true, like having no fun while being forced to lvl up to 60 or 70 ... and the game only starts when you reach max lvl

Waza

Ahh I loved that Duck Tales game. I remember I had it on Windows 3.1 on my old Tandy 1000, lol.

Jashin

@Nullzero: He's not saying "make things cost less gold" or "give neat items to everyone". He's saying, "Hey, as long as you need to accumulate X resources, let's make the path to getting those resources fun, instead of, oh, say a boring grind."

ultimatepancakesensation

Here's the thing- why can't they make grinding not so boring?

arstal

Hitting that gold must hurt...or feel really good.

Dudemeister

@Sadkermit: THIS SPACE FOR RENT: It's easy to criticize the guy for stating the obvious, but honestly, the obvious needs to be stated considering the fact that MMO is almost synonymous with grinding.

ultimatepancakesensation

This is a bit of a simplistic view in my opinion. Saying "make the game more fun!" is silly. MMOs are all about the "have's" and "have-not's". I have 5 more levels than you, but you have 100 more gold than me. I have fire spells, you have swords and armor. I have an epic mount, you have a normal mount.

It's not the complete core of every MMO, but 'status' in MMO games is important. It makes the game fun for a lot of people... I have something you don't have, therefore I am better than you, and therefore I feel good about myself, and continue to have fun.

But if you lower the standard, and say "everybody can get anything! That makes our game funner than all!" Then really, noone will be having fun, because there's no reward to differentiate between those who play hard, and those who hardly play.

Nullzero

@Doomstink:

Yea, sadly people still play it.

and sadly, im one of the people in the past who got WoW gold online...

ZeonicFreak

@Alith: True.

I play City of Heroes / Villains a lot, and I'm currently 1 level below the cap and still have plenty of contacts with well-written stories to do - not including the other 2/3 of the contacts I missed on my way up simply because I outleveled them.

What do I see near the top? People begging for powerlevels.

Some people play the game simply to get the high stuff, because that's how they enjoy it - they don't enjoy the process in between. As long as those people exist, there will never be a "solution" to selling stuff like gold in WoW.

Saxboy

Sadly, what usually happens in MMOs is that players will take the most productive path of least resistance, regardless of the fun involved or the alternatives.

Alith

@Bluecell: I can agree with that. That's what I was trying to get at, but I feel as though I might not have expressed it clearly enough. When things boil down to a tedium such as that, that is when the game ceases to be fun for me. Even if I were doing it to level up a character, the repetition and tiresomeness of said task would ruin it for me.

Again, I never have played WoW, but if I could attain my gold in a less nauseating fashion, then I would, and I would have fun leveling up my character in the process. However, if gold farming CAN be avoided, then it wouldn't ruin it for me. However (and I'm issuing this as a statement to the entire industry) when developers implicate tiresome methods such as gold framing that CAN'T be avoided, and must be dealt with in order to achieve your task, that is when a game boils down into being work.

NinjaBurg3r

that picture just made me stop and as myself, "were the graphics on my Amiga 500 really that bad?"

legacyed

I prefer the Puzzle Pirates way.

Kenofthedead

@Sadkermit: THIS SPACE FOR RENT: That's just it, though. You listen to the rabid frothing WoW player about what they think on the gold farming issue, and, as far as they're concerned, it is criminal activity on par with rape. They don't even *get* that the evil party is blizzard for creating an environment in which you must spend months repeating content to unlock something as insignificant as 60% speed increase on a mount. You can actually measure the time you have to spend in order to pay for damages on equipment when you die. The idea that the run back to the corpse is the big death penalty is crap--they take an hour out of your life when that happens.

The real problem at the rotten core of the game industry is that the metric for determining how 'good' your game is, is how long someone stays playing. When, in point of fact, that behavior can be synthesized by experiences which *don't* merit them. How long do people play solitaire, bejeweled, or, god forbid, the crack-cocaine like Puzzle quest? These are not games that *merit* this much time. They do not have the endless depth that's implied in the 1000s of hours that they rip from people's lives.
The fact that someone actually is still talking about fun in a way which *isn't* a sanctimonious pat on the back to explain their own success gives me hope for the future.

Blizzard will undoubtedly crush that hope with their next project, but... until then...

deathbunny

@Lot krotan (wut?): You have a valid point, but I feel I must digress. Half-Life 2 and Bioshock were amazingly immersive games, but at the same time, I had a blast playing through them while enjoying the wonderful stories they had to offer. I just feel that a game doesn't have to sacrifice outstanding gameplay for a great and engrossing story.

You mentioned that menu navigation and character tweaking doesn't seem fun. I'm not necessarily arguing whether or not those things seem fun, per se, but rather the ultimate outcome, the goal, the quest. When that becomes a chore, thats when I begin to change my perception from "fun" to "work". I like to be challenged intelligently and progressively. I don't like to have to run around and do mundane things that should be revised or removed.

I wish I could think of a specific example off the top of my head, but unfortunately I can't. I'm referring to things like "Collect 500 ultra-rare orbs and then return them to someone entirely across the continent." I don't mind shuffling through my menus and properly equipping my character, as long as the journey I've embarked on is fun and engrossing in the end. When that journey becomes mundane, and feels like I'm working, rather than having fun, thats when I become turned off.

NinjaBurg3r

@andrewBHI: According to these guys, Disney's Duck Tales: The Quest For Gold. I played it back in the day too - was crap at it though. I remember the times when I was playing the mountain-climbing missions and how very rarely it would be possible to get up the top.

Reminds me of MMOs really, the ceaseless, repetitive failures in between great moments of exploration. I think Jele has a point.

Retropants

@HawaiianActor: [youtube.com]

Best shit ever! I love the image Kotaku :)

Oh and I have supported prostitution, and I didn't even get a blowjob :(

Irenicus-the one and only

I played Runescape for a long time and quit when the real world trading measures were put into effect. It totally ruined the game in my and a lot of other player's opinion.

They made it impossible for you to give items to different characters, impossible for you to help your friends out or loan them items, impossible for you to get loot from monster drops and SPLIT IT BETWEEN FRIENDS. They took out 1v1 player killing, and they took out the simple Dualing system to put in a far more complicated tournament system. They didn't think the measures through nearly enough before the implemented them, and it really ruined the game for a lot of the higher level long time players.

n/a

Cory Doctorow, a science fiction author and editor on BoingBoing, wrote a short story called "Anda's Game" that explores the ethics of gold farming in MMOs. You can download it for free from his web site: [craphound.com]

Doomstalk

I thinks it's funny that this is coming from a RUNESCAPE developer. That game is the textbook example of boring grinding.

Stefanten

@Zharay: "But if it suddenly became easy to make 500g a run through say an instance, then everyone would be doing it, causing the market to change in a way that would make making a proper profit next to impossible"
-----
I have no problem with that statement - if you can make that scale of money by actually going out and playing the game, then what's the problem? If large amounts of money can be made that way, people wouldn't need to scam others with high prices for drops.
If more people were grouping for instances (for money's sake), then statistically, more of the rare items would eventually drop meaning it would be more accessible to casual players.
"Making a profit" from items would be less important because the source of the money would be from running the instance, not gouging prices.

Arttemis

@kingdavid73, NinjaBurg3r: Saying a game isn't fun because it feels like work is an easy argument. I played WoW for a long time and I had fun leveling. The key word there is leveling. When I reached the highest level (70) the game quickly stopped being fun. The majority in the group of friends I played with found the earliest levels (1-20) the most fun, and if they were to go back to the game, it would be to play those levels again.

The argument Imre Jele is making is that people buy gold because what they have to do to earn that gold in game isn't fun enough, and to fix that, developers should just make their games more fun.
The fact is, the actual problem lies with how gold is actually acquired in game. You could get your gold however you want to, but if you want to make it fast and efficiently, it usually boils down to farming, which is tedious and boring. And work.

The most desired items in the game are attained in one of two ways:

1. Gold. Get it any way you can and pay the NPC. Now if you don't want it to take ten years, kill yeti, pick flowers, mine the rarest ore, make the best gems. Over and over and over and over until you have enough.

2. Raid. Find a good group of people to run through the most difficult instances (dungeons). Kill a boss. Hope and pray that he finally drops what you're looking for. If he doesn't, or if he does but it goes instead to another member of your group, kill him again next week. Repeat ad nauseum.

When logging on meant I would be doing one of those two things, the game was no longer fun.
Read This

If you're really going to battle the want/need to purchase gold with real money you have to, at the very least, remove some of the power it has in the game by making those most sought after items attainable through alternate means.

Bluecell

I disagree on this. No matter what the game and what the population, if players are easily able to obtain gold, players will exploit it. Now the fact is that if gold or whatever the currency is, is easy to obtain, there will be a enormous price saturation. Gold in WoW for example would not be worth the amount it is now, making that 100g item in the market be worth exponentially larger to exploit the new influx of gold.

Thankfully making money isn't THAT hard in WoW. In BC you can easily make 100g a run in Outland from just leveling. And thankfully that price for a mount can be effected by faction representation (which takes time and in the end, doesnt really matter as by the time you are high enough for a major discount, you should have enough for the base price anyway). What people have trouble with is how not to spend their money and how to set themselves limits.

I have to admit that it really comes down to luck in the end if your not actively trading in the market (you want money, thats where it is...). You can easily make 100g in Outland but thats only if your not such an item monger for your own character (spending money on supplies). And you really start making money when you are able to farm rares or trade goods, but that takes work. But if it suddenly became easy to make 500g a run through say an instance, then everyone would be doing it, causing the market to change in a way that would make making a proper profit next to impossible (biggest example of this is holiday only items).

Zharay

I stopped playing WoW specifically for this reason...
The game became so mundane, I can't believe I kept going as long as I did. There's always the weekly raiding, and then mindless, repetitive daily quests for my epic flying mount, followed by more mindless repetitive dailies for faction to get the netherdrake... I almost had enough money for my first alt's epic flying mount as well... and then I had my 65 warlock and 58 hunter to finish leveling, grind outlands faction, get fly mounts for both... all while still raiding on my main and keeping an Arena score.

God, I don't miss WoW for one second, and I don't know how my friends can keep playing.

Arttemis

FFXI is the only MMO I have any experience with, but here's the thing. Most people I played with - the types who didn't feel the need to compare the size of their e-peens vis a vis how uber their gear was - enjoyed the social aspect of it, working together to complete quests or level up characters and things like that.

And if that is the draw, then who cares if it's easy to get the 1337 gears? Obviously, the e-peen conscious will scoff, but do we really want them dictating how the game's reward system is designed?

Not that it matters too much - I'm pretty much done with that game anyway.

seafisch

That's great and all except when you add in the factor of player controlled pricing on things you'll always have a situation where cost will go up with effort. And it's a nice hard fact that some people are just too lazy to earn in game currency through work. That said WoW was pretty damn easy to earn gold in.

weasl

The fact that attaining gold in MMOs should be enjoyable doesn't make Mr, Jele's statement true. No matter how fun it is to get gold as long as it takes real time people are going to try to find ways to shortcut that. In WoW I personally chose to shortcut it by using a ToS (Terms of Service) compliant add-on program (auctioneer) to turn making money on the in game Auction House into it's own mini-game.

While viable alternatives like that in an MMO decrease the likeliness people will be willing to pay real money for Gold, Mr. Jele is a little naive if he really thinks that simply "providing you with enough fun while you collect that 1000 gold for a steed" would prevent gold selling.

Xorrel

His comments are not really out of line. MMO's can be viewed from a variety of perspectives, one of which is to consider them as an addiction. The industries that support addictions almost invariably also involve a more criminal element. Just look at recent court documents surrounding pending lawsuits directed at IGE for some examples.

dagget

duck tales was the only cartoon that taught capitalistic ethics and morals. totally underrated

Xamot

I personally have a problem with his solution. By forcing, what are considered equitable, trades they also restrict "gifting" as well. In CoH, I often give INF to a character with a good look or story. If you want to stop the farmers, kill the crop and do away with the need for in-game currency all together.

mtheumer

Who cares about runescape anyways...

Xmaster

Bonus points for the Duck Tales PC game picture. I used to play that horrible thing a lot on my dad's crappy PC back when it was actually newish. I can still hear the sound card-less PC squeak out Flintheart Glomgold's theme.

MrPerson

D-D-D-Danger! Watch behind you
There's a stranger out to find you
What to do? Just grab on to some DuckTales! (oooh ooh hoo!)

HawaiianActor

For me, the idea of buying gold in a video game cheapens the experience. But on the other hand, allows me to get access to things I would not normally have by 'working' for them.

I fully respect the people who can get gold without a moments thought. But when that restricts me as a player, its anoying and time consuming. I want to be able to jump into a game without worrying about how much gold it will cost me to buy a new mount or armour. At the same time, I respect players more for earning it through hard work and dedication for playing. There is no winning solution for me.

thebishman

WoW is a perfect example of the imbalance with in-game currency; to the point that you almost have to buy gold from a farming site instead of having to spend literally months saving enough gold for the flying epic mount/training.
I'm level 62 right now and most mobs at my level drop a handful of silver if I'm lucky. It takes a very long time for this to add up, and as I tried to save my money to get my 60 mount, I wasn't even CLOSE when I hit 60 so I had to buy from a site. It's a sad thing.

iStoner

Most RPG's don't sell millions.

Wow is actually a pretty big phenom in that arena. That'd you have parents and children playing it (like the ones I encountered in a pug last night) and everything from casual gamers to poopsockers.

That said. On my first character, I pretty much survived almost exclusively off of found or rewarded gear. Why? Because I was constantly saving up for a mount.

Well, I have my epic ground mount, but now I have to come up with another 1000G's for my...regular flying mount...and another 5000+ for my...epic flying mount.

Its honestly ridiculous. I literally cannot split the gold fund between saving for the ride and buying new items. Its just not possible to do in any reasonable amount of time unless you constantly track the AH and maximize profit by farming very very specific things. It becomes work to do both at the same time..so I choose saving hardcore for the mount. BEcause the extra speed will allow me to farm stuff faster which will allow me to ...upgrade my mount.

I need to go somewhere and cry now.

phunk

@kingdavid73:

Actually that's completely opposite from my experience with WoW. It was a blast as a low level but became work when I hit 60 due to the constant repetition in order to find the epic loot.

LX

WHAT is the name of the Duck Tails game!?
I was just thinking about it the other day. Before the screenshot above, where Scrooge Mcduck jumps in the gold, you play some kind of game with his stock ticker--one of those really old stock machines, that printed stocks out on the ticker tape. I vaguely remember buying stocks in that game...or something to that extent. So weird!

andrewBHI

@NinjaBurg3r:

I know that MMOs aren't the case, but some games focus isn't the gameplay itself being fun, but rather the story telling and immersion (Half Life, Bioshock, Final Fantasy, etc.) Menu navigating and character tweaking doesn't sound fun, but that doesn't stop RPGs from selling millions...

Lot krotan (wut?)

RuneScape sucks balls though. -.-

flukielukie

I agree. To me, a game is longer fun when it feels like it has become a chore for me to accomplish something. Games are supposed to be about relaxation and escapism. This is coming from someone who doesn't really have much interest in MMO's, but I think this can be applied to most games in general.

NinjaBurg3r

I completely agree. If a game feels like work before you can get to the fun parts, then it's not much of a game. That's the main reason I don't play MMORPGs. They aren't fun until you're high level, and you aren't high level until you've worked for months. I'd rather just have fun right away.

kingdavid73

Love the accompanying picture. Brought back memories.

Personally, I think he's missed the point. WoW is obviously fun or there wouldn't be millions of people playing. Buying gold will always exist because there will always be people looking to make money from it, and those who don't want to be bothered with the time and effort required to accumulate the gold themselves. The best way to counter-act that would be to eliminate the gold requirement for certain items.

Stationary NPC says "do this massive variety of tasks for me, and I'll just give you my horse." So long as the quests are challenging with a minimum of tedium (heh), there will still be that sense of accomplishment.

Bluecell

I wouldn't say the metaphor is too off.

Have you checked out the Chinese gold farming industry lately?

brent_w

And I think that TV news shoudn´t cover only disasters and war.

But on the other hand that´s what makes money to TV producers.

So WOW has some stupid issues but they will never care of fix that, because people still buy it, and they will still profit from it. From making people stuck into a game forever doing repetitive tasks in order to get something they want, bacause it´s

- easier to develop
- people take a long time to build their gold stack (hmmmm monthly payments, yum)
- and as Bill Gates said when people conplain about Windows crashing: "You´ll buy them anyways."

Wyld

the problem in this cse is that mmo's are long term play environments by nature. so gettignt he steed the first time may have been fun, but on my 4th alt, rmt'ing that particular roadbump becomes a lot more appealing.

I certanly am not defending goldfarmers, but using content as an excuse for a game that even casual players will see several hundred hours playing just isnt realistic, players will play through content far faster than developers can conceptualise, design, bugtest and release.

ryanfrost

I think the world needs a Duck Tales MMO.

raptorsrevenge

sex-starved MANATEE Mark, not grownups.

Is this concept of a game being fun new to this guy? I thought we were all on that boat together. 20 years ago or so.

Congrats on making a common sense observation Imre. I think you're going to go far with that kind of crazy thinking.

Sadkermit: THIS SPACE FOR RENT

I wholeheartedly agree.

Playstation

I'm surprised people play RuneScape... last time I checked (six years ago), it looked like some kid drew the game's art in MS Paint.

Doomstink

Ok...that metaphor just lost me! LOL

3/9/08=Brawl; 3/16/08=Bday...Two Great Days, One Great Week!

Ok. Here's my theory on how to screw up gold sales.
Make an MMO where you constantly make money. You can't move without making gold. The problem is. It's happening to everyone. Nobody can get rid of the gold. They'd love to give it to someone else but they have enough problems of their own.

Leathersoup

@raptorsrevenge: That's what I thought this article would be about XD

Fun ass game.

Gloibin

Best quote of monday morning? Genuis

TB Fair he's right about the RWT; if only he's expressed it in a more "Media Friendly" way :-O

MrSerious