Feb 8
Let Loose the Rants of War
MMOG Nation column up at GameSetWatch, a lot faster than I expected actually. I uhh, kind of went off on a rant. Sorry if it gets a little incoherent/preachy in there. After having an entire day or so to think about SOE’s White Paper, I decided the most topical thing for this week would be to get all of my brainstem swirlings out onto the virtual page.
Gaming is a hobby. I take it very seriously, as do a number of other people, but gaming is a big part of my job. For most players, for the average player, gaming is supposed to be about having fun. How is a player supposed to have fun if the same have/have-not bull that makes ‘real life’ so challenging intrudes on the game world? How will a casual player feel if he knows ‘all he needs to do’ is drop 50 bucks and he can be playing with his friends again? These kinds of questions are precisely why a lot of people play Massive games in the first place. Force real-world economics on most Massive players, and I think they’ll respond by just leaving.
I’d love to hear from folks what they think. Both on GSW and over in the comments on Raph’s site, I let my lid flip a little bit. I just … blarg. I love the business side of games as much as the next blogger/editor/journo/gamer person, but at the end of the day these vast virtual environments are nothing more than diversions meant to make people happy. Anything that gets in the way of that is (IMHO) academic, and I feel like sometimes that doesn’t get said enough.
2 comments2 Comments so far
That’s not really how I look at it. You know how often these debates rage back and forth on any forum for a game that has an RMT market, but at the end of the day gaming is a hobby like any other. Whether you golf, knit, read, hunt, or slay dragons, at the end of the day it’s something you do to relax, have fun, and generally enjoy yourself. It just happens to be digital in the case of online worlds.
That said, I would consider people paying to get ahead in an MMO the same as someone buying a really nice set of golf clubs you can’t afford (but could earn by winning the golf tournament). It’s only going to bother you if you let it. Why do you care if he’s got a better set of golf clubs? Aren’t you playing to enjoy the game?
This analogy isn’t perfect, I know, because it doesn’t translate directly. But my point is this: some people have more purchasing power, and some people have more time. In a game where either one is a potential path to a desired goal, why does it affect you at all which one people choose to use? Someone who has time to play for 16 hours each day is going to have the same advantages over you as someone who has money to drop $1000 on characters and items. Why is the person who sacrifices his life for the game somehow more validated?
“Forcing a college student to decide between bread and a piece of content, giving a MMOG addict a direct shortcut to financial ruin; these are very much the trappings of the modern world, and they have no place in Massive gaming.”
I’m calling shenanigans on that one friend. Nobody forces such decisions on others. Bread vs. Content? That sounds good as a sound-bite but is a bit unfair. Are you really of the mind that there are game developers out there who would make a game to create such decisions?
I agree that there are some hard decisions out there in terms of game design when RMT is deliberately a part of the design, but if you don’t make a compelling game, even at the pre-RMT level… who’s going to stick around to buy anything?
The good game still has to be a prerequisite. You can’t make a good game if your only mission is to suck dollars out of the bank accounts of your community.