Broken Storefront Windows
Sony Entertainment is now officially condoning the sale of in-game items via an outside site that is maintained by the company! That means, instead of encouraging players to deal with someone in-game, the creators and maintainers of the game are actually encouraging players to break context and cheat.
What’s going on, exactly? In the realm of on-line gaming there are those who play the game, then sell the virtual property and/or characters acquired in-game through some out-of-game service, such as e-bay, to other players who are less-than-scrupulous. Apparently, some players are willing to pay real-life money in order to get a jump on other players in these games.
Aside from the fact that this is sad and pathetic, it’s really annoying to players who feel that they worked hard for what little they’ve been able to achieve in the game. Since every player must pay the monthly subscriber fee to play, it’s unfair that some players are able to pay a little extra in order to circumvent the mechanics of the game.
Sony calls their service “Exchange”, as if it were simply another place for player characters to congregate and trade goods and services. Except, it isn’t. Sony thinks that by offering certain “Exchange-enabled servers”, and servers that are not “Exchange-enabled”, they can avoid pissing off their non-cheating player base, and cheating will actually go down on the servers where it isn’t specifically condoned.
This seems like a non sequitur, but I’m finding a lot of industry people (a.k.a. designers) are acting as cheerleaders for this mentality. I think that G. Gordon Liddy said it best, “How do you get more of a behavior? Subsidize it.”
The same people who have pushed the Broken Windows theory in reference to bad player behavior now act as though the theory doesn’t apply to this behavior. This blows me away after reading several accounts of the "virtual sociopath". The virtual sociopath thinks it’s okay to kill other player characters for personal enjoyment because the game implicitly makes that behavior legal. After all, if it wasn’t built into the game, you couldn’t do it, right? That’s the kind of logic I see in the Sony Exchange fiasco.
My question to the industry is this; Why not just let players buy anything they want to buy directly, in-game? You could have a window that’s always available and just scroll through the list of possible junk in that game and rack up a charge on your credit card at any time to buy something for your character. You could even pay $2.50 to do an automatic 50 points of damage to a creature you’re currently fighting. That seems like it would cut out the middle-man and the need to leave the game to go to some other web-site. It’d be a hell of a lot more profitable, too.
What the hell is the point of playing if the rich can do whatever they want, while the rest of us have to slog through the normal game mechanics to get by? Buying virtual property outside of the game mechanics is cheating, pure and simple. You could police it if you wanted to, but you’re too damned lazy and greedy to do it.
Congratulations, Sony. May your blackened souls rot in digital hell.
What’s going on, exactly? In the realm of on-line gaming there are those who play the game, then sell the virtual property and/or characters acquired in-game through some out-of-game service, such as e-bay, to other players who are less-than-scrupulous. Apparently, some players are willing to pay real-life money in order to get a jump on other players in these games.
Aside from the fact that this is sad and pathetic, it’s really annoying to players who feel that they worked hard for what little they’ve been able to achieve in the game. Since every player must pay the monthly subscriber fee to play, it’s unfair that some players are able to pay a little extra in order to circumvent the mechanics of the game.
Sony calls their service “Exchange”, as if it were simply another place for player characters to congregate and trade goods and services. Except, it isn’t. Sony thinks that by offering certain “Exchange-enabled servers”, and servers that are not “Exchange-enabled”, they can avoid pissing off their non-cheating player base, and cheating will actually go down on the servers where it isn’t specifically condoned.
This seems like a non sequitur, but I’m finding a lot of industry people (a.k.a. designers) are acting as cheerleaders for this mentality. I think that G. Gordon Liddy said it best, “How do you get more of a behavior? Subsidize it.”
The same people who have pushed the Broken Windows theory in reference to bad player behavior now act as though the theory doesn’t apply to this behavior. This blows me away after reading several accounts of the "virtual sociopath". The virtual sociopath thinks it’s okay to kill other player characters for personal enjoyment because the game implicitly makes that behavior legal. After all, if it wasn’t built into the game, you couldn’t do it, right? That’s the kind of logic I see in the Sony Exchange fiasco.
My question to the industry is this; Why not just let players buy anything they want to buy directly, in-game? You could have a window that’s always available and just scroll through the list of possible junk in that game and rack up a charge on your credit card at any time to buy something for your character. You could even pay $2.50 to do an automatic 50 points of damage to a creature you’re currently fighting. That seems like it would cut out the middle-man and the need to leave the game to go to some other web-site. It’d be a hell of a lot more profitable, too.
What the hell is the point of playing if the rich can do whatever they want, while the rest of us have to slog through the normal game mechanics to get by? Buying virtual property outside of the game mechanics is cheating, pure and simple. You could police it if you wanted to, but you’re too damned lazy and greedy to do it.
Congratulations, Sony. May your blackened souls rot in digital hell.
posted by Jaycen Rigger at 1:21 AM
6 Comments:
What the hell is the point of playing if the rich can do whatever they want, while the rest of us have to slog through the normal game mechanics to get by?
What the hell is the point of playing if the students, the unemployed, and people with way too much free time can spend eighty hours a week grinding ahead of the normal people, who have jobs and families to maintain, in addition to "keeping up" in their chosen fantasy world? If RMT breaks your game experience so badly, your game is broken. Badly.
The main valid point of contention in most of these arguments is that most EULAs forbid it, so engaging in RMT is cheating - which is accurate. This is not the case with Exchange, obviously. Whether or not it turns out to be beneficial or detrimental to the game remains to be seen - or whether it will have any effect at all on such a broken design - but using the same tired old arguments against it just doesn't sit right.
Sentack,
I'm a "guardian". I'll die holding the flag up in the face of an over-whelming enemy. I refuse to sell my soul because it's convenient.
The real fallacy is that "it's a losing battle". There WAS NO BATTLE to begin with. If the game companies actually chose to enforce the rules, you'd see it move back to the underground amongst a minority of dirty players. Occasionally they'd get away with it. Occasionally they'd get caught.
I want you to think about this. By your logic, we should just give up on all law enforcement because there's big money in illegal activities, and we'll never be able to stop everyone, and it'd be easier if we just gave up and tried to make some money off it ourselves.
Human slavery is a big business, and it's impossible to stop it in every corner of the world, and it's going to happen no matter what we do, but it's still wrong.
What the hell is the point of playing if the students, the unemployed, and people with way too much free time can spend eighty hours a week grinding ahead of the normal people, who have jobs and families to maintain, in addition to "keeping up" in their chosen fantasy world? If RMT breaks your game experience so badly, your game is broken. Badly.
Yeah, that's tough man. I feel your pain. One thing I wanted to put in, but my group over-ruled me on was putting a daily limit on experience points. You could still kill monsters and build skill, but I was going halt experience gain after X amount.
I find your last comment to be interesting. Yes, I think the commercial games are badly broken. I think they exemplify the bigger societal problems that already exist. Why do the authorities choose to encourage negative behavior? I can't understand it.
As far as my arguement being tired...you might be tired of hearing it, but I'm not tired of saying it. And because the people who should be listening aren't listening, doesn't make the arguement less valid.
Someone has to stand up and keep fighting the good fight.
I find your last comment to be interesting. Yes, I think the commercial games are badly broken. I think they exemplify the bigger societal problems that already exist. Why do the authorities choose to encourage negative behavior? I can't understand it.
I don't understand it, either, but probably for a different reason.
Consider liquor laws. These vary wildly from place to place - over here, you've got totally dry counties where sale and manufacture is forbidden, over there, it's perfectly okay to sell hard liquor in the supermarket, right next to the Lucky Charms. Heck, way over there, they even let kids under 21 drink. Now, do the folks in the dry counties think that the godless booze-mongers in some of the other places are causing grevious harm, and promoting negative behavior? You bet. Should they have any say in what kind of liquor laws they have over there? No way. Why? Because the laws aren't regulating a universally recognized evil - people in every culture throughout history have been known to enjoy an alcoholic beverage now and again, and really, there's no way to stop it. Prohibition? Not an option.
So, then you get someone like SOE come along, looking like they're trying to play both sides of the fence. They still disallow eBaying, but they'll broker exchanges through an official channel, taking a modest cut for themselves, of course. Is this hypocritical, or sending the wrong message? I don't know - I don't think so. I know that some places in the US (Utah? Pennsylvania) forbid the sale of beer or liquor by private interests, but you can still stock up for the Sunday game by going to a state-run store during the week. Seems a little on the edge to me, but if the government wants to keep strict control over what gets bought and sold, sure, why not? (Is this the behavior of a Liberal, or Conservative? Hmm.)
The upshot here is that RMT in online games is not the all-encompassing, game-destroying boogeyman that some people make it out to be. I've never done it myself, and I think it's a little sad that people do, but if someone wants to blow two hundred bucks on an elite mount and a big shiny sword, how does that effect my game at all? Is it wrong because they didn't "work" for it, putting in the hours and hours of grind that other people did? Well, someone had to do that work in the first place - as far as I know, they're not creating new items specifically for sale. Does it really matter to me if they bought their +20 Mace of Skullcracking on eBay, or if one of their friends twinked it to them, or if some random player just handed all his gear over before cancelling his account?
Some people (Dr. Bartle, for one) ask, "if it's okay to get stuff in-game when you don't work for it, why don't you just ask them to give you the best gear and a highest-level character for free?" Strange argument, but okay. Some games are experimenting with that. Is that wrong? Should we be gnashing our teeth and railing at them to put an end to this encouragement of destrutive behavior at once? Again, that would seem strange. So, once again, we're back to the "our game, our rules" scenario. Sony is making a business decision, and allowing official RMT. Their game, their rules. Is it a good business decision? Maybe not - but I don't think it's so bad in the larger context.
Your comparison of RMT to the slave trade also seems like a pretty strange thing to me. Obviously, there are terrible things that happen all the time, and we should enforce laws that work to stop them. Surely, though, there are laws that cover lesser infractions, or even things that some people think shouldn't be against the law at all, that you'd agree don't require such dogged vigilance. How many jaywalkers get away with their illegal behavior every day? Should we create a special nationwide task force to hunt down these scofflaws and bring them to justice? Of course not. Does that mean we should give up on law enforcement entirely? Of course not. Same thing here.
Is RMT such a bad thing, in the greater scheme of things? I don't think so. It's the virtual equivalent of jaywalking - sure, you might block traffic for a moment or get clipped by an unattentive driver, but you're not seriously impacting the pedestrian/driver experience for the majority of players. Some things are worth going to war over, some things, you just let slide. Your argument is tired, not because people are tired of hearing it, but because it is pointless. Accusing Sony of promoting cheating by allowing this "cheating behavior" is akin to the fiery preacher in the dry county in Alabama haranguing his flock about the sinners in San Francisco who can buy gallons of whiskey at the Safeway at all hours of the day or night. And they're not even ashamed! Their city, their rules. Are they encouraging negative behavior by allowing such free trade in the devil liquor? Again, I don't think so. Sure, you can point to any number of negative effects - drunk driving fatalities, increases in spousal abuse or prenatal abnormalaties, and so on - but you'd be hard pressed to make an acceptable argument that this common human behavior should, or could, be squashed entirely, through the force of law.
Circling back around to the original question - why do game companies make these decisions? I can't say that I know for sure, but I can make some wildly uneducated guesses. First, companies are large beasts, and reluctant to change once they've latched onto a good thing. So, RMT remains illegal, as per the standard legal boilerplate in the EULA. However, companies are also very sensitive to "user issues", especially where gameplay is concerned, and the game community is full of squeaky wheels. Those who inhabit the forums can be extremely vocal about rather insignificant issues, but they give the appearance of being part of a silent majority. So, the beast twitches, and makes changes - either through patches or policy - that may or may not be good for the game, the community, or the industry, depending on the scale of the change and the size of the company. These two forces of reflexive change and unthinking inertia are generally at odds, and the results can be pathetic, or spectacular.
So, is the initiation of Sony Exchange a good thing for their games? It's debatable, but I'm going to say no. It's antithetical to their main purpose - reducing perceived damage caused by RMT - in addition to being a rather transparent grab for a slice of the juicy grey market. Is it bad for the industry? Maybe not. Sony can afford to take a few punches, so they're in a prime position to conduct this little experiment, and the rest of us can sit back and benefit from the outcome, whichever way it goes. Also, one can hope that it will invite more examination of the standard click-kill-loot treadmill model that most online games follow, which (I believe) inherently encourages real-world trading - game designers should see this as a design flaw, and work around it. Will this spark a revolution in design, and usher in a new era of MMORPGs that don't require sixty hours of repetitive stress injuries before the "real game" begins? Not likely - but we can always dream.
(Wow. That's a lot of jabbering, there. No more caffeine before bedtime...)
Marc,
The liquer laws are a perfect analogy to what's going on with Sony.
You have two seperate systems. Each one is seperate from the other with it's own, seperate set of rules. People can choose to move to either county and enjoy living by the set of rules established in that county.
My point in all of this; those who live in the county that doesn't allow the behavior generally dislike and hold in disdain those who live in the "alternate" county. They also lose respect for the over-riding authority that allows both systems to exist.
The people in the alternate county don't care what the other people think of them, because they don't see themselves as being in the wrong. They don't hold the same level of morality the other county residents have.
I'm not really nashing my teeth because game companies are making bad decisions. I'm certainly not saying that some governmental entity involve itself and create a Fedral RP Gaming Authority that details the basic rules by which all RPGs must operate. I'm concerned, though, that the same group of people who used to say, "this emphasis on material things is wrong" are now saying, "do what makes you feel good".
What the companies, and you, are not understanding is that buying stuff to get an unfair edge is only fun if it gives you the unfair edge. By making it the "norm" those people who used to enjoy doing it are going to move on to other anti-social behavior in an attempt to crank it up a notch, since now all the decent players are gone (they don't want to be on the receiving end of the unfair advantage) and all that's left are people trying to out-do each other in an attempt to see who can become most disruptive.
That's why Bartle asks the question (I think). He saying that if you're going to let people buy their way up without "going through the grind", then why not just start them off with everything they want and give them the ultimate instant gratification.
The grind (which is meant to inject a negative connotation to the game process) is another way of seeing "life". How you live your life, defines who you are.
Joe and John are twins seperated at birth. Joe goes to a mega-wealthy family, and John goes to a lower-class, low-income family.
At 45, both men are sitting on seperate yachts, enjoying the spoils of what they own. Are they going to be the same type of person? Perhaps, though it is extremely unlikely.
One man had everything given to him, and probably did not have to "go through the grind". One man was immersed in the grind.
Which man will have more depth of character? Who will have the most life experience?
Anything is possible, but I like to deal in what's probable.
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