Archive for May, 2010

Note: This is a repost from Cedarstreet.net. It has been edited for relevancy, with a postscript added.

Penny Arcade can be a fountain of interesting information when they aren’t featuring anatomical references in either the blog or the comic. Several times, I find that when Tycho links to something, I had damn well better click it, or turn in my official “I am a Gamer” card (not to be confused with GamerCard ™).

I clicked on a link in a recent post over there, and as I read the article at the resulting destination, I realized the sensation that one has when passing a gruesome accident by the side of the road: you know shouldn’t stare, but you can’t look away.

This article — a translation from a Chinese newspaper/magazine/something called Southern Weekly — is about a young woman named Lu Yang who was drawn into a game called ZT Online.

From what I gather, ZT Online, is like other Chinese MMOs. You can spend an hour or a lifetime playing, but you won’t get anywhere unless you pony up real cash for in-game items, a practice called real money transaction here in the West.

Over here, RMT is generally (although not universally) dismissed for two reasons, one of which is presented in the source article. First, Western culture is so drawn to scandal that the idea that a product is specifically designed to suck out as much money as possible from the player would cause the offending company to fold beneath public pressure and/or a public stoning of the board of directors¹ (casinos are the odd exception to this rule). For the second point, I’ll turn it over to the direct quote from the article:

“Chinese gamers are an unwelcome species on European and American servers,” said a game manager who once worked on World of Warcraft. Chinese players always have ways of quickly ascending levels that leave European and American gamers in the dust, and on group missions they do not like to respect the tacit rules of profit division. For those “pedantic” European and American gamers, Chinese players are like fearsome pagans. “European and American games do not encourage unlimited superiority of power; they put more of an emphasis on balance and cooperative support.” The former WOW manager said, “Perhaps this is because of the influence of traditional culture and the current environment; truth be told, Chinese gamers are better suited to jungle-style gaming.” Note: Emphasis mine.

I think that this is widely and overtly understood here in the West, and despite the obvious Pro-Chinese fist-pumping by the original author, Western gamers would just shrug in a kind of “yeah, so?” manner if presented with this accusation. Just as the original author seems to think that the play styles accepted (possibly demanded) by Chinese gamers “leave[s] European and American gamers in the dust” and that to the “‘pedantic European and American gamers, Chinese players are like fearsome pagans”, Western gamers look at Chinese operations like ZT Online and scratch their heads. As Lu Yang herself asks as her time in-game wears her down, “Why should a doctor want to kill a teacher? Why does someone who is a cop in real life want to harm others in a game…Why is there such enmity between strangers?”

Eastern Versus Western E-Peen

I do not have first hand experience with Eastern MMOs outside of test-driving some of them like, Sword of the New World (as it’s known here in the East), and a little bit of time with Lineage I and II. My primary reasons for staying away from Eastern MMOs can be boiled down to the fact that I am more interested in working solo, or in a group, towards a goal for the purpose of self-satisfaction that I (or we) have accomplished something larger then ourselves.

Both WoW and ZT Online measure success in terms of loot; how much you acquire, and specifically what you acquire. In this regard, there’s little difference between the two. However, when you examine how the players acquire the loot, you get to the major difference between not only the two games, but the mentality behind Eastern and Western gamers.

As the article mentions, Western gamers obtain their loot through the expenditure of time. In WoW, Blizzard changes each and every player the same (roughly) monthly fee and provide the trough from which they can eat as much or as little as they like in a calendar month. The game rewards players for playing more often: you level faster, which means you have access to increasingly higher level areas, and also higher level gear. Casual players can access this with their own monthly fee, but it will simply take much, much longer then it would for someone who plays for longer, more often.

The Chinese flip side, according to the article, is that players in ZT Online can use real money to purchase not only items, but levels for their character. A player who is willing to spend the money can have a super high level avatar with the most elite gear. Theoretically, a player with deep pockets can have a top of the line avatar on his first day, while players who have played for weeks, but haven’t spent a dime, are limited to the starting area, and are basically at the mercy of any and all players who are higher in level. In ZT Online, your expenditure of real money buys you the gear and removes the grind associated with many Western MMOs which has been set up to act as a gate-keeper to higher level content and loot.

Equality for All Versus Equality for Sale

A lot of people claim that people play MMOs strictly for the social aspects, which I have refuted many times. There are other reasons, such as dynamic worlds and updated content. This article shows that in the East, there’s a totally different mind-set which has very little to do with being social.

Western MMOs have really annoyed me in the way that they offer equality for all players. In WoW, every single player has the exact same opportunities as every other player with the same class, race and faction. This means that any quest that can be done by one gnome mage can be done by all gnome mages whether the path was begun on launch day, or on the day that the servers are shut down. The content never changes so that no subset of players has a different experience then any other.

This method does have it’s advantages, however. You can find other players in the same level range who need to complete the same quests, or you can learn from those who have already done the quests. Finding NPCs is easier when others have visited them for the same reasons you need to visit them. The quest goals are always the same, and the expected loot drops are always the same, even if it doesn’t drop all the time.

It has it’s downsides as well. There’s no individuality in WoW. The player who is 5 levels ahead of you is what you’re going to be, and the player 5 levels behind you is what you were. Content spoilers are easily available for those who want to “zerg” through the content to reach the goals, and endless reams of stats leads to “minmaxing”, turning character development into an exercise of one’s Excel prowess.

From what I gather in reading this article, ZT Online‘s goal is the elevation of the player above others. While a lot of Western MMOers enjoy having access to all content based on his or her class/race/faction, many players and pundits wonder why a Western MMO cannot allow players — who are supposed to be taking on the role of the “hero” — to actually be the hero, with all of the fame and accolades the station entails.

This is partly because in the case of ZT Online, players are elevated above others through PvP, which from what I understand is more the more dominant play style in the East, as opposed to PvE, which is more dominant here in the West. The major thread within the article focuses on Lu Yang’s defense of her nation against a stronger, better funded nation when the stronger nation declares war on her kingdom. It even mentions how Lu Yang came to be regarded as the “Queen” of her nation: by dealing the killing blow to a foreign “King” who had wandered into her territory.

Any Westerner who has participated in PvP knows that there are those who an accept their fate graciously, and there are those who’s infantile nature causes them to swear, throw tantrums and verbally attack other players. While this later situation is totally undesirable, the Chinese apparently take a different path, which is known as “Spending to buy your anger”. Because of the RMT nature of ZT Online and other Chinese games like it, a defeat doesn’t necessarily result in a verbal assault. Rather, the defeated player now has more incentive to deliver retribution. In order to exact revenge, however, the defeated player is forced to spend more money to buy more levels and better gear in an attempt to trump the victor the next time they meet.

Capitalism in the East

One undercurrent that I took away from this article was that the Chinese MMO scene is the most two-faced, greedy operation the gaming industry has ever had the displeasure of accommodating².

In China, as in Korea and other Asian countries, a lot of players (if not most), don’t own a computer. Instead, they congregate at Internet cafes where public systems are loaded with the most popular games. Players create their accounts, and can play in any of these cafes. In the article, Lu Yang and her highest ranking officers meet face to face in one such cafe to plan their strategy for the upcoming war.

On two occasions, the article mentions Lu Yang’s run-in with salesmen in these cafes. Apparently, because online gamers have these public places to gather, game operators have the opportunity to send foot soldiers directly into the presence of the player base in an attempt to get the players to switch from playing their current game, to playing their game. It was one of these salesmen who convinced Lu Yang to switch from Legend of Mir to ZT Online by comparing LoM‘s dungeon crawling — which Lu Yang was apparently tired of — to ZTO‘s pay-to-advance model.

Here in the West, gamers are wary and cynical of in-game advertising. Here, no one likes to feel like the target of a marketing push since it makes people feel like nothing more then a commodity that a company is attempting to manipulate. Apparently, this kind of “in your face” sales tactic is de rigueur in Chinese gaming cafes, which leads to a very confusing conundrum.

There’s been much talk about the addictive nature of MMOs, from the original EverCrack to the World of Warcrack. The mainstream media loves to feature the dark underbelly of online gaming with stories about parents who ignore their screaming children for hours, and stories from the news wire about Asian gamers who fall down dead after playing for days without a break, a meal, or a shower. There’s been debate over whether or not the developers are knowingly and purposefully creating these games to maximize addiction. Of course, any developer of any product wants to maximize attach rates and maintain the “stickiness” of their product, but personally, I doubt that there’s a conscious, nefarious component of MMOs.

What we see with ZTO in this article, though, is an interesting dichotomy for a business in the New Chinese Communist State: Ugly Capitalism, cashing in on it’s customer’s need to dominate other members of his and her community.

The article states that “The story is well-suited to Chinese tastes”, which implies that many players are drawn to ZTO because of the trappings of the game: each player is an orphaned member of a royal family who trains for war in an effort to win back his or her kingdom and ascending to the position of King or Queen. The Chinese culture is well imbued with the spirit of imperial monarchy, and so mapping the premise of ZTO to a Western title would be like styling the player as a freedom fighter battling a repressive regime; it’s part of the culture and the fabric of the nation. I can say that at least in the case of Western games, themes like this have sold very well, so if you excuse the extrapolation, I will suggest that the premise of ZTO speaks the heart of many Chinese gamers.

The problem, then, is that while the game is presented as an epic experience in the great Chinese tradition, the game itself is what I’m going to call predatory capitalism.

The creepy salesman notwithstanding, the whole premise of ZTO is fucked up. By the article’s admission, the game demands that you pay real money for your advancement. I suppose that this is not without peer, as Project Entropia has been doing this for years (RMT), Sony has set up it’s own RMT system for EverQuest 2 and the upcoming Free Realms, and even Second Life allows you to purchase in-game money with real money (as will MetaPlace).

However, the article seems to point to the fragile nature of one’s purchases in ZTO. Not only are finished goods available for RMT, but the components used in crafting and upgrading are expected to be acquired through RMT. The article explains examples of players who have spent hundreds if not thousands of their hard earned cash just to buy materials used in the upgrade of their gear because the game continuously destroys their materials through the process of upgrading. This is the same as having your groceries turning to dust in the parking lot, over and over again. Not only is it bad enough that the game forces players to pay for their enjoyment in microtransactions, but it seems that the game is designed to maximize the number of RMTs per player to absurd levels (regardless of culture).

Essentially, the game is designed to simply take advantage of the human propensity for wanting to be better then the rest, and the unbridled rage that is so easily unleashed thanks to the anonymity of the Internet. Rather then offer players a world in which they can relate to one another on any level, the game actually charges the players for the privilege of acting out their aggression. I cannot see how this is anything less then taking advantage of a subset of the population which is known to feel disenfranchised due to unemployment and other factors.

Addendum:

I wanted to repost this today, a day after the EQ2 $25 mount was announced.

A lot of people – myself included – have gone on the warpath over these absurd prices for virtual items. $25 is one half the price of the original box. For $25 you get a vanity item, while for $50 you originally got an entire world; the ponies are practically vanity items (although with some non-competitive features), while the retail box is, well, the whole game itself.

But the more I thought about it, especially when compared to ZTO, offering vanity items isn’t inherently evil the way things are trending here in the West. I still absolutely think that the prices for the WoW and EQ2 ponies are batshit insane, but they don’t unbalance the game. No one is spending their way to the level cap by buying these things, and although I strongly believe that by virtue of the volume apparently being sold, we’re only on the tip of overpriced virtual items here in the West.

It remains to be seen if these items will continue to be cosmetic vanity goods, or if Western MMOs decide to step up to the ZTO model, but the doors have been opened to potentially slip in that direction.

1: It’s fairly obvious that no revolt has occurred here in the West in response to WoW’s original overpriced virtual items. In fact, the opposite has occurred: they’ve been welcomed by enough players to warrant the competition to do the same thing.

2: Unfortunately, while I still consider the business model behind ZTO to take greed to insane new levels, I cannot imagine that Activision-Blizzard – a company which basically prints it’s own money – priced their pony at $25 because they were hard up for cash.

Twitter is a never-ending source of interesting article starters, and this morning, a brief, two Tweet exchange between @copperbird and @tipadaknife struck a particularly clear tone that made me stop what I was doing and think about it: Do open world (sandbox) games glorify criminal behavior?

The whole point of a “sandbox” setting is to allow players to roam without pressure. More often then not, there’s an overarching goal that follows a narrative, but sandbox titles are usually designed so that you can explore the landscape or take on side quests without interrupting the main thread of the story. Part of this “go anywhere, do anything” design means that players can choose not only to follow the story or not, but usually also whether to wreak havoc or not.

Grand Theft Auto is the poster child for anti-social behavior in sandbox worlds. In fact, it’s technically the point of the game, and you’re rewarded for engaging in criminal behaviors. Rockstar’s latest sandbox title Red Dead Redemption, follows along somewhat of the same theme by casting you in the role of John Marston, dispossessed gang member, but makes the redemption part an actual option: you can either go straight, or continue along the path of an outlaw.

For as long as we can remember, games have always given us the reins of the hero. Sometimes they’re flawed heroes, and sometimes they’re borderline psychopaths (shout out to Kratos!), but there’s always been a sense that all of the indiscriminant killing is for the greater good, or at least a more noble purpose then pure selfish gain. Sandbox titles, however, often remove that nudge by  including a “crime DOES pay” system that rewards players for anti-social and criminal acts like carjacking, dealing in drugs, or attacking civilians.

Psychologists and concerned parents everywhere will rush their children to safety in the face of these titles, but it very well could be a chicken-or-the-egg scenario. When the gloves are off and players are able to act out criminal scenarios, are they comfortable exhibiting latent anti-social tendencies because the act is taking place in a relatively safe environment with no real world consequences, or is the game promoting the criminal life-style through glorification and reward?

It’s my opinion that people who revel in doing bad things for the sake of doing bad things are probably a step away from doing bad things anyway, and that it’s better that they do them to a virtual NPC then a real-life NPC, the same way many people with anger-management issues might take up boxing as a means to channel their emotions. To say that a game which offers the ability to mow down pedestrians with a car or horse is driving people to commit such acts in real life through positive reinforcement is, in my mind, a cop out. If these people really wanted to do these things, there are millions of cars in the real world. Why choose a virtual setting over a real setting? My best guess is because they know full well that in the real world, there are real world consequences, and that no one can just reload from a previous save to make the right choice once the wrong choice has been made.

As a parent, however, I wouldn’t even think of allowing my child to watch or play one of these games at this point in her life. She’s still learning the ways of the world, and for young people, media is a teaching tool. If parents are seen to enjoy beating in the head of a hooker in a video game, then why shouldn’t the child associate enjoyment with the act they’re witnessing? Can they understand that the enjoyment is from the act of playing the game – played by someone who does understand that it’s not real and can enjoy it on a fantasy level? That’s a question I’d not be interested in putting to a test, personally. It’s better to err on the side of caution, as any parent will tell you.

Real life is full of choices, many of which aren’t technically choices at all. Since most people are lawful citizens (I hope), then mugging pedestrians and stealing drugs from cartel kingpins is as unthinkable a scenario as being able to flap one’s arms and flying to the moon. Sandbox games that offer a path less traveled and far less lawful are novelties. They’re a glimpse into a forbidden and unthinkable world that we would never dare enter in our normal daily lives of cubicle world and soccer games. Taking the darker path is a small act of rebellion that we can step away from when we’ve had enough, or more importantly, can show us just how important and difficult it is to do the right thing when we could be taking the potentially more lucrative – but more dangerous – path of least resistance.

Note: This is a repost of an article from Cedarstreet.net

Gamers are a funny lot. Many of the more vocal among us probably haven’t ever developed anything more complex then a rash, yet they seem to be able to pinpoint why a game “sucks”.

When it comes to gaming, the concept of “suction” is as vague as the true and universally accepted definition of “hardcore”. Gamers will tell other gamers that “they suck”, which could be because the “sucker” beat the snot out of the “suckee”, and feelings are hurt. More often, however, gamers will pronounce with an air of definitive universality that a particular game “sucks”.

Here’s a bit of trivia: no game sucks. It’s just you.

Many times, gamers who claim that a game sucks fail to qualify their pronouncement as “opinion” (that salient point is usually understood the moment a dissenting voice flames in response). Often times these gamers truly believe that their statements are the Internet equivalent of a lightning bolt from Zeus, or the impact of Thor’s hammer. In their own minds, they are the Moses who has the unenviable burden of dealing with the Game That Sucks, and is tasked with enlightening the pagan masses by slamming them over the head with stone tablets of their own design emblazoned upon which is the phrase “This game sucks, and here’s why…”. There’s always an unsolicited why inscribed on those tablets.

The problem isn’t with the game, but, naturally, the gamer. No one can be faulted for enjoying a particular subject, be it World of Warcraft, Age of Conan or EVE Online, yet these Masters of The Opinion of Suck tend to build up a case against rival subjects by nitpicking on everything from the fonts used to the mechanics of the rule set to the graphics, and almost everything in between. Certainly, in some cases where the production values are simply lacking, one could make an easy case for simply turning away in silent shame, but for titles like Lord of the Rings Online or EverQuest II – which have millions of dollars of production value and were composed by extremely talented and driven human beings – proclaiming with finality that “they suck” is nothing short of self-important hubris.

There is a remedy, for those who are willing to seek one (and I suspect that those numbers are fewer then the number who should, which is a shame), and it is this: enjoy whatever game you try. Enjoy it on it’s own terms, for what it has to offer, not for how it stacks up to [Insert Name of Favored Game Here]. Don’t worry about how the game presents it’s quests, or how many times you have to kill wolves (we’re not getting away from that mechanic any time soon, it seems). No two or three games are alike, despite what self-promoters on partisan forums will tell you. Worlds and lore, mechanics and flow, community and quests, they all vary from game to game and they all have their own merits in each presentation. By denigrating another product as “suckish” you’re walling yourself off from an experience, narrowing your vision, and illuminating yourself as a 100% certified douche-nozzle. There’s enough narrow vision in politics and religion for humanity to gorge itself upon from now until the sun burns out. Do we really think we’re furthering our interests by badmouthing these games?

This isn’t to say that every person will or should like everything about any game out there, or that there aren’t aspects in every game that don’t work or that are unpalatable to an individual gamer, but consider this request to allow any game you cast your eyes upon to be judged on what it offers, and not by your own expectations or experience with past games.