I had already read Psychochild’s justification of RMT as a comment on Sara Jensen’s blog, now he goes further on his blog, and he is still WRONG.
Does WoW suck as well because people are buying gold and paying others to skip “the boring parts”? If so, I think we’re pretty fucking doomed when it comes to making a game that doesn’t suck! History doesn’t look very kindly on us in this matter….
Yes, WoW SUCKS on those aspects. Guess what? Even WoW isn’t perfect and still carries with itself some old, bad habits. Blizzard didn’t eradicate all of them and there are some core design points already unresolved.
It’s absolutely not a case that RMT infiltrates exactly in the most flawed and vulnerable parts of the game. In WoW RMT gains its legitimation (meaning creating a desire) in two main cases. One is the “epic mount”, on which Penny Arcade made a comics, the other is on endgame raid maintenance. The third being powerleveling services, which is a different aspect I already commented.
What is WRONG is to JUSTIFY the potential problem and refuse to observe it from the game design perspective. If it’s all good and all justified then there’s NO REASON to try to make better games.
The destructive effect of RMT is on this industry is exactly because it leads to justify everything instead of looking at things from a critical perspective. Justifying RMT is the first step to justify speculation, justify bad habits and justify bad game design. Justifying it because there aren’t solutions. That’s what they want YOU to believe.
The real issue is what Raph points out in the power-leveling article above: the primary motivation is to keep up with your friends.
Yeah, and what’s this? Is it not an important aspect to think about? Or maybe we just justify this one too, because WoW is perfect and so IT CANNOT BE CRITICIZED. And since it’s perfect and YET RMT happens, then it means that RMT is justified too.
while I’ve said that RMT is usually something that people use to make up for time they can’t dedicate to the game, I think the stronger motivation is variety.
Oh yes. And how’s this justified as well?
These are all hints of something wrong. You can keep justifying all of these, or you can strive to make better games. I thought the role of a game designer is to QUESTION how things work. To not sit on the superficial level but to DELVE, observe and figure out different possibilities. And this process starts with asking questions to ourself, to refuse the simplistic answers. To NOT FEEL CONTENT. And not to provide justifications for all kind of crap they are trying to feed us just because they want to speculate on it.
Game design HAS TO start from discontent, because without discontent you cannot wish for something better.
Anyway, in the end RMT is going to happen.
Yes, till RMT is supported and encouraged, it is going to happen. The truth is, again, that game developers want to perpetuate it.
It’s a DELIBERATE choice, so have the courage to admit it.
A game designer should NEVER justify anything in any case. Because that coincides with the end of the job.