New Issue Of The Daedalus Project

Nick Yee writes "The Daedalus Project have new findings and a news survey. The Daedalus Project is an ongoing online survey study of MMORPG players that started 5 years ago and has surveyed over 35,000 players. Some highlights of this issue's findings: While the media likes to talk about how "virtual" relationships in MMOs are, about 80% of players actually play with someone they know in real life (a romantic partner, a family member, or a friend). PvP servers attract younger players as well as more men than PvE servers. This has implications for gender-bending rates. On PvP servers, female avatars are much more likely to be played by men. 22% of respondents said that they had purchased virtual gold. On average, these players have spent $135 USD on virtual gold. While older players are more likely to have done so, there were no gender differences."

Comments

So basically "pay to cheat"? No, thanks

[Moraelin]

"And how many of those players want to pay $25/hr for a GM? Frankly, if you can make that kind of money off a player you can afford to set up a few thousand terminals in India and train that many GMs."

1. So basically, you're proposing... what? That anyone who can pay $25 can officially get not just an advantage in the game, but they get someone to customize and tailor it especially for them.

You know what? No, thanks. It's bad enough to have people with rare super-powerful items bought on eBay. Having the game company itself sell customized "swords of Paladin slaying" to every PK idiot with a credit card... no, thanks. I like achievements in the game to at least pretend to reflect some personal skill or effort. A whole game built on achievements being how much RL cash you're willing to pay, wth is the point and achievement in that? How insecure _does_ someone have to be to measure their achievements that way?

2. You're still proposing that a bunch of people be trusted with creating and putting content in the game on short notice, completely bypassing any QA or testing. You may notice that even stuff that senior designers and programmers made, and still after an extensive internal- and beta-testing, still needs to be tweaked and balanced against everything else in the game.

Would I trust some half-trained tech-support guy's 5-minute hack to actually be anywhere near balanced? Does that guy even know everything in the game that the item needs to be balanced against?

It's not even whether it's in India or not, it's just that _noone_ can have the whole game in the head, and know the balancing factors and decisions that went into everything. (E.g., that yeah, item X is also that powerful, but it's something that's the big reward for a whole story arc, spanning several instanced missions.)

Do I even trust that not to break the game? E.g., if the player wants a potion of teleporting through walls for the next instance, how do you know they won't use it to get into an unfinished area still in development? E.g., if the player wants a wand that creates a deadly plague to finish off some NPCs, how do you know they won't use it to start a plague in the capital city or in the newbie area, for grief's sake?

Both cases above, getting into restricted areas _and_ a world-wide plague, are stuff that actually happened in WoW. Again, stuff designed by professional designers, with code/scripts made by professional coders, and after an extensive internal- and beta-testing. And shit still happened. Do you trust 1000 monkeys with keyboards, bypassing QA and testing completely, not to create that problem 1000 times a day?

How do you trust them _all_ to not be _bribed_ to explicitly code something against the rules? There are some people with a _lot_ of disposable income. (I've been in a game where someone had paid literally over 20,000 USD for in-game advantages.) And there are countries where those cheap GM's would end up recruited from, where salaries are really low. It's very easy for a westerner to pony-up a bribe that's ludicriously high for that country.

E.g., I don't know about India, but in China an average wage is about 1000$ per year. If I knew my GM is from China, I already know that for a 1000$ bribe, the guy will roll repeatedly against will-power to refuse it. Even if he gets fired for taking it, it's a year's salary in one go. People have stabbed each other there for a $800 virtual item. "Hey, buddy, I'm sick and tired of running away from all these murlocks. Make me a pair of 100D6 damage daggers for my rogue, and you get 1000$ by PayPal right now." Are you sure he won't take it?