Two Brief Programming Notes

Ooh, you get to be guy who puts the hurting on those naughty cheaters? Fun. Well, in a sanitation worker sort of way. That said, a job’s a job, and that’s hella better than an indy-happy (at times arguably delusional) student such as myself has managed.

As anyone who has read a tirade of mine could attest, I’m firmly on the side of keeping RMT out of games. This is because I tend to regard games as great sanctums of equal opportunity amongst players while pointedly ignoring the obvious “but players have differing amounts of time to play and therefore inequality exists by default” on the grounds that at least that imbalance was earned through the virtue of in-game interaction. So I basically regard gold farmers with all the charm and compassion of a diehard Wiccan facing the Spanish Inquisition for similarly religious-minded means.

That said, it’s not that I blame gold farmers, per se. Cold, hard cash is the most powerful incentive in the modern world. My preferred solution is usually to consider the line of reasoning that if a grind is so very punishing or imbalanced that people would pay scalpers than t play, then it’s a very bad reflection on the game design. I’ve put some thought towards better models.

I buy gold, does this make me the son of satan yet?

Only insofar as supporting any illegal industry would.

Provided your bosses aren’t concerned about their thralls rocking the boat, what job isn’t a design position waiting to happen?

@Raad
Well, then, it seems evidence points to the gold buyer stereotype matching the gold sellers’.

You may not like RMT, and that’s fine. However, when you misuse language, it makes your arguments hollow and unpersuasive.

Well, it would from a perspective of the lawyer where the exact vocabulary is important and with the legal training to understand the distinction.

However, from the upstanding layman’s perspective, that is to say without qualified legal presentation reassuring us contrary to popular belief, being firmly within an established ‘gray area’ is illegal enough to quality for the use of the word, and a goodly bit of the stigma that goes with it.

That said, a disclaimer: I’m nothing but biased on this matter. I’ve pretty much been waving around a burning flag of “RMT is evil” the whole time. Am I going to make it sound worse than it is, perhaps even subconsciously, just by speaking about it? Hell, yeah I am. I’m a gaming zealot. I’ve proposed having cheaters’ hands removed at the wrist more than once.

Besides, whether or not RMT is illegal, as outlined in Lum’s article, many RMT sellers are involved with a number of confirmed illegal activities, such as credit card fraud. So there’s a pretty good chance you’re dealing with criminals to do it.

I’m a gamer fanatic who places irrationally high value in the sanctity of online games. If you’re looking for a suitable grisly punishment for mattress tag removal villains, seek you a mattress production fanatic who places irrationally high value in the sanctity of their mattress tags. I wouldn’t be surprised if one exists among those who might have some vital job-related use for the presence of that tag, at least after encountering the nth matress without one.

Actually, it’s not particularly the RMT folk I feel that way towards, it’s more along the lines of the kind of scum who employ aim bots and wall hacks and the like. You can cheat all you like on your own, that doesn’t hurt anyone, but when you force your cheating upon others in an online game then, as far as I’m concerned, you’re scum for whom the presence of their hands is being misused. If removal of your hands doesn’t stop you, we can move on to other appendages.

(Of course, I don’t seriously intend to act this out any more than someone who’s pet peeve is jaywalking seriously intends to run one down. I mentioned that just to underscore the severity of how biased I am against cheating in games.

As for why “it’s not particularly the RMT folk I feel that way towards” it’s because the sanctity of an MMORPG’s play experience is somewhat questionable to begin with.)

I wonder… if you’re a gold buyer and you’re aware that the gold seller you’re buying from has obtained the in-game assets they are selling you by hacking accounts and credit card theft, doesn’t that potentially make you an accessory to these crimes?

I’d say that virtual good became “real enough” ever since taxation on them became a congressional matter. Of course, just because they’re “real enough” doesn’t mean that the company agreed that you’re doing anything other than renting them.

I meant exactly I said, “became a congressional matter”. They considered taxing them. At that point, there’s sort of an official government recognition that there’s adequate value in virtual items for them to be considered as “real.” Although, if we were in Korea, there would be less ambiguity yet since they actually are taxing RMT transactions.

@wowpanda
Sure, but if you follow this conversation, I’m not talking about RMT itself being illegal.

We’re now in the territory of considering RMT from a perspective of if credit fraud and account hacking is involved in procuring the goods being sold. In this case, this could be considered in the same light as buying stolen goods.

The catch? If these goods aren’t really considered “real,” as taxation would suggest, then you’re not really buying stolen goods because the goods in question are inconsequential.

Earlier on you were saying that you believe that the bigger gold selling outfits do not engage in illegal practices. I’m not so sure – I think the bigger outfits are even more likely to be involved in illegal methods to circumvent bans and hack accounts than the individual gold seller. Last I checked, ignorance of illegal activity taking place that you are wantonly participating in was not a good defense.

@wowpanda
Whether or not the majority of gold seller’s hands are completely free from credit card theft or account hacking is a difficult assertion to prove or disprove no matter how strong one’s convictions may be one way or another.

This, of course, brings forth a whole other dimension of RMT that’s been talked about before, that being, “it monetarily incentivizes people to ruin the other player’s game experiences.”

Whether bots or sweat, that there’s an angry Asian man trying to sabotage your hunting an area because it’ll undermine his quota of gold to sell to other players is a significant impact to your enjoyment for the day.

@CmdrSlack
True enough. But it does, nonetheless, provide certain food for thought as to just how real virtual items are becoming. Not to mention you’re completely ignoring the precedent set in Korea.

But you do agree (or at least you have referred to it as) a fairly substantial “grey area” and that (for wowpanda’s reference) was what I meant by calling it an “illegal” industry. It’s clearly legal and, from an upstanding layman’s perspective, that’s illegal enough to steer clear of it.

Of course, this loops back clearly into my obvious bias against it. I’ll definitely be calling this glass half empty at any opportunity.

Edit: “It’s clearly legal’ = “It’s not clearly legal”

It’s a pretty big legal leap to say that because some smaller, less “legit” types hack accounts and steal CC info, the entire industry is culpable.

It would be, were it not for quite a bit of past precedent to back it up. IGE is not a “smaller, less legit” seller, they were (at the time of the scandal) the biggest big name in the business.

Can I establish that each and every gold farmer is similarly scam-minded? No. However, it does set a pretty bad precedent to consider they’re breaking the MMORPG company’s rules to begin with to even operate.

I have to agree with sinij, really. The gold sellers are just responding to a demand. I can blame those who purchase the gold much more appropriately than the gold sellers themselves.

However, I can also blame the MMORPG developers whose idea of a grind is one so protracted that many players would rather pay somebody else to play the game for them. It certainly isn’t something I’d be proud of about a game of mine.

I’ve been having a hard time enjoying MMORPGs lately precisely because of that. The trouble is that the flow is all off.

If you’re a newbie MMORPG player who is picking up the game for the first time, a leveling rate that lets you slowly figure out how to get into the game is appropriate. On the other hand, if you’re a veteran MMORPG player who has done the drill a million times before in the games that this game clones, the newbie’s leveling rate is torture. A veteran player might have fun when they get to the end game, with all the tools and advanced activities that part of the game offers, but the rest of the game is just a 300+ hour long unskippable tutorial.

On top of this, we’ve a ton of other reasons why you might need a shortcut in advancement. Maybe you play with a bunch friends who have more time to play than you do and you want to play with them but they’ve out leveled you. Sidekicking/mentoring systems help, but are not universally available and are rarely a perfect solution (e.g. even sidekicks can’t enter certain zones without adequate levels). Maybe you’re in a competition with other players who have longer to play than you, and paying bribing somebody else to give you an edge over them seems like the only way you can win. (Which invalidates the spirit of competition to begin with, but that detail is easily overlooked when your nose has been on the grindstone long enough.)

So, despite being an RMT hater, I do understand the design problem in which justifies its existence. A game should be fun – you should want to actually play it. When you’d rather pay somebody else to play it for you, then something is wrong.

However, don’t fall in love with your urine filters. Gold sellers aren’t simply a useful device (though I’m sure they’d prefer you believe they are). They’re people who see money to be made and aren’t afraid to break some rules to do it. You might love alcohol, and be thankful that there a means for you to beat the prohibition to get it, but you don’t love organized crime because they have a nasty tendency to cause a lot of fallout damage as they operate. RMT sellers bring to a game a lot of campers, bots, and just generally undermining the very sanctity what honest advancement is supposed to mean in an RPG by what they offer. I have some very good reasons not to like that RMT is going on and these mirror most of MMORPG developers’ – they’re not just banning RMT to keep people in the game longer.

In the end, maybe instead of paying some borderline criminals to keep playing an MMORPG with an insufferable grind, you should cancel your subscription to the game outright. What kind of tool would you have to be in order to pay somebody else a lot of money just so you can keep paying $15/mo to the MMORPG developer who is wronging you in the first place? This is why I don’t play a whole lot of MMORPGs these days.

In the wider scheme of all your costs in life, sure.

In a more examined scheme of computer game education budget, there’s a lot better bangs for your buck available than a game that requires you first buy it, then pay $15/mo, then sucks badly enough that you want to pay somebody else to play it so you can continue to pay $15/mo.

I meant to write “computer game entertainment” budget, but that was an interesting Freudian slip considering Raph’s equating fun in games to learning. ;P

@Hatch
I’d like to introduce you to a little thing called GameFly. But, of course, it’s your money. You can spend it however you like.

I’m not bothered at how you spend your money. If you can find a way to strain enjoyment out of a game that’s mostly crap, more power to you.

However, so long as people keep voting with their dollars for mediocre grinds, that’s exactly what MMORPG developers will keep delivering. That you’re paying somebody to play the game for you so you can continue to send the wrong signals to game developers is… well, what would you call that?

You’re more a diehard MMORPG fan than me if “what’s available” is nothing but games of that genre.

I’ve been there. Lately, my philosophy has shifted more along the lines of thinking that what I get out of games is entertainment.

If a game isn’t really entertaining me (perhaps because I no longer give a damn about virtual achievement knowing its just a bunch of 1s and 0s on a computer somewhere which will soon be made obsolete when the next expansion comes out or I move on to another MMORPG) then the game isn’t performing the role in my life that games are there to perform.

Worse, if I consider entertainment from along the lines of Raph’s Theory of Fun, where a sense of fun is actually learning going on, I’m afraid that playing a game which fun will actually make me stupider over the long run.

When you’ve been playing a game long enough that the goal is to sit there and accumulate, not dodge the enemies’ attacks, not use the terrain to your advantage, not strategize, basically sit there and soak damage and hammer out a predictable pattern of hot keys because to do anything else would be considered exploiting, then you’re being trained not to play a game at all.

I’ve actually noticed this behavior in me if I’ve been playing a MMORPG a lot lately and then move on to another game. I won’t try to play that game intelligently, e.g. think of ways to play the game better, because I’m too used to the idea of a game in which there are no ways to play it better, by design, to level the playing field. The “persistence>skill” model is a genuine brain killer.

So, in terms of time investment, I’m feel I’m probably wasting my time a whole lot less playing something genuinely entertaining but without a persistent space than I am playing something mind-numbingly boring but with a persistent space.

But I still see some appeal in a persistent space. It does make you feel a certain sense of creation to know that your efforts in a game are actually producing a sense of progress (even if it is an illusion). To these ends, I’ve been experimenting with a game that can be both a dynamic (as opposed to the usual static – nothing ever changes) persistent game world and interactive in a way a game should be interactive.

If it’s a Square-Enix game, they spend about 5 hours in non-interactive cinematics dinging.