Game Developers On Gold Selling

Eurogamer has an article which takes a look at how various game companies deal with gold spammers in their games. Some, like Mythic, take a hard stance, literally telling farmers and sellers to "go to hell." Others engage in an arms race to block such behavior, sometimes to the detriment of normal users. "In fact, a former Jagex source tells me that when Jagex banned all IPs connected to gold selling, 'they lost 10 per cent of their membership, and still haven't recovered in terms of numbers since they did it two years ago. Even though they have almost stopped gold selling in RuneScape, it has cost them two million active accounts; i.e. there were four million players, there are now two million players, of which less than one million actually subscribe.'" Still more companies are experimenting with real money trading (RMT) to at least establish some control and security over the situation.

Comments

Gold selling is a good idea

[cliffski]

Because when I see that people are actually PAYING someone else to play the boring parts of a game for them, it's easy for me to deduce that what we have is not a fun game, but a tedious grindfest designed to keep bored teenagers playing forever and ever.

The solution to goldfarming should be to find out why earning gold in the game is so bloody tedious and focus your design efforts on making the game fun to play. Games are supposed to be fun, not a second job.

Re:Gold selling is a good idea

[Alarindris]

Because when I see that people are actually PAYING someone else to play the boring parts of a game for them, it's easy for me to deduce that what we have is not a fun game, but a tedious grindfest designed to keep bored teenagers playing forever and ever. The solution to goldfarming should be to find out why earning gold in the game is so bloody tedious and focus your design efforts on making the game fun to play. Games are supposed to be fun, not a second job.

I couldn't disagree more. The fact that people are paying money in addition to their subscription means that the game is fun or has value to the player.

Personally, I never 'grind' gold. I play the auction house and can then do whatever I want.

"Oh, but see you are avoiding playing the game!"

No, I AM playing the game. I'm sorry you couldn't figure out a way to do it too.

Re:Gold selling is a good idea

[Majik Sheff]

Sounds like you fit the mindset of EvE players. The game can be a relentless grindfest or a fantastic exercise in playing the market. It's all in how you choose to play the game.

Re:Gold selling is a good idea

[guyminuslife]

I actually think one of the reasons why WoW is popular is precisely because it's mostly boring.

Imagine if the game were all about instances and non-stop PvP. You sign in and it's like, oh, Unreal Tournament. That's the fun stuff, right?

There's enough of that to "reward" you for playing. But of course, that's all spaced out over a lot of tedium. Most people playing WoW are bored most of the time they're on it.

The tedium is essential because it means you start getting attached to menial stuff. You go into guild chat and have SUPER-DRAMA over who gets which raid spot and why did that hunter roll on that shaman gear. The tedium is necessary, of course, as a step in the direction of uber-ness, to get your quest or your experience or your crafting materials or whatever. And so at first you tolerate it. And then you get used to it. And eventually you depend on it.

Like playing the slot machines; most of the time you lose, but you win often enough that you just have to keep putting in quarters.

Re:Gold selling is a good idea

[Alarindris]

But gold doesn't get you everything you want, even now. MMO's almost never let you just buy the best items from gear. The only 2 avenues to getting the best gear in WoW are raiding and PvP - there are really no good items you can just buy.

Thank god for that.

If you dumped 500,000 gold on my WoW character now, the only thing that would change is I would stop having to farm gold. My character wouldn't be better, no-one else would be affected - I'd just have more fun.

Problem is, you are able to then spend less time than everyone else to get X piece of gear from X boss. You could say that the only real MMO currency is time spent playing. A certain amount of effort needs to be put in to achieve any goal.

Why don't they get rid of health and death? I don't think that's fun at all! I want to have 100% fun all of the time! Get rid of quests, why can't I just start at 80? I don't think leveling is fun either!

"Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty... I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led diffcult lives and led them well."

-Theodore Roosevelt

Re:Gold selling is a good idea

[Rich0]

You could say that the only real MMO currency is time spent playing. A certain amount of effort needs to be put in to achieve any goal.

You've hit the nail on the head exactly, but I disagree with your conclusions.

In my experience people who hate trading of real-world cash for in-game gold tend to be people who have lots of time to play, and not lots of real-world cash to spend. People who like to buy in-game gold tend ot have little time to play, and lots of real-world cash to spend.

Obviously self-interest dictates that people who have lots of time to kill should want the game to reward time spent above all else. People who have lots of money to spend want the game to value real-world money above all else.

There really is no "right" and "wrong" way to design a game. Thus, there is no end to arguing between these parties and a huge arms race as people willing to take real-world money will do whatever they can to create in-game advantages for their customers to stay in business.

I think there needs to be a balance. Games should not be designed so that new players can't expect to enjoy the majority of the game until they've spent 300,000 hours playing it. New content needs to be available at all levels of play. On the other hand, it isn't good for gameplay when some newbie can walk around killing people left and right with an uber-sword-of-destruction that they bought for $19.95 on ebay.

I think that if you make the game fun and have rewards both for people who have leveled for 18 hours a day and also for those who play an hour a week and don't level at all, then you'll get rid of much of the incentive for farmers.

Re:Why oppose it?

[Morlark]

Developers being cocks? Sorry, I actually facepalmed when I read that. I take it you've never played an MMO? Gold selling thrives in MMOs because, at the end of the day, there is one fundamental truth that applies both in and out of game: (some) people are stupid. Gold selling has a noticeable and significant negative effect on the game. Sometimes this means they've got their bots out keeping a given zone completely barren of mobs, so that any actual players who want to do anything in the zone are unable to do so. Sometimes it means that the gold sellers flood the auction house with the items they have farmed up, meaning that any legitimate player who wants to sell some items for a bit of gold can't do so because the going rate for those items is so low that they can't turn a profit. On the flip side, the people who have bought gold now have so much money that the market price for other (non-farmable) items goes through the roof, meaning that honest players can't afford the things they want. Gold selling absolutely ruins the in-game economy, which makes the game a lot less fun for everybody, and that means the developers lose subscribers. That is why.

In fact, in recent years, things have got even worse. As the developers get better at spotting the behaviour of the gold sellers' farming bots, the gold sellers change tactics. Instead of targeting the game, they target the players - through various trojans and keyloggers and whatnot, they compromise a players account, strip it bare of gold and items, and then sell the proceeds on to other players. Of course when the player discovers this, they immediately go crying to the devs demanding that their items and gold be restored. The dev company then has to spend god knows how much on employing extra customer support staff to deal the player's own lax account security. That is a direct cost to the dev company caused by gold sellers. The claim that the developers are being cocks by protecting the interests of both themselves and the players is laughably ignorant.

Allow me to finish up with a little personal anecdote. An acquaintance of mine in WoW once had his account compromised by gold-sellers. I don't know how, since he's usually a fairly tech-savvy person, but everyone slips up once in a while. The gold sellers stripped his character completely clean, took everything he had, and passed it on. When he finally got his account back, and was waiting for his items to be restored, you know what his first response was? He went straight to the gold sellers and bought some gold, to cover what he had lost. Yup, he went to the very people who had stolen his (imaginary) gold, and paid them real money to get it back. And he never once made the logical connection that the people who had taken his stuff were the same people he was dealing with. The average person really is that stupid.

It's only a minority that actually does buy gold, so you can't even claim that "players want it". But when the developers have to fight an uphill battle against both the gold sellers and that stupid minority, so that they can improve the game for those very same players, you do have to have a bit of respect for what they do.