It’s always rather hard for me to understand Jeff Freeman’s point of view. I can understand what he writes but I find hard to decide if he’s being sarcastic or if he actually thinks what he writes. In the case of The top-five MMOs of all time he was sarcastic, or better, he believed in what he wrote but he didn’t actually like it.

Now the blogosphere thingie started again because of Dave Rickey. But it was already in the air. One of those arguments that keeps returning to haunt your nightmares, at least till you decide to solve it completely and exorcize it. Now, maybe, I’ll try to tackle this argument to at least define my point of view so that I can have a more solid stance in the future, when the issue will be brought up again.

Reading what Jeff wrote I believe the focus is at the start and the end:

The US Army is fighting back against payday loans, by offering payday loans.

[..]

Performing the services of delivering items, information and secure transactions to players (without damaging gameplay) is only something the developers – not third party operations – can do.

These services need to be integrated into the total package. These services need to be part of the service that we’re operating, if we want to deliver the entire service that the players are demanding.

So I believe there are two basic concepts (and again, if I explain in broken english what others wrote in a clearer way is just to help *myself* to focus the arguments, not to teach to others). The first is that it’s ridiculous to fight fire with fire, the second is that (if something needs to be done) it’s the direct responsibility of the game company to find a solution, without encouraging or supporting a third-party effort.

The discussion is rather complex. There are many elements included, for example this point of view can (and should) be extended to things like Cosmos (the UI mod for WoW) and Thottbot. Both are examples of third-party involvement that goes to satisfy a large “demand” coming from the players. I can develop this line of thoughs saying that WoW *already* improved the game by including in its design what was previously confined to external sites. So while you *have* to use a spoiler site to get a quest done in DAoC, in WoW (in general) you have more informations to understand what the task requires you to do. Not only, in general you also know what will be the reward, the difficulty of the task and a rather precise approximation of where you have to go to accomplish it. And beware, these are basic design elements that made WoW largely successful, they aren’t tiny or irrelevant.

Now, because I already named Dave Rickey, I’ll also say that this is *exactly* what he stated not long ago in a discussion about Thottbot:

Frankly, examining it makes me wonder why we didn’t have that level of data-gathering. Like most “benign” third-party tools, it points out a design shortcoming.

What he says backups the point I explained above. These third party tools identify a demand coming from the players and they “anticipate” the design implications that will follow. This because the actual development always lags behind. There aren’t many developers that know exactly what is going on in their games and they fail too often to see basic design mistakes, possibility spaces about improvements and all the rest. Till it doesn’t become GLARING. See all the recent thievery of basic ideas and Ubiq’s excuse about it:

Why did it take so long to do it? I posit that most revolutionary ideas seem easy and straightforward in retrospect. Before WoW, most people didn’t see quests as being all that important because… well, in the games in the past, they’re not. It took the revolutionary (and obvious in retrospect) idea that the quests needed to be front and center, rather than an afterthought.

Now, without derailing too much, it’s obvious that there are many “fronts” to consider about this problem. There’s a legitimate demand from the players, there are the design implications as a consequence and then there are all the problems about third-party operations that capitalize the need by taking advantage of a weak point of these games. Now what Dave says is that the industry should stop to fight against this latter point:

At the bottom of this is the fact that the “secondary market” exists, and it isn’t going to go away. And it’s not going to ruin the games, although it does create some very real problems when farmers and players are competing for the same stuff. Like I’ve been saying for years, we’re going to have to find a way to make peace with the item, gold and account trading.

But you CANNOT. And all the reasons are already there in what he states: “it does create some very real problems when farmers and players are competing for the same stuff”. The competition in general is what makes these games “multiplayer”. It’s all about competition and I want to underline for the billionth time that the proper etymology of “competition” is: “Going together toward something”. It’s not directly “me vs you”, it can be also a collaboration. Now all the non-single player games are about a competition and you cannot trivialize this concept. Foton was already over this point when he demanded his paycheck (follow the link because he goes straight to the point). The “equality”, the BASIC principle on which these games are *founded*, goes in the cesspit.

Let’s say that Mythic decides to sell directly the epic armors for an accessible price, like 10$ or so. What will happen? I don’t know how many guilds will accept to help a player with that horrible and upsetting line of quests. “Just pay the 10$ for god’s sake. No, we aren’t going to help you and loose all that time just for that.” If you directly plug in the game mechanics the real money you break the engine. Who will organize and join a raid on the bugged Molten Core to try desperately to kill and loot Onyxia when you can obtain the same result with a few bucks while sparing a lot of time? Once the money becomes gameplay it cannot exit again. How many players will be left to play the game “properly”? They will become quickly a minority, the gameplay not only will marginalize their presence, making them quit because they cannot find anymore peoples to group with, but it will also ruin directly the experience of those that gladly pay to not play. At the end they’ll cheat themselves out of the fun and the game will look just empty. Or, better, emptied.

About a year ago I was on the same position of Dave about this argument but Lum explained me (in a lost PM) that the “equality” *is* a basic element. Once you are in the game we are supposed to be all equal. WoW is largely successful (as already explained) because it is accessible. When you introduce pay-per-use gameplay elements (or when you tolerate them by not enforcing your policies) the players are not anymore equal, the difference becomes how rich you are in real life. You can afford to participate in the competition only if you have the money. The competition itself, the gameplay itself, become about who can afford to pay more. It’s not a case if already in the past another hot topic is about casual vs time intensive crowds. Because even the “time” is considered borderline as “interesting gameplay” (and, again, accessibility). And if we want to be completely honest about what Dave says:

We sell characters, we sell “special services” like character transfers that cost us nothing, we sell access to our betas, we would sell you the trash from our bathrooms if we thought anyone would buy it.

This is already true. “Expansions” for mmorpgs are already a line breaking the “equality”. If you want again to participate you have to shed out another 29$. Want this new shiney? 29$ or you’re out. Even the high system requirements for EQ2 are another line to cross that disrupts the accessibility and the “equality”. Even in the FPS genre the equality is broken when the gameplay relies too much on how many frames per second your hardware is able to grind. Again the direct reason why the first Counterstrike is still super-popular. If you play “chess” it doesn’t matter if the pieces are made of precious ivory or paper. The competition HAS a value. The competition is ALL. If we remove it we have nothing. Even a world like WoW that so much negates the importance of a strong community still relies completely on a competition and even Diablo was again about a competition.

It’s not a case if one of the examples brought by Dave *underlines* this point. The “bonus items” that are often tied to the collector editions of games are ALWAYS non-competitive tools. It’s graphic fluff exactly to avoid to affect and invade the other mechanic where the real money becomes a gameplay factor. This cannot happen. Going back to what Foton says, it’s obvious that another approach cannot work. What if I’m trying to organize a big raid with my guild so that I’m able to win that powerful item? Nothing? What if three days later my guildies find out that the powerful item is being sold for real money on eBay?

You CANNOT make peace with this secondary market because the playerbase is already borderline. The companies that are directly against this like Mythic, SOE, Blizzard and Squaresoft already have serious issues because the players demand a reaction, not just words. Again it’s not a case that reports of hacks produce loud fights in the message boards when the players don’t see STRONG reactions from the game companies to prevent them. Guess what? It’s again because there IS a competition. It’s someone running faster in a PvP environment as much as someone discovering a “god mode” switch in PvE (and it’s not a case if so many players legitimate attack Mythic because of their support to the buffbots). If one of those companies will now say “ok, we will stop taking actions against who uses exploits or hacks” or “ok, wo do not support the secondary market but we won’t pursue it” you’ll get a REVOLT.

So another path isn’t possible? The answer is “yes”. For the same reason of what I wrote here above about the expansions. Why they are tolerated by the players if they effectively are bags of improvements with a real money labels? Because they aren’t just that. Those bag of improvements that you pay for aren’t just that. They are attached to the gameplay. They are creative systems, there’s a game that you play. There’s an experience. If we broaden this point of view we will be able to include realities like “Second Life”. This game works because the real money is always tied to an act of creativity. It’s not competition based on false laws, it’s creative competition before everything else.

Now I’m tired and I want to conclude. There’s a definite line between these games and real life elements. You cannot allow the secondary market to cross it, nor you can integrate that secondary market in your game without creating something *specifically* aimed to that, like Second Life. This is why Blizzard tried to address the problem in the best way that, for now, is a compromise. Trading is limited, not all is translated into a shareable value. Quest rewards cannot be traded and this allow the main structure of the game to remain unaffected. The accessibility of the game isn’t hindered even if the problem isn’t completely solved.

My point of view is still near of what I wrote in a comment to what Lum wrote (linked above):

I still believe that most of what is being sold (money, phat leet) isn’t fun to play. The game should focus to offer something more involving that leet power, greed and narcissism (as mechanics).

I believe there are better solution to solve gradually the problem strictly from the design point of view. For example you cannot buy the cooperation of peoples and you cannot buy reputation in a community. Again this should be the focus of these games in a similar way to what Ubiq always repeat. We play along with others, we need the world to gain new depths and better mechanics that aren’t again just a threadmill of power or personal achievement. These games need, again, *cooperation*. Healthy competition. Large scale PvP scenarios with more tactics and, maybe, more immediate and intuitive gameplay but not just time-intensive or money-intensive power-ups.

The solution is about thinking out of the box. Discover that these games can be much more without chasing desperately overused mistakes. Without seconding them. There’s a lot to do in the game design to minimize the relevance of the problem of the secondary market.

“They say that in a gold rush the only ones that really make the money are those that make shovels”

Yes, “they” made shovels exploiting holes and deficiencies in the design. The design shouldn’t now second that wrong tendence. It should learn about it and correct its behaviour. Addressing the problems and advancing.

Edit: Ubiq also commented and even shifted the focus to what really matters and is only drowned in the sea of words I wrote.