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MMO Gaming - Virtually Too Real?

Posted by simoniker on from the griefing-for-fun-and-profit dept.

bippy writes "The Rocky Mountain News has an article about the evolving face of massively multiplayer online games. PC MMOGs have fostered debates about free speech, made money for people and been home to virtual and real crime. Or as the Rocky put it: 'In a time of global terrorism, high crime rates and world hunger, the virtual evils of a computer game are really trivial. But in a way, that's the point: Why do even our games have to be subject to crime, no matter how virtual?'" A spokesperson for Ultima Online comments on Electronic Arts' view of virtual crime: "EA owns your gold, your swords, your characters - they are all just digital bits. If your entertainment is to destroy other peoples' entertainment, you're going to be tossed."

28 of 196 comments (clear)

  1. pwn3d by mattjb0010 · · Score: 5, Funny

    EA owns your gold, your swords, your characters - they are all just digital bits.

    Translation:
    EA: pwn3d

  2. Some experience by Fizzl · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I play EverQuest and ocassionally code in a Mud.

    The grief of losing an item on which you used many hours of your Very Real time to obtain can be big.

    As I have seen the player point of view and the administration point of view of a MMOG, I can say only this:
    Nothing is virtual. Players are real persons. They use their real time to play. For the hardcore player their character is as real as the paycheck they receive for doing their more 'boring' job.
    Yes, it is easy to toss a player with 'it's just a game, get over it', but anyone who has played any of these games know that it's not that simple.

    When you play. Remeber; your virtual comrade/enemy is also a living, breathing person.

    --
    Bot Assisted Blogging
    1. Re:Some experience by Phekko · · Score: 5, Interesting

      So you'd feel better about your computer if you knew that someday I could just creep into your apartment and take it from you?

      I remember (ok, so it starts silly, bear with me) as a kid of 14 getting my 1st summer job. It paid like, oh, $500 a month or something. I was saving for a VCR as my parents were of the opinion that they don't need it, they get enough TV as it is. So I worked for a month and spent all of the money on a VCR. Yes, back in those days they really DID cost that much. I felt really good about that VCR and I don't think a potential threat of someone stealing it might have made it better for me. Ok, in a real world there is always a possibility of getting robbed and thus in a realistic virtual world there should be, too. But in any online game that allows PKing and/or stealing from other players it happens ridiculously often. It should be allowed to some extent but it would also have to be illegal in the gaming world and punishable as well. In the real world you get to pay fines in mild cases and go to jail in the more extreme cases. And you always, ALWAYS lose the benefit from your crime if you get caught and the one you have wronged should be recompensated as well. In the virtual world jail-time would probably translate to losing the gaming time you have paid for and well, fines and suchlike are pretty straightforward. If it needs to be truly virtual as in real-life-like, then make it truly virtual. Implement police force etc. Thief should be a possible occupation but it should also be an occupation that is easily short-lived and/or difficult to play.

      This, by the way, from someone who only has experience on Everquest, not UO. All comments are welcome.

      --

      Sigs for Nerds. Sigs that Matter.
    2. Re:Some experience by Cougem · · Score: 5, Insightful

      In games like UO you play to compete. Life and death is part of the game. Being killed by a PKer is something you might expect, I don't think you can compare it to your computer. We expect to be killed by NPCs in games, you don't expect your computer to be broken by an equally inorganic action such as an earthquake. So, being killed by a PKer in a game just add another level to the uncertainty, it's a level passed NPC combat. In both instances you lose your loot/items. It's just it's a human doing the action rather than a computer.

    3. Re:Some experience by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      why is parent modded as troll ?

      so, i played neocron. the first person shooter mmporg with lots of pvp because the quake ppl feel right at home with the area damage weapons. the problem with most mmporgs is that when people PK, scam or spread grief they are not held responsible for it. in neocron this meant that someone who just mowed down 20 newbs at some spawn event could stand around in a no PvP zone and shout abuse at the respawning players. GMs just said 'pvp is part of the game'.

      so what is the player supposed to do ? try to have a good time with the game or 'take care' of the griefers. in the end i just canceled my account.

      there is a specific type of people that play the game in a way where they exploit the game mechanics to grief other players. they dont care about retaliation from other players or temporary bans from GMs, they grief on as long as they can and ruin the game for others in the process. a real world example would be someone who grabs the football from the field at the superbowl and runs away, not minding the horde chasing after him with torches. its just that these people dont care about the virtual world at all, knowing that whatever might happen to their character it doesnt mean anything in reality.
      now IMHO.. this is a distance to a mmporg that more EQ players should have, but then no one would be there to grief.

      so the mmporg police force will accomplish nothing as to the griefer it means nothing. permanent ban for life is the only option if a company doesnt want to loose players that just want to have fun.

    4. Re:Some experience by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 5, Interesting
      If I walk around in my town, carrying about a penguin that's been painted yellow and while trying to make everyone call said penguin "Pikachu", I'll be comitted to the local looney bin. How is that any different from romping about an imaginary town called "Darkhaven" and insisting that you're not John Doe, but "Thorpe the Ranger"?
      The difference is that, in a good MMORPG, Darkhaven will be populated with many like-minded players, all trying to exist as make-believe characters in a virtual world. Rather than calling you a looney, they'll try and play along. I am not sure what you are referring to with the "actually being Thorpe" remark... but yes, some people will go very far with imagining themselves being their character. That has nothing to do with split personalities or psychological problems, it's simply the enjoyment of trying to create a believable character by exercising ones imagination

      Yes, of course people get upset emotionally if their characters are harmed or their items stolen. Would you not be upset if someone ruined a painting you have been working hard on? Someone keying the classic car you've slaved over many hours to restore it to its former glory? Same deal... you get pissed at the person who is wilfully destroying something that gave you intense enjoyment.

      That, by the way, is what so-called 'grievers' do in these games: they go out of their way, not to steal your money or kill your character per se, but to ruin your fun. Game companies are right to boot such players.
      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    5. Re:Some experience by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 5, Insightful
      If you hold that it's ANY more then that, then whats to stop lawsuits to say, keep Everquest around after Sony decides it's no longer profitable? Where is the line drawn?
      Since the question of the real world value of in-game items has already come up in a few lawsuits in various countries, you can be very sure that the game companies (if they're smart) are already looking into this very issue... If in-game items are deemed to have an actual real world value, then they need to carefully consider how their liabilities sit. Putting a price tag on virtual goods isn't a very foreign concept, after all: the free call minutes on your cell phone account may be just bits in a server somewhere, but they are yours, and they do have a value.
      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    6. Re:Some experience by Phekko · · Score: 5, Interesting

      but by doing that you get nowhere closer to a more realistic virtual world. Ok, granted, in real world people expect to be shut away for a long time (life or close to it) for a premeditated (spelling might suck here) murder. And it should be something like that in online games, too. But for instance them dark elves hate humans in Everquest. Yet human PCs don't get to kill dark elven PCs or vice versa, unless it's a PVP server, in which case everyone gets to kill everyone anyway.

      I don't know the right solution to killing, especially if you want to have character classes such as assassin (what would be the point of making a character specializing in killing if it's not possible?) but I do feel very strongly about the so-called neutral alignment classes. I would LOVE to play a thief or a rogue if I was able to actually pick someone's pockets occasionally and perhaps even break into someone's house but in order for it to be fair it'd either have to be NPC houses (booooring) or there should be a limit to what and how much you can steal or something (not quite fair busting your chops off for that Wondrous Armor of Immortality +792 if the very next night someone busts into your home and steals it) One way of dealing with these issues is to declare that "life is not fair" and another is to ban just about everything.

      No MMORPG (that I know of) has the balance between these anywhere close to what I think is right so I don't play any of them. Which is probably for the best, all things considered.

      --

      Sigs for Nerds. Sigs that Matter.
    7. Re:Some experience by FuzzyBad-Mofo · · Score: 5, Informative

      I played UO for 2 weeks back in '98 or '99. I expected PVP combat, but for some reason I imagined other players to have some shred of honor. What a rude awakening to walk out of town and repeatedly get slaughtered by players many times stronger, apparently for no other reason than because PK's enjoy one-sided battles.

      And when I did manage to explore the countryside, the place was full of houses, often with hoards of items inside (which caused the game to lag terribly). Nice idea, poor execution. Everquest was better, but had it's own problems.

  3. Mandatory Zero Wing Reference by syberanarchy · · Score: 5, Funny

    All your bits are belong to EA.

    Don't buy EA, for great justice.

  4. obl pun by dandelion_wine · · Score: 5, Funny

    When the world first opened, players immersed themselves in a hedonistic world of sex and crime

    later, they started playing the game.

  5. Virtual Reality Games by Rick+and+Roll · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Virtual Reality games, like all games, turned to be more about gameplay than graphics. In the '90's VR headsets were all the rage. In fact, my little mall, in an isolated city of 60,000 people (Flagstaff, AZ), had someone set up a store dedicated to headset-based virtual reality gaming. Didn't last long. And then of course there was Virtual Boy (which I liked alright and some people absolutely love).

    Anyway, it turned out to be different. It just turned out that huge, smart databases transformed MUDs and BBS games to have many real-world dynamics, and make the virtual world more exciting to some than the real world. And now they are forming relationships in the virtual world. Healthy for some, unhealthy for others.

    But the success of different games over others shows that it's all about the gameplay.

  6. What IS the goal of an mmog? by rufusdufus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The point of having a massively multiplayer game is so that large numbers of players interact, otherwise why not just make work like diablo where everyone just plays with people they have agreed to play with.
    The point of making large numbers of people interact could be many things; however the G part of MMPOG means game, thus you might expect peole to treat it as a game and try to win. Now most MMPOGS don't actually have a way to win, so players make up their own rules. For some, winning and "beating the system" are the same thing, or at least, the interesting thing since the AIs have always been too simple.

    So while stalking and calling names etc is certainly uncalled for, messing with other people seems to be the whole point of most MMPOGS. With guild v guild and kingdom v kingdom and pvp, what do you expect but that people will be competitive. And competition means winners and loser, and in an MMPOG thats one winner and a thousand losers.

    So the games bring it upon themselves in a way, the unhappy newbies being picked on by the powergaming kiddies. Thats what they are designed to do, deep down. And since the rules arent written down anywhere, and in fact change randomly, who is to say what is legal and what is not, really, if the game lets you do it, it must be legal unless they tell you otherwise, and even then like in sports, is it only not legal if the umpire notices?

  7. Hard Core Addict by Wexton · · Score: 5, Interesting

    my favourite part ... A 12-year-old boy in South Korea stole $16,000 in real money from his father to finance his gaming addiction at a local cyber cafe. My opinion, but that is just crazy.

  8. ;e by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Why do even our games have to be subject to crime, no matter how virtual?

    Why wouldn't they? Virtual or not, the games, our lives are run and designed by humans. People are people in all their glory and faults. If your looking for utpoia online your looking in the wrong place.

    1. Re:;e by kmweber · · Score: 5, Funny

      http://games.swirve.com/utopia

      I've found utopia online :)

      --
      "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"
  9. Re:Internet Anonymity - an experiment by atomico · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The internet encourages anti-social behaviour some people

    Quick and easy confirmation: read Slashdot comments with your threshold at -1. Obviously, those morons wouldn't say the same face-to-face: too big risk for a tiny, stupid, reward.

  10. Re:Internet Anonymity by srichand · · Score: 5, Interesting

    um, i beg to differ. I doubt if any terrorists currently planning any strike anywhere in the world were inspired by any game in general. bin Laden never played Quake. I doubt if Saddam's ever fragged anyone at UT. If a guy has voilent, anti-social tendencies, nothings gonna stop him. on the other hand, a "soft" guy playing hours of such stuff would hardly be affected by it in real life.

  11. Player-defined societies by obyrne · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The MMORPG 'A Tale in the Desert' is (in addition to a great city-building/RPG game) largley a social experiment where the players have opportunities to decide how the game-society should go about achieving most goals.

    The developers have created tests in each of seven 'disciplines' that are flexible enough to be solved a number of different ways. Though blind, malevolent ambition is one way to get things done, the populace seems to have gravitated toward mature, cooperative solutions. This might be partially because of the 'legal system', which allows any citizen to create a legal petition to punish certain behaviour or change certain game mechanics. If 2/3 of the population agrees with the petition (and it's feasible for the developers), that punishment or change is performed or coded into the game.

    Respecting the players by giving them this sort of control over the fate of their own society is a risky thing to do for the company, but I think it's paid off. ATITD is by far the most interesting and challenging game I've ever enjoyed.

    --Owen--

  12. Re:Internet Anonymity by mattjb0010 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I cannot speak for any others, but thats why I'm anti social. Because society disgusts me.

    People who are anti-social *are* what's wrong with society. If you're not prepared to go out there and make a difference then that is disgusting.

  13. Ummm... Alcohol?? by _Pinky_ · · Score: 5, Funny

    Why do even our games have to be subject to crime, no matter how virtual?

    Ummm, my friend, whom you don't know, told me he normally plays games while relaxing, late at night, sometimes real late... And during this relaxation period he may consume a few beverages which could hamper judgement...

    So during this period of late night, beveraged game playing, he may do things that he may otherwise not do... or so he says...

    This could also explain my, errr, his Karma...

    (Whats really sad is I had to use google to make sure I spelt alcohol right, you'd think they would have that on the can somewhere)

  14. Re:This is bound to happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny
    I might add one exception I've found; puzzle pirates. When I tried this game during the beta testing, I thought I'd accidentally connected to the wrong internet or something. In general the users are helpful and benign, and there's hardly a mention of 'I w1ll 0wnz0r j00 f4gg0t!!'.

    And now that you've posted the link on Slashdot, what do you think will happen?

  15. Sublimation by quintessencesluglord · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As S. King pointed out, you have to feed the alligators of the sub-conscious. A polite society doesn't allow for poetic justice; it doesn't give you a space to let your id to roam free. The entire horror genre is dedicated to this idea.

    Look at any moralistically repressive system, and you see the worst crimes imaginable being perpetrated. There is no escape valve. What do you expect?

    The classics of horror were written during the most repressed times, and hardly ever do you see horror expanding during times of war. Why bother when people are already acting out in real life?

    And as it is for games. The mere fact people are acting in an anti-social fashion suggests a need. You _could_ play nice, but people choose not to. Isn't playing PARANOIA still a social event?

    Casual evidence suggests this is a step away from criminal. Kick in the doors to people's minds, and they tend to kick back. And it isn't pretty.

  16. Good, bad and non-PVP games by Vreejack · · Score: 5, Interesting

    One perceived problem with many MMORPGS is that they do not allow or were poorly designed for player-vs-player contests. Ultima Online allowed this right from the very beginning, but was was completely unbalanced due to its open and realistic character design (no classes or levels, just a bunch of interesting skills), essentially rewarding people who wanted to find ways to exploit the awkardness in the design to take on other players. These people were essentially using loopholes in the rules to create their own game at the expense of others who did not know the unintentional (and unintuitive) rules. These loopholes are known as "exploits" and use of them is usually punishable by cancellation of your account, but they are often hard to spot.

    Everquest avoided this altogether by simply disallowing players to take each other on. For many though, this leads to boredom. And boredom leads to trying to find ways around the restriction. Using exploits to affect other players indirectly (a form of hacking) is a game in itself.

    Games like Dark Age of Camelot and Shadowbane were specificly designed for Player-vs-player combat from initial concept. While classes and levels are a disappointment to those seeking realism, they do allow excellent control of balance by placing some artificial limits on what abilities players can combine. Players attempt to tweak the characteristics of their characters for the best possible combination of features, but the games are becoming so complex now that if they are well-designed there will never be a single "best template" for any character. The best games of such type maximize both complexity and balance, allow players to beat up on each other, and preoccupy them with exploring the intended rules and not the unintended rules.

    In the early days of UO, I recall that there were only two or three ways to develop a character for player-vs-player contests. Exploits were much more interesting, and use of them was considered "1337". In Shadowbane there are already so many interesting tactical and strategic avenues to pursue to get an edge over your opponents that using exploits seems positively childish. To label someone an exploiter is insulting.

    vreeJack

    --
    "Will future ages believe that such stupid bigotry ever existed!" -- Ivanhoe
  17. trivial by feidaykin · · Score: 5, Insightful
    In a time of global terrorism, high crime rates and world hunger, the virtual evils of a computer game are really trivial.

    In the span of a few hundred million years, the Earth will become less and less habitable due to the expected changes to our giant stellar friend 1 AU away, and that's assuming an asteroid doesn't get us first. On this time scale, the evils of global terrorism, high crime rates, and world hunger are really trivial.

    What good does it do if we stop terrorism, crime, and eliminate hunger, if we're still doomed to be completely annihilated in ~500 million years?

    Okay, I know I'm going to take a hit on my karma for posting this, but the main reason for my post is to simply prove that it does no good to insult a pass-time that many gamers take seriously by calling aspects of its nature trivial in comparison to something else. Everything is trivial compared to the scenario I just described, just as indeed, I suppose video games are trivial compared to the concerns you described.

    Now, would you go around telling people not to live their lives the way they do because we've only got ~500 million years left here on Earth? No, you wouldn't?

    Then shut the hell up and let people enjoy a video game in whatever manner that wish, including taking its problems as serious as they wish to imagine them. It may not seem right, natural, or even healthy to you, but there are far worse things people can do with their time.

    MMORPGs are an excellent way for the socially inept to form rather serious bonds of friendship, and end up living better lives because of it.

    But I guess everyone should stop complaining about the faults of virtual worlds, or maybe stop playing in virtual worlds entirely, since it's so trivial in comparison to your examples. In fact, I think I'll turn in my Dark Age of Camelot account and join the police force right now! Thanks for your insight, buddy!

    --

    "To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking

  18. He mentioned nothing about SecondLife by objwiz · · Score: 5, Informative
    The makers of Second Life have taken a very unique approach to player rights with in the game.


    In Second life, the content player create, is owned by the player and not the company .
    This is totally against the grain of most online games where the company owns it all.

    Additionally, they have started tying in real currency to the in game currency. I know this not unique, as Project Entropia does the same thing.


    I personally hope this is the way games will go--giving ownership of virtual property to the players and allowing them to use it, sell it, convert for real $$$. I find these environments more enjoyable and rewarding that environments like Everquest, where Sony pretty much owns you.

  19. I made $12,000 in 3 months off EQ by RaigeDaFurry · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Most people when they see that cringe but let me defend myself. First off if you don't know this game read the whole post before you pass judgement.

    Fact of life/fake reality: The masses will never have access to the elite items in the game because they either don't have the ability to kill the mobs to get the items. They must either obtain it through "hand me downs" or buy it.

    I made this possible for ANYONE in the game to get elite level loot. To give you an idea most people in everquest never see more than 20,000pp at one time in their bank account. Through luck and the situation I was in and the character class I was I could obtain almost anything people wanted in Planes of Power.

    First, off all loot I obtained and sold was MINE and obtained solo without any assistance. I'm not one of the infamous earthbow sellers (if you don't know you don't need to know.

    EQ has never been known to make the best decisions when changing how characters work and when releasing new expansions. Luclin... was a pathetic excuse... I'm not goign there. The first good decision was Planes of Power. The elite guilds needed a challenge and the rest of the game was nothing now.

    99% of the Everquest world was alienated by their decision to please the elite guilds. There were around 20 zones or areas if you will. You could access 3 right off but had to beat certain mobs and get "flagged" to continue on. http://everquest.station.sony.com/power/ for more details.

    Like I was saying, this basically alienated 99% of the people who play from continuing on. Unless you were highly organized and ... elite you were not beating these mobs. So most of the EQ community watched the news of the other guilds who could and awed at the most incredible items ever put out by Sony.
    A few items to mention are quest clothing/armor which would make your old armor look like a tin foil suit. Also bloodmetal earrings. This one was one of the most incredible items that ANYONE could wear. However, 99% of EQ had no access to it. Being an enchanter I can charm mobs and as it turns out I could charm a certain mob that could obliterate the rest of it's kin by simply giving it another weapon, hasting it by 70% and slowing the one it's attacking down. 1/5 dropped the gem needed for this earring. The rest of the pieces were trivial to obtain and so I started making these earrings.

    Low and behold I was pumping them out like crazy to my guild. Then one of the people I knew in game offered me 70,000pp for one of these earrings. Since I'd been using my own materials and time to obtain and make these I was like sure. So bam, 70,000pp. Then i thought... geez... I always wanted a horse so I sold another and had 140,000pp. Mind you this is like making $100,000 in 2 days in the EQ world. I bought my horse and continued to collect the gems. I started to give half to my guild and sell the other half and sometimes I'd watch the auction channel and I'd see an old friend or someone I've heard of who was having a really bad time trying to make money to get something they want and I'd just give them an earring. I lost count of how many I gave away. Think of it. I was the only one the the EQ world who really knew about it and I was giving them away.

    I mean, they weren't giving me anything to give the guild items. I didn't have to do it at all so I kept a few and soon amased over 1million plat in less than a week. About this time the need for "dummy" accounts came into play. That is, mage accounts that we can place all over the EQ world and use them to Summon us past a lot of wasted time. The problem was noone wanted to pay for these. I happened to know someone who bought platinum and sent my guild leader to him and thus it began. It's how we paid for 14 mage accounts that basically let us fly by any other guild that was trying to get mobs that dropped elite loot. It was fun, though bullish, but that's part of the EQ world. You MUST be like that or be walked over. Even the GM's wouldn't so anything. But typically if

  20. This isn't new by deinol · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Wasn't there a slashdot article the other day that said the opposite? That the problem with MMO games is that they have become single player games where you can chat with other players, and that there is less and less meaningful interaction between players?

    I guess it just depends on what sort of game you are looking for. Some people want to play cooperatively against the computer. Some people want to have a virtual world, where competition between players is a strong part of that. Different games will appeal to different crowds.

    The mud I used to play and really liked, had a very realistic feel to it. If you wandered into the wilderness, and fought something too hard for you to handle, you died. When you died, you started over with a new character. That's it, game over. Very harsh, but more realistic.

    If you got stolen from by another character, you lost things. That's the way it goes. But, if they got caught, the soldiers would throw them in jail, and a templar would likely take all of their things. If they got caught murdering people, they were killed on sight by the guards. And the guards were pretty tough. You could get tough enough to take one, or maybe two if you were really good, but 4 or more would team you to death.

    So there was crime, but if you stuck to the safe areas, that were heavily patrolled, you could successfully play a very non-competative character, where social interaction was all there was to the game. But for those that liked the seedy life, they could venture into the slums or the lawless wilderness.

    There is a lot of potential to MMO Games. You just have to know what you want from one, and wht the designers have created to accomadate that.

    --
    Got Apathy?