer program developed long ago. We still used it because [after the mazers were developed because with our program] you didn’t have to be present at the computer, [but] some of our computers had the mazers running. As for customers, business jumped quite a bit the week after mazers went off game.
Urizenus: So what do your bots run now? Pizza?
Mick: We have our own program.
Urizenus: Oh. but what object(s) do you work?
Mick: No comment (Wouldn’t want another maze craze to start).
Urizenus: haha
Urizenus: Can I ask, in rough figures, what your revenues are for simoleans and for the rest of your biz?
Mick: Over what period of time?
Urizenus: Annual.
Mick: I’d have to ask my accountant.
Urizenus: are you close to 7 figures?
Mick: Only been in business just over a year, but for 2004 we have already pulled in 63k –that’s everything…..after taxes.
Urizenus: wow, in 2 months?
Mick: yup
Urizenus: Congrats!
Mick: That’s more than what we average, but this year has shown no decline, each week it has been more than the last.
Urizenus: I understand you also give a fair bit to charities?
Mick: Last year we donated to various charities, mostly St Jude’s Childrens Hospital. This year we decided to concentrate on one and we chose The Make A Wish Foundation.
Urizenus: So how did you get into the game currency business?
Mick: I got bored with TSO and decided to sell some on eBay, mostly hoping to make enough to pay for our accounts every month, lol.
Urizenus: Did it take you by surprise? — I mean that there was such a big market for this stuff?
Mick: Sort of, I knew about the EQ market, my brother in law dabbled in that. But I was surprised that TSO was so big
Urizenus: Had you played other MMORGs before?
Mick: I had played EQ and a couple little ones. But mostly before TSO I was an avid Madden Challenge participant.
Urizenus: What games do you think promise the most growth right now — both in subscribers and as a market for your business?
Mick: SWG
Urizenus: what about FFXI?–say when it goes on PlayStation.
Mick: It started out big but I think it was hyped up too much.
Mick: The only game I actually play for fun is SWG.
Mick: But FFXI is ok to me.
Urizenus: What are your thoughts about 2L?
Mick: It’s an even smaller market than TSO.
Mick: Last numbers we saw for TSO was around 70k players — quite considerably [less than] the 250k I remember them saying [originally].
Mick: You can’t advertise a game and then wait a year to start pushing for major updates.
Urizenus: So, do you think tso is dying? Do you think EA will pull the plug soon?
Mick: It is dying, but I don’t think the plug will be pulled anytime soon.
Mick: Well they aren’t going to pull the plug, the sims is still a major name and will always attract the kids it does and the large amount of women.
Mick: They could save it if they wanted to, it wouldn’t be impossible.
Urizenus: so how can they save it?
Mick: If they keep updating, and listening to the players, they can improve it and keep people interested.
Mick: People have been complaining about the friend/enemy links since the beginning, and they are just now getting around to revamping the system.
Urizenus: I’m not sure that nerfing the game by eliminating red links will help.
Mick: Didnt say nerfing, revamping.
Mick: In SWG….CSRs, DEVs, and MODs talk to the community all the time and are very friendly. TSO has never had that.
Urizenus: How do you respond to the people that complain that game currency sellers are “parasites” who ruin the game for people that “play by the rules”?
Mick: Most people I know who say that hardly play the game anyways.
Mick: We may ruin the game for those people, but we keep twice as many interested in the game because they don’t have to “work” so hard in a game.
Mick: How many people want to come home from work or school just to log on to a game and work some more?
Urizenus: And the robot factory is just soooo fun.
Mick: I focus all my gaming attention on SWG.
Urizenus: So you play there? What server?
Mick: Mostly Tarquinas.
Urizenus: So how big do you think the MMORPG market can get? Has it leveled off, or could we see games (and markets) that are as big as those in Korea.
Mick: I think it can always get bigger, depends on where they want to go with it.
Urizenus: What about your business? Are you optimistic? Will it hold? Grow? Contract over the next couple years?
Mick: It has only gotten bigger since we have been doing it.
Urizenus: So you think that will continue?
Mick: I think it will.
Urizenus: Anything you want to add?
Mick: We are looking forward to Word of Warcraft (WoW) and The Matrix Online (TMO), we think they will have a large player base .
Urizenus: Will they be stealing players from SWG?
Mick: I don’t know if I would call it stealing, but I know people are looking forward to them as well in SWG. But if they aren’t that great, SWG won’t lose them.
Mick: SWG is coming out with their space expansion this summer — that is what most people are looking forward to.
Urizenus: sweet
Urizenus: ok, thanks a lot Mick!