Emergent Play & Control - Gold Farming

I was very captivated by Steinkuehlers Article "The Mangle of Play" where she depicts how chinese gold farmers destabalized the intended balance and play the designers had in mind in the MMOG Lineage II.

I think the case of gold farming and the impacts of such an industry is a good example of emergent activities and also acts of control by both the game company and the players themselves, as Steinkuehler also describes.

I remember being told about bots when I first started playing WoW. At the time, I had already been active in Guild Wars, but don't remember running in to the concept there, despite this game having many similarities to it's MMO brethren.
When I heard about bots in WoW, I found this notion both captivating but also mysterious - how did these bots look? I expected something spectacular that would make me recognize one immediatly, they were robots right, unlike the rest of us players, so they must look different!

Then one day, one was pointed out to me.
It didn't look like a robot at all, it was just a night elf hunter - a great dissapointment.
The only difference was the way the character moved, spun around on the spot and didn't react to other players interfering with it's course.
I proceeded to whisper this character which had an unusually silly name, I forget, but "Xvolkk" is a good guess. The character then stood still (bots don't stand still for long) and responded to my "Hello" with a "lol".
Hmmm, okay, I wrote back saying "what are you doing?" and got another "lol" and I was then certain this was not an english speaker and most likely a chinese gold farming player, who had checked the AI controlled hunter and then seen my message.

Gold farmers don't have as profound an impact on WoW as the one Steinkuehler described in Lineage, where a race and gender combination became the signature for a gold farmer and a whole race was made obsolete - for leisure players that is.

These are Dwarves???

The play style of the gold farmers in Lineage was also far more aggressive than I've ever experienced myself. Of course for them, it's all in the name of profit and they mean no personal offense. So while certain rules and design features can open up to emergent forms of play, likewise can they open up to new forms of monetary exploit. I wonder if issues of protecting the game against such huge potential imbalances is something game designers have to include in their design choices, besides just providing for a pleasurable game-play experience.


Diablo III has been announced to allow players to buy and sell in-game items for real currency via Battle.net. It will be interesting to see how this will work for Blizzard, the players and the gold farmers.

It makes me think of the blurred boundary between labour and play and how MMOG's have been famous for being "grindy" and work-like (raid management fx). How will Diablo III's Auction House insert itself into that history?

Is the Diablo III real money auction house a step in the direction of making gold farming an actual and legitimate job? Are game companies moving towards working with the gold farmers, instead of against them, giving up some of their control and trying to embrace this new reality?

Well, the reception of these news amongst game enthusiasts were polarized.

Some see it as a direct attempt at getting rid of gold farmers, or well.. perhaps just legalizing them and hoping the in-game market will be stable anyways.

Some players are rubbing their hands. This is their chance to really try out virtual trading big time instead of just "playing the Auction House" in fx WoW where spending all that gold meaningfully is pretty much impossible.

Some are being almost apocalyptic about it, echoing the Lineage story about imbalances and ultimately putting the (often) western player as the buyer and eastern player as the seller, instead of everyone being both, with the end result being a completely ruined game.

Never has it been so political to play an MMOG, markets arise when there's a demand and as such people are employed in China producing real currency out of the virtual currency they sell the players (who are both eastern and western as far as I know, although I suspect they earn better on the western players).

Gold Farmers at work

Do players feel as if their leisure spaces have been contaminated by real-world matters, is it a breach of the magic circle? Chinese labourers are at work in the same game where I spend my off hours playing around. Or even worse, (and this is high on the worse scale) imprisoned chinese gold farmers are working where I'm playing.... that's a very uncomfortable thought. These are the games where people sometimes log in to "take a break from 'real life'".

When people throw out the common expression "it's just a game" the next thing to say is perhaps  - "for whom?".

Gender and Gaming II - Initial Social Access Points Coming to a Place Near You!

The session on Gender and gaming this week dealt with three texts in particular:

•    Yee, “Maps of Digital Desire”

•    Lin, “Body, Space, and Gendered Gaming Experiences”

•    Jenkins, “Complete Freedom of Movement”

In game deterrents and barriers

We wanted to play this video in class, but ran out of time. It's a machinima produced by WoW players and can thus be seen as a humorous response to how female players are sometimes treated in WoW (confer both Yee and Lin).

The video brings forward the double edged sword that female players are sometimes confronted with. I find the video funny, but I also consider it a criticism. It wouldn't be funny if it wasn't referring to a pattern and then reversed to expose the ridiculousness of female players acting this way. I'm seeing a message in this video that, besides the giggles, the viewer is meant to take away from this.

On one hand, female players/avatars are sometimes met with a differentiated treatment, where they are regarded helpless and in need of protection (i.e. from a male player). Other times female players are treated more generously, help is easier attained and players can be more forgiving if a female player makes a mistake.

There is another side to this coin, where forgiveness is replaced by distrust in the female player’s skills and abilities to play well. It can be disheartening to be treated as an inferior player, suspected of not being able to fully perform to the standards of male players. 

For more on this, consider reading Esther MacCallum-Stewart's article Real Boys Carry Girly Epics: Normalising Gender Bending in Online Games (2008).

I think the video displays many of these points, both the positive of getting the offer of free materials for a new item, but also the negative. For example when Jesse leaves, one of the women says she wouldn't have liked to carry him through the dungeon and outperforming him anyways.

I also see this video as an example of a deterrent that is operating within the game. So the female player may have made it as far as to actually play, but can find the tag "female" occasionally creating problems.

I've had a few experiences with this myself, but most of the time, being female has not been an issue.

I'm wondering though, in relation to the video, does male players meet any barriers in game? In what way would these barriers intersect with fx age, sexuality, race etc? And how are these different from the barriers girls and women meet?
(Maybe I'm reaching too far into next session's theme..)


Out of game deterrents and barriers

In line with Lin's study on gendered gaming experiences and how they are physically structured around the home, cybercafés and dormitories, this is an example of a larger roadblock, still cultural, but also in the more serious category.

Quoting from Kotaku in Well, That’s One Way to Combat Misogyny in Gaming:

Enthusiasts of military-style first-person shooters are not well known for their progressive thoughts on the matter of gender. The organizers of a large LAN party in Texas, scheduled to celebrate the launch of Battlefield 3, have decided the best way to deal with any slurs hurled at female gamers is to simply forbid them from attending.

"Nothing ruins a good LAN party like uncomfortable guests or lots of tension, both of which can result from mixing immature, misogynistic male-gamers with female counterparts," the organizers originally wrote in an event FAQ. "Though we've done our best to avoid these situations in years past, we've certainly had our share of problems. As a result, we no longer allow women to attend this event.

This paragraph has since been removed, as the stink over the exclusion went viral, and replaced with: "This event is a 'gentlemen's retreat'; as such we do not allow women to attend."

This is an obvious barrier, they simply will not let you in. Comparing to Lin's example with cybercafés that culturally was considered dangerous and inappropriate for females, where also the interior layout of the cybercafés acted as a hindrance, here they have tried to solve this problem by segregating the genders and creating a pure male space (notice what they are wanting to evoke by the phrase "gentleman's retreat").

So far, using these two examples, I've painted a pretty grim picture, it sounds like female players are barely wanted in these games by the male majorities and if they get in, their role is clearly marked.

However!

Initial Social Access Points coming to a place near you!

This link was shared on Facebook a few days ago, it's from the Diablo 3 forum and titled How to prepare your girlfriend/wife for diablo III. The problem is: These players are excited about Diablo 3, they know they will spend substantial time when this game comes out and they are already thinking about how to deal with some potential future conflicts now:

"What I mean by prepare is that... You prepare her mentally for all the hours you WONT spend with her and all those hours you will spend with Diablo 3. "

The author ends his post by saying "leave some tips!"

I've seen this dilemma presented on other game boards as well, and this thread looks like a standard "how to deal with girlfriend/wife & gaming" case. What I want to highlight here, is that one of the bits of advice usually given, is expressed as the best case scenario:

"4) Try to convert them to games (best option). Maybe you will even play together?"

And later by another commenter:

"I feel sorry for you guys. You should try to find a grl that loves games :)"

Having/finding a gamer girlfriend is again by a third commenter framed as optimal, this guy considers himself lucky!:

"Guys i gotta tell you,i must be one of the lucky guys :))

My girlfriend,age 22,hardened WoW player,W3 player,and other tons of games,liked D2,and D3 got her quite excited,she`s always asking about that beta key :-<"
                               

We're clearly watching the "initial social access points" in the making as Yee talked about. Notice how forthcoming the guys are in this process, the male players are actively seeking to involve their female aquaintances, here romantic partners, or at least this is the advice given.

When I read this thread, I couldn't help but to also find it endearing. While looking at the negatives on this topic, the previous examples given, this does not give the impression of male gamers aggressively defending their turf, setting up a "do not enter if has boobs" sign as with the Battlefield 3 LAN.

I'm curious about the access points for female players in Battlefield 3, is this not a game that inspires the male players to invite their girlfriends/wives?
Would Battlefield 3 also be able to cultivate a "girlfriend-effect" or why does this game seem to move in the opposite direction?
Is the "girlfriend-effect" an MMO phenomenon only?
And how about expanding the "girlfriend-effect" to also include female players recruiting their female friends? Personally I'd love to have a bigger female player network at my disposal! 

And last but not least, bikini plate!

Here's an example of bikini plate from WoW. Should I add, the gear is the same, it just looks different depending on the avatar body.

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Note: I accidentally misrepresented the avatar sizes, the female avatar is (of course) shorter than the male.