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There's this game, which is for PC called Maple Story. Every girl I know is playing this right now, and enjoying it. It's a traditional RPG, but a sidescroller where you walk around and beat up cute little monsters for experience points. You can become a magician, a warrior, a thief, or a bowman to begin with. It's very cute, and addictive.

Another big one is Gunbound, in which you pick a little robot, and use angles, force, and wind to shoot other little robots down. Pretty childish and "cute" also.

Both are online games which came out of Korean based companies.

There are two points that I would like to make: 1) As some have mentioned, not all games have monthly/yearly charges that are required to play. Games such as http://mapleglobal.com/ and http://gunbound.net/ opperate on a differnent model. The game is totally free to play (you don't even have to pay for the game itself, you download it). However, if you want spiffy enhancements (such as cool outfits and weapons) then you have to pay a one time fee for that item (like going to a store). This model is very effective for low bandwidth games like gunbound and maple story (low bandwidth compared to, say, WoW). Because you don't have to pay, you CAN play only on weekends when you have free time without feeling you aren't getting your monies worth. 2) Some games are experimenting with the idea that although you the player don't play 24/7 your character does. In http://atriarch.com/ your character stays in even while you log out. While you aren't playing your character does whatever tasks you want it to while you are gone (like practicing skills). This allows people who don't play very much to keep up with players who do play alot. Granted, players who actually play level up faster then players who let thier AI do it for them but they don't fall nearly as far behind.

A newer version of the classics with a Korean twist. It's addictive and you can play with your friends.

I look at their site/game and it is very sophisticated. Lots of great programming! How do they pay for all of this? There is no charge to play, and no advertisements.
My guess is....
Computer for Sale!

It would be even nicer if they did this in lieu of monthly subscription rates.

This has been seen before, and seems to be working rather well for the makers of Gunbound. You can play (for free) for hours and hours to accumulate "gold" wealth, or pay a nominal fee directly to the company to receive an injection of "cash". "cash" could be thought of as a service which increases the enjoyment (and thus has "value", considering that games are a vehicle for selling fun) of an otherwise free game.

The interesting thing about Gunbound's model is that "cash" and normal "gold" are not the same, nor are they directly interchangeable, as I recall. I haven't played for so long that I can't remember, but I believe you aren't able to directly transfer "cash" in Gunbound. "cash", which can only be bought, generally has (IIRC) 10 times the value of "gold", which is earned by playing matches.

This reminds me of the old, old days when BBS sysops would sell Trade Wars credits for real cash. That never seemed fair at all, however, since Trade Wars is a long-term strategy game which generally has an eventual "winner". Giving one player money would unbalance the game terribly. Note that Gunbound, however, is a simple shooting game that revolves around matches, and not an RPG or long-term strategy game. Items gained by long-term players give them a slight advantage in matches on high-ranked servers, but it is possible to play the game without worrying about economics at all.

The choice is left up to the user -- live in "high society", where (real) money and (virtual) possessions are quite important, or just play the game on the casual servers, where items are simply status symbols of cosmetic value.

Considering that the game still seems to be alive and kicking, I would say that this is a viable model for "legalizing" and regulating the currency trade in online gaming.

Perhaps an expert player of Gunbound could give an estimate of the real world value of cash, in terms of roughly how much grinding time worth of wealth one US dollar buys.

It's a free turn-based online game where you select your trajectory, weapon, and power stroke. Each turn lasts about 15 seconds.

http://gunbound.net/

Not to mention Gunbound is having a competition Oct 26th to the 30th. Find the Administrator in a room, answer up to 3 questions. get 1 right and get 10,000 gold. Get 2 right and get a nifty pumpkin avatar plust the gold. I have yet to see an admin, so tell me if anyone wins. :P

how about gunbound? haven't played it yet, a friend sent me the link not long ago. It's not OSS, but it is supposed to be free. (I think it's Spyware/Adware free, but I haven't checked yet.)

now people could haxor gunbound.

I play Final Fantasy XI, and so far I have yet to see any real advantage to spending cash money to buy gil or other items in the game. To my understanding, the game's economies are structured to not take this sort of thing into account. Besides, in FFXI, gil is abundant if you just work a little for it (selling crystals, farming items at the AH, heck, even making some good deals at the AH/Bazaar).

I'm not saying people shouldn't be allowed to do it-- hey, it's their money-- but to me, at least, it defeats the purpose of playing the game. "I spent $500 on the best sword evar and now I'm a L1 Warrior with the Atma Weapon +5", which he can't use until level 70 anyway. It's far more impressive to either a) kill the monster guarding the sword or b) save up enough gil to buy it from another player. Either way, someone gets the fun intended-- and maybe you do too; maybe you like fishing better than fighting, and sell your catches at the AH for ungodly sums. That works too.

The point of all this rambling is that in older games, like UO (which I did play for about a week before I realized it was populated mostly by elitists who'd sooner give me a quick and messy death than the time of day), money was hard to come by and the methods for getting it were somewhat tedious. In newer games there are plenty of occupations that can earn a player money, and they're very diverse. Thus, buying money outside the game in these games could be seen as cheating by those who spend a weekend building up their skills in the hopes of becoming the next virtual millionaire.

Oh yeah, and this of course ignores the subset of MMO games where a primary way to get money is to buy it from the developers. Gunbound comes to mind as a big example.

At the risk of making the submitter sound terminally naive, where else would their cash go besides the company coffers? Heck, Gunbound works the same way now. You pay to dress your character up in fancy items, which can affect your gameplay. While you can get the items foor free it take a hellva lot longer. it's digital, has no real world value, but people buy anyway.

Kinda like people buying/selling Diablo items, I imagine.

(or harder or, yes, even better! eg: Scorched Earth vs Worms)

Play GunBound. Almost any winders box can play it and it's an online derivative of these games with stats and rankings.

It's a heck of a blast. And it's free. (as in beer.)

NexonAsia (which is closed, I'm not sure whether Nexon uses it as well) games also used such cards, with codes on scratch-off thingies which you imput into a website. Of cause, then main problem then is to supply all these cards to distributors, which is just about as hard as normal game distribution, and it's even worse if you're trying to market it globally.. I think many other Asian-based MMOGs also uses such formulas..

As a side note, Gunbound has a different formula for cash-earning: allowing people to buy certain equipments using real money. (It doesn't apply to all equipments though [the high end ones can only be gotten via actual playing]) There are other MMOs which does this, but I'm not going to search for them right now..

That already goes on in Gunbound. People are always trading items for 20 kills, etc. It's all currently done on trust at the moment though.

Gunbound is a scorched earth/worms type game that's insanely addictive and fairly hack/cheat free at the lower levels. Average 4v4 game is about 10 minutes, although if you look up and it's 5am don't put the blame on me :P

Oh, it's also free to download and play ;) You win 'gold' from matches to upgrade your 'avatar', although you can also use Paypal to purchase items to wear.

http://gunbound.net

A friend recently introduced me to Gunbound, a cartoonish game, where you can pick a mobile cannon with different features, add features, play on a team, chat away, and blast away until someone is finally blown up or falls through a hole you've created. Only downside is the lack of instructions - kinda learn as you go

I seem to find a lot of women playing too - which always makes things a little nicer, IMHO ;(

it's not an fps, but it's still quite some fun... gunbound

's a scorched earth like game. really fun, and nice and easy to play.

Hey man,

The only problem is the games she'll enjoy probably won't have voice comm right out of the box. But if you used Teamspeak or Roger Wilco you'd have your voice channel open no matter what games your playing! I'd reccommend Gunbound as my gf spends more time playing it than I do!! It's essentially a free, online only, Worms/Scorched Earth clone but when you win a match you get gold which can be spent on new gear for your avatar! Wait till she sees some of the dresses she can buy! Anywho ... hope this helps man, and good luck!

Kleedrac

Mostly because they always Quake3/Half life machines running illegal cd keys. Plus with the HUGE boom of people playing free games at pc cafes like Gunbound and solitaire I bet theyll eat this up. Given the right advertising and support. This is exactly what people need too, a good free game with some good support ( silicon ice ) and a good base ( RTCW ). Games are getting to supscription based which is why a lot of PC cafes are closing down nowadays. They cant afford to buy licenses for every machine.

So, I confess, I enjoy the occasional game of Gunbound There is the one item that switches your current position with that of a teammate. Jump off a cliff, on the way down Team Teleport, and enjoy the confused cries of the masses wondering how I am still alive. No penalty for it either, yet. Most of the time team killing costs you a few rank points, but they hadnt thought of this yet.

Because, as we all know, the main point of any massive multiplayer online Korean game is to get your character a better hat.

Seriously, though, this game is lots of fun - I'm an addict myself.

Another one I've recently discovered is 'Survival Project' at http://english.spgame.com/spMain.asp

Oh, and for the lazy: Gunbound. Get out your engrish dictionary and go have some fun.

Not exactly traditional tanks, but try Gunbound if you can stand the way Koreans seem to mangle English, and playing with a lot of Korean and Singaporean players.

It's still in beta-testing (I think), online multi-player, free to play, and is actually pretty darn fun.