Gambling your life away online - an article about what a Chinese MMO is like

Great article. It took a while before the horror of that game really hit me. I would like to think that a game mechanic of this type wouldn't work in the west because:

- a good number of players rely on parents/pocket money to buy their games

- a good number of players are adults who have to pay other bills. I can't imagine my landlord being happy that i didn't pay my rent because i was addicted to spunking my money on a computer game.

-I'd also imagine that Westerners are less fussed about the size of their e-peen.

Oh, that explains all those SUVs.

You should rather think about "honor". Asians have strong concept of it and should MMO capitalize over it, they get suckered in easily.

And that MMO obviously did (little touches like automatically adding player who pkd you enemy-list kinda illustrate it. Hell, having enemy list at all should give you idea.)

Then it all about preserving your face and not failing. Compare it to Western MMO where it is about winning.

@ zwei2stein

Fair point about honour. I'd never thought of it that way.

Therefore this game appears to have tapped into the idea of buying your own Honour.

It kind of irritates me that people have the attitude "well, I'll just pay instead of grind". The message to the company is, basically, if they make the game as annoying and not fun as possible, they can charge more money.

Unfortunately, I don't have much respect for or confidence in my fellow consumers, and I don't think they'll see it that way. Instead, I think they'll happily fork over money to skip intentionally irritating and dull content, thus encouraging companies to add more intentionally irritating and dull content.

It's the same thing you see in other economic transactions. Consumers are dumb as a bag of hammers, unfortunately, and just seem to have no ability to foresee the consequences of their buying decisions.

If gamers - as consumers - had any wits about them, they'd just shun pay-to-play systems altogether and make the business model untenable. I don't think they'll do that, sadly.

I never buy games that are pay to play. There's no need for it, and that way I feel like i'm doing my bit to stop the growth of Pay to Play

Also a problem. However, this is just as prevalent in other games - players go after new content voraciously to keep on the cutting edge. Look at Guild Wars - DoA was absolutely terrible game design but grind goals and potential rewards sent players rushing into it. In the cast of pay-to-play games, this would correlate to players maintaining subscriptions in order to go into these areas, and keeping other players into the game for longer simply because they wish to fully exploit the content of the game to get their money's worth.

While paying for benefits might increase the rate of this problem, it's not the cause of it, and to consider games that offer real-money transactions guilty of adding content to keep players and make a profit while games without it are not (the ones that focus on in-game grind) is rather one-sided.

I would like to say two things,
1) Yes this is an extreme example, and does show Every thing that can go wrong in a MMO.
2)But on the other hand, In Asia piracy is SO rampant that the only successful business models require offering something they can't get for free.

It's an Asian culture thing, and as long as it stay over there I'm fine.

The next question to consider is how different is paying for online benefits different from any other income-related hobby. Tabletop gaming, CCGs, and a huge number of other activities.

Why is paying for a game looked down on more than the rest? Every game has unfair advantages that trivialize the skill of the player, criticizing money-driven games without doing the same for time-driven games is unfair. It's a flaw in all character-development games with heavy emphasis on equipment, but the player who hit mobs over and over for months to get gear to crush you isn't that different from the player who paid for the gear. Both of them spent time on it (whether the time was RL or ingame) for a game where time > all.

I can blame the game, but not the players. I'd have to praise the ones spending money for being logical - if I had put the thousands of hours I farmed into a job, I could have bought all my gold and had enough left over to do something useful with.

And then the game would have been less than what "we" (I was tempted to say westerners but you know it's not true) now consider a "game". Then why not play poker or any other online gambling? Too random? There's surely one about chess. Too boring? Look at the kill-for-cash MMO Kwari (also here and there). Et caetera.

Money is killing the fun factor, because it brings back into the virtual world the real one, and in a very brutal way expressed by the article in OP. It's also the reason why the extremes of RMT become acceptable (sweatshops, people paid ridiculous money while the golden boys make millions). Culture has a huge influence on the social acceptability of these game elements, but in the long run it does more harm to the majority, while a minority escapes with either more money or more e-satisfaction (yes honor is important in Asia, but how honorable is it to win because you've got the biggest toy?). I would even venture into saying that MMOs are ideal tools for luring the "people" into believing that they're happy, while they're mainly seen as profitable consumers (exactly like mobile phone consumers).

Interesting read also:
http://www.playnoevil.com/serendipit...-when.....html

Edit: everyone should read this, it's about RMT but it does give you some hints of how bad p2p can become:

Excellent article.

Do people really consider grind-farming a game? Or is it the pre-requisite in order to fully play the game?

Guild Wars really starts at level 20. In games where achieving the maximum, or at least a competent level takes much longer, how much of the work before play is really a game?

Games where skill is marginalized by other factors (ie: most RPGs) aren't the games you should be looking at for level playing fields. The ability to slowly work to produce an uneven playing field through acquisition is what attracts many players.

Lets take a Guild Wars example - Sno (of the old 55 monk academy) was once offered US$50 (iirc) to teach a player to farm UW. His academy took 100k+ sums to teach players. Either of Players who went through it would have an 'advantage' of sorts, and had to work, either through farming or RL work, to get that advantage, and hadn't wanted to spend the time learning it bit by bit themselves because for them, that's prerequisite work required to actually play the game (do proper runs). You could extend this example to PvP title farming and account sales.

Again, in non-RMT games you still end up with a select few that got luckier, or have more time, that have the best gear and that puts them on top. RMT might highlight the problems, but it doesn't cause them. It's part of online RPG design in general, which for the most part reward time and grind behind the account more than the actual player.

If you're really trying to talk against the imbalance of equipment availability, being able to buy it for RL money is often much more equally available than hoping to get lucky on a ridiculously rare drop. That depends a lot on the structure of the game though, so it's not a blanket statement.

Do you really think that GWers care about grinding? I think not and there's only a minority who try to reach a certain rank or GWAMM or even have elite armor.

A lot if, like me, you care about the story, the landscape and the fun. I know it sounds naive, but I'm wondering whether it's not the "blasé" effect of GWG taking its toll on you .

Look at the example quoted by the RMTers in the link I provided above:
they were determined to be the best. However they didn't have the time to play the game so he hired my service.
When your money becomes your main advantage, you've failed to create a game. Players may fool themselves into believing that it's for their "fun", but it's not, it's rather for their "sense of accomplishment" which is rather an illusion here: they want everyone to see them as "the best", not be the best.

While careful design will surely help prevent these extremes (and Anet will have to make a much better job in GW2), RMT/p2p is becoming a major trend. Becomes it makes MMOs extremely protifable. But, as for video-on-demand and software-as-a-service, these models will backfire at the companies in the long run (while in the short run we'll see new millionaires) as they fail to be sustainable. e-grind is only one aspect of this IMHO, mixing money and games too closely is another (though it'll attract a very rich niche of players, see the link to Kwari above).

On the other hand, give the different status that MMOs and games have in Asia, I'd be interested to know how this affects the reflection on these problems (game addiction, economic fairness). After all, we're looking at this article with our westernerns' eyes and as the "links and sources" from the article's translator suggest, we may be mistaken.

The problem with the efficiency argument for spending money instead of time is (as someone said), that this is supposed to be a game. In most games or hobbies, the point is not to buy your way to the top...the point is to spend your free time having fun. Yes, you have to spend money to have fun also, but I don't think you can actually take away the spending time aspect and still enjoy yourself.

For example I really enjoyed playing through all 3 campaigns from 1 to 20. Even though by the time I did Nightfall I could have run myself to Consulate Docks, etc, I had fun just playing the game. Getting better stuff was an incentive, but not one that superceded having fun.

Now fast forward to a few months later, I have several level 20 characters that are done with almost everything except the elite areas. That's when the grind really starts, whether it's for titles, or learning how to farm UW so I can afford that rare skin, or entering RA over and over to get glad points. At that point it began to make sense to spend money over time. 9 rings for example, because you don't have to be at the computer. Or farming ectos to buy that weapon instead of waiting for it to drop. That kind of activity that is not actually fun to do, it does make sense to spend money and save yourself the time. I had fun doing that for a little while, but not too long. Now I only log on to play with friends.

I think most people feel like if they're gonna spend money, though, they might as well spend it in real life. Whereas time is a more easily spent commodity - think of all the hours spent watching TV - and so it's easier to rationalize spending it.

I agree with this wholeheartedly. I think consumers have encouraged the rather sad state of most MMOs today by continuing to support games with weak mid and long-term content (Everquest, WoW, etc.) and RMT-based games are just a natural evolution of that particular style.

The people have said, with their wallets, that what they want is a set of predictable, non-taxing mechanisms for advancement (i.e. the 'kill/collect/carry' quest mold) and they have rewarded companies like Blizzard that have refused to push the envelope or attempt anything novel.

It's sad, but the lowest common denominator, in all things democratic, will always decide who the victor of any competition is. Apparently, what appeals to the lowest common denominator in MMOs is arbitrary digital advancement, and companies are catering to that demand in various ways whether it be the repetitiveness of WoW and a subscription model or outright pay-to-advance transactions.

What you fail to recognize though is that arbitrary advancement in a video game IS fun to some people, and they don't care how they actually advance.

Personally, I think it's sort of sad, but the fact is that some people feel a great level of accomplishment when they hit some high rank in Guild Wars or get a fancy graphical enhancements for their character. For some of those people, buying things outright to show off IS fun and to them that's a perfectly valid way to spend money on the hobby.

You and I may only want to play the game for personal enjoyment, but a lot of people out there, in MMOs, FPSes, and all manner of real life hobbies, take their enjoyment from besting others, and they're not picky about how they do it.

I'm reminded of a scene in American Psycho where the characters are comparing their business cards and trying to one-up each other on the designs. It's very similar to that with video games.

They call it "fun" but it actually isn't. It's at best a close illusion of fun, at worst a way of hidding their real problems, but it's not fun in the constructive way. It's a bit like the way some people may find alcohol convenient to forget their real-life or the pleasure to smoke cigarettes. I know that discussing it here won't change one bit of the problem, and that I'm generalising, but this had to be said. This overwhelming feeling they're looking fun is not fun because it won't contribute to their self-being, it will be part of the social avatar they want to show others. Furthermore, being the best (as opposed to becoming the best, it's the same as the destination/path dichotomy) won't last long and they'll find themselves very quickly bored with this status.

Agree but we need to make a difference between e-peen and those that really want the FoW armor for the beauty of seeing their character with it. The moment you transform this self-assessed action you did in the game into a socially-relevant concept, you transformed a bit of fun into a bit of e-peen. And e-peen can only go 2 ways: bigger or you'll rage.

You're so right See the player that won GW (couldn't find the thread on GWG)! Or the "I pwned u" mindset.

May be we should display life-achievements to put back some order into the virtual world (note to self: try to write your sarcastic sentences with a different style). My diploma-peen will own most people here, shall this give me an edge in-game (like free glasses)? (note to self: make sure that you're not seen as an arrogant academic full of diploma papers but empty)

Still have to watch this one. Did you see the size of my new 8800GT?

This reminds me of Magic World Online.
They solve the 'people tend to play too much' by setting a system to autofarm for every single player.

That is, if you are not in front of the machine, the machine plays by itself, following your set parameters!

Crazy, eh?

I' rather stick to the first GW principles, where time spent didn't was important... until grind titles came... yargh...

Yeah but, you can't compare grinding on GW to some the other mmorpgs. Guildwars cuts you more slack in which grinding is not neccessary unless you want to, games with equipment that get steadily rarer(or have to obscene requirement of items) as their power increases and games that require you to kill 289583256539 monsters to level up once at high levels that takes months to do but makes you 10x as strong as the previous level are the worst(especially ones like ZT online) unless you're going to try something that will obviously get you banned(farming) you'll never stand a chance against monsters or other players(unless you buy,buy buy items and materials with real money).

Heh SWG had the best autofarm feature around. You could set yourself up an "ingame macro" (yeah the allowed them) to target/lookfor, fireat/kill, searchforloot/loot and just turn it on and walk away and come back rich with resources and goods later and because EVERYONE could do this you had very little bickering about grind. That's what these mmo's need to do is allow EVERYONE to bot farm/macro farm then everyone will be equal and have plenty of gold/credits and resources and all the phat loot they want. IF the origional SWG was free to play I'd play it forever an ever and nothing else. It had the best of everything in the beginning, but, ruined it in the end when they changed all this.

Very good article indeed.

I just got an absolutely sick idea...

Anet could make an RMT company.

It would appear to have absolutely no affiliation with Anet or the game. It would simply appear as any other RMT company.

The catch is, since Anet would own it, there would be no cost for laborers to farm. Anet can simply have one person doing it. All they do is create the in game currency using a special account, and sell it at comparable prices to other RMT'ers.

This nets them the maximum amount of profit from their consumer base without looking like a greedy company (since the RMT side would never have any connection to Anet or Guild Wars).


Edit: Possible things to consider...
1. Anet can track all RMT purchases, seeing as how it would own the RMT company. In doing so, they'd have a flawless ban list. In banning a player later on for this (wouldn't want to do it right away, you want that player to tell his friends to buy from that company, you want the word of mouth to spread a bit), it forces that player to buy the game(s) again, or quit.
If the player rebuys the game(s), more profit is made for Anet.
If the player is forced to quit, Anet once again profits as that is one less person to support and less load on the server.

2. Anet's RMT site (hypothetical) could act like the rebel badass by posting fake legal threats on their own site. Not only does this make them look legit to players ("Oh wow, Anet has tried to take these guys down and they're still here, they must be good!") but it gives them an image of being even more legit. If they weren't, why would Anet have threatened them with legal notices (despite the fact that it would never take down it's own company, lol)?


Hey Anet, give me a damn job.

i sincerly hope that guild wars never goes like this, but if it did i may throw a bit of chump change at it for some fun stuff.


but dear god don't make me.

At the same time, you can't help but be baffled by this news, western countries should take example:
http://www.pacificepoch.com/newsstories/122845_0_5_0_M/
(original news from playnoevil)

I play Air Rivals (basically a Korean Starfox Online), which has a micropayment element, but i'm at level 30 of about 90-100, and haven't felt the need to buy anything, and the mood i've gotten from the forums is that you don't need to buy anything to be good at it. There are slightly weaker versions of the weapons that you have to buy, as well as some useful account features like being able to transfer items between characters, but if you create a second account or have a trustworthy friend you can get round this.

However, i have noticed that they made it so that you can't trade shop items anymore, so i'm worried that Air Rivals might start to go that way.

It also has the gambling upgrade system, but the cards you upgrade stuff with can be bought with in game currency, so its not quite that bad.