July 9, 2009

Take 2: China’s ban on gold farming

Will this move by the Chinese government change the MMO landscape? Two writers weigh in.

When a news story releases, usually everyone forms an opinion on what it means to them. We all interpret the news from our own perspectives, and sometimes those perspectives are the same, and sometimes they may be different from those of our neighbors.

Recently the Chinese government enacted laws that banned the practice commonly known as gold farming. Essentially, gold farming is when gamers (usually in a massively multiplayer online game) go to key areas and camp for drops or collectibles, then sell those on the market for in-game currency. That in-game currency goes into one repository and then players can go to a third-party web site (it should be noted that some publishers and developers frown on this practice and accounts can be banned for doing this), pay real-world money for a specified amount of in-game currency and then their in-game character is either met or mailed (within the game) and given the in-game currency they purchased.

What this enables the player to do is buy items in the game that they would normally have to spend hours grinding to get. There is also the possibility that certain mobs may be camped for drops, thereby denying players the opportunity to advance quests that may target that mob.

It can create a hostile environment within games and cloud a social gaming environment with an ugly and competitive atmosphere.

GameZone’s Michael Lafferty and Steven Hopper have talked about this, and in this two-part editorial piece, each will have the chance to present his take on the subject. To kick this off, Michael Lafferty will present his notions on the story, while Steven Hopper will comment in the following week.

Michael Lafferty:

The Asian gaming environment is one of the biggest sources of farmers in MMOs. And if the Chinese are actually banned by law, and that law can be enforced, we might initially see a cessation in the number of farmers flooding into zones.

I’ve been on the receiving end of hostility from farmers. When Lineage II, a game that has a player-versus-player world, first came out, some of the quest areas were camped by farmers. They usually had power-leveled enforcers and if you ventured into that area to find a quest mob you were told in no-uncertain terms to leave or your character would be killed. So much for players working together. To its credit, NCsoft really came down on that sort of thing, but even though the company banned quite a number of accounts, you still saw farmers running through the area. These were usually characters with names that were a jumble of letters, like “jdfslfsdpa,” and they would run, kill, harvest coin and keep this up in a certain area.

Is this law enforceable? Probably not. Unless you have someone specifically monitoring a player’s behavior, by watching, how can Big Brother clamp down. The threat is there, though, and might be viable enough to dissuade some. If a company has been identified as a farming business and employees are identified, then that would be much easier to shut down.

Gold farming operates under that old supply and demand. If there is no demand, the supply will dry up. When players start putting in the time themselves and stop using the gold-farming services, then that element of the industry will go away.

MMOs are somewhat about social gaming, about working together. Sure, players want to be ‘uber,’ they want the best gear and the top-end abilities – even if they have to pay to get them. Working for the reward seems to be a concept that many do not aspire to – they want it handed to them. And that’s probably fine, if that is the way they choose to play the game. After all, they paid for the game but they tend to forget one thing – even though they have invested in the game, it’s not their game. MMOs belong to the dev team and publishers; they set the rules that players have to abide by and while some may not like those rules, they are not given the liberty to change them … unless they want their accounts banned. When you plunk down your monthly subscription, you are paying for a service – one that the end-user licensing agreement players clicked through rapidly spelled out. If you don’t like their rules, don’t play.

To bring this back full-circle, though, it seems unlikely that what the Chinese government has done will impact the overall landscape of MMOs in the long-run.

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