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Sad. I work in the game industry, and it's sad seeing a work as nice as World of Warcraft perverted in that way. The designers never intended for such a thing

by palish 19y ago

Sad. I work in the game industry, and it's sad seeing a work as nice as World of Warcraft perverted in that way. The designers never intended for such a thing to happen. The future seems like it's going to be a balance between freedom to entertain and moral standards. With the way movies are going, games are in danger of becoming morally questionable too (think of a Saw game or a Hostel game where your main objective is to torture someone). Time is a valuable human resource, and a game like World of Warcraft wastes a lot of it. But it does give people satisfaction. So if it's morally wrong to waste a valuable resource, is the game morally wrong? Maybe everyone has ways of perverting everything, and we shouldn't worry about it. But it must be painful to watch your creation destroy lives like that.

Tichy 19y ago
I think there are worse things in the world. After all, they don't really harm anybody, or do they? In WoW you can't really harm other players, I think.
- euccastro 19y ago
  You can harm someone indirectly through the in-game economy. Out-of-game virtual goods trading can kill meaning of progress in a game- whether there was much meaning to begin with is another debate. This economic link between worlds breaks the "magic circle" that separates game from real life. This can hurt or kill the experience of a game, depending on how much it relies on suspension of disbelief. Then again, this also opens opportunities to explore, both in game/experience design and in business.
Goladus 19y ago
I haven't finished reading the article yet, but I suspect this problem is a little blown out of proportion. The designers most definitely did plan for this, and the game is built to be resiliant to gold farming. The player economy is huge and important, but nevertheless a marginal aspect of the game. You can accomplish virtually anything without using it. I suspect most of the millions of people who play Warcraft have fun and are not addicted to it.
- palish 19y ago
  Uhh, excuse me, but the designers didn't expect sweatshops to pop up and waste asian people's lives farming gold. That's what's sad about it, the waste of time. I'm not talking about the people having fun, I'm talking about the people having to work for next to nothing doing something they hate and wasting their time on it.
  - rms 19y ago
    The wage is comparable to other menial jobs in China. I personally would rather farm gold than work 12 hour days in a manufacturing plant. At least you can chain smoke and maybe even listen to music. What's sad is the hundreds of millions of Chinese people that would kill to have a standard of living as high as a city-dwelling gold farmer.
    - lupin_sansei 19y ago
      Well said. If there was better work than Gold Farming they would do it. I'm with Milton Friedman in thinking that Sweatshops are a good thing, in that they provide a job for people who've got no place else to work. Remove the sweatshops and they starve.
      - rms 19y ago
        The real problem is that we have an economic system where people would starve without sweat shops. Capitalism has this nasty little problem of all the wealth getting concentrated in the hands of the few and globalization exacerbates the problem. Unfortunately, no one's figured out a better way of distributing wealth.
        deleted 19y ago
        [deleted]
        pg 19y ago
        And the alternatives to capitalism have an even nastier problem: absolute instead of merely relative poverty. Incidentally, the Chinese wouldn't starve without sweatshops. They'd be peasant farmers. The reason they work in sweatshops is the same reason workers chose to work in the "satanic mills" of England in 1800: being a peasant farmer is a very hard life.
cmars232 19y ago
On that note, here's a hilarious link to a South Park episode which nicely illustrates your point. http://video.glath.com/view/southpark.Make_Love,_Not_Warcraft http://video.glath.com/view/southpark.Make_Love,_Not_Warcraft

by palish 19y ago

Tichy 19y ago

I think there are worse things in the world. After all, they don't really harm anybody, or do they? In WoW you can't really harm other players, I think.

euccastro 19y ago
You can harm someone indirectly through the in-game economy. Out-of-game virtual goods trading can kill meaning of progress in a game- whether there was much meaning to begin with is another debate. This economic link between worlds breaks the "magic circle" that separates game from real life. This can hurt or kill the experience of a game, depending on how much it relies on suspension of disbelief. Then again, this also opens opportunities to explore, both in game/experience design and in business.

Goladus 19y ago

I haven't finished reading the article yet, but I suspect this problem is a little blown out of proportion. The designers most definitely did plan for this, and the game is built to be resiliant to gold farming. The player economy is huge and important, but nevertheless a marginal aspect of the game. You can accomplish virtually anything without using it. I suspect most of the millions of people who play Warcraft have fun and are not addicted to it.

palish 19y ago
Uhh, excuse me, but the designers didn't expect sweatshops to pop up and waste asian people's lives farming gold. That's what's sad about it, the waste of time. I'm not talking about the people having fun, I'm talking about the people having to work for next to nothing doing something they hate and wasting their time on it.
- rms 19y ago
  The wage is comparable to other menial jobs in China. I personally would rather farm gold than work 12 hour days in a manufacturing plant. At least you can chain smoke and maybe even listen to music. What's sad is the hundreds of millions of Chinese people that would kill to have a standard of living as high as a city-dwelling gold farmer.
  - lupin_sansei 19y ago
    Well said. If there was better work than Gold Farming they would do it. I'm with Milton Friedman in thinking that Sweatshops are a good thing, in that they provide a job for people who've got no place else to work. Remove the sweatshops and they starve.
    - rms 19y ago
      The real problem is that we have an economic system where people would starve without sweat shops. Capitalism has this nasty little problem of all the wealth getting concentrated in the hands of the few and globalization exacerbates the problem. Unfortunately, no one's figured out a better way of distributing wealth.
      - deleted 19y ago
        [deleted]
      - pg 19y ago
        And the alternatives to capitalism have an even nastier problem: absolute instead of merely relative poverty. Incidentally, the Chinese wouldn't starve without sweatshops. They'd be peasant farmers. The reason they work in sweatshops is the same reason workers chose to work in the "satanic mills" of England in 1800: being a peasant farmer is a very hard life.

cmars232 19y ago

On that note, here's a hilarious link to a South Park episode which nicely illustrates your point. http://video.glath.com/view/southpark.Make_Love,_Not_Warcraft http://video.glath.com/view/southpark.Make_Love,_Not_Warcraft