By Julie Whitefeather

This last weekend I had the pleasure of being a guest on the “Shut Up We’re Talking” podcast. Among the subjects we spoke about was one of the articles I wrote for Virginworlds.com – an article called “Pushing Back” about the causes for pushing back the release date of new games. I have told the owners of both this site and Virginworlds that I would not duplicate work so I will pick a new subject; one called “We’ll always have Qeynos.”

Read On…

We’ll always have Qeynos…

by Julie Whitefeather

There are some games that have that certain “je ne sais qua”; EQ2 is one of those games. But the reason for me isn’t because of anything that the developers put into the game. The reason is the community itself. I once wrote an article called “The Endgame is About People”. I should have called the article, “The endgame SHOULD be about people” – too often it is not. Most often end game is about what gear we can squeeze out of the latest boss in the latest instance. If the end game, or even the game itself, is about gear or the latest experience it will soon get old and repetitive. Gear gets outdated by “mudflation” (think of it as inflation for the usefulness of objects) and even the experiences that developers bring us run dry in what inevitably becomes the race to the level cap. But what if the game becomes out sharing an experience, a conversation and a bit of virtual life with others? Then the game will never run out of content unless it runs out of people to share it with.

Oh no you don’t…

One of the discussions we had involved owning of virtual goods. In this case the discussion didn’t just revolve around real money trading (RMT) – in other words gold selling. RMT has been going on for some time and it is not likely to stop any time soon. In Korea gold sellers have even begun to unionize. But there are larger issues involving the sale of virtual goods that whether or not gold selling effects the virtual economies in which they take place. There is an old expression that says “give someone an inch and they will take a mile”. Nothing could be truer when it comes to government involvement in virtual worlds. This is an area in which the United States Government has begun to involve itself. There are many ostensible reasons, not the least of which is the prevention of terrorism (a connection I am still trying to understand). But it is only a matter of time before those discussions begin to range into how to take virtual goods. How would you react if you managed to get the “uber sword of uberness” on a raid and then got a tell that told you how much gold would be deducted from your account for tax? Yet this is an issue that was brought up in the podcast in one of the recent blogs we discussed. The possibility of having to check a box that means you understand your virtual gains are subject to taxes would only be a manner of time if players are allowed to own virtual goods. Beyond that the concept of government taxing virtual goods and the problems this would present developers is a Pandora’s box that no one should want to open, least of all the developers themselves. In fact a round table discussion held by none other than Dr. Richard Bartle at the last Indie MMO Game Developer’s conference discussed just that. What I found the most interesting factor that came out Dr. Bartle’s followup article on the matter was that there is indeed a point that can be reached – a point that is reached through ownership of virtual goods – where developers were no longer willing to make mmos.

Casually hardcore?

The last subject we discussed was casual versus hard core gaming. While the discussions ranged back and forth a bit about whether or not game content meant for the casual gamer lacked depth (and I feel it doesn’t have to) – that is not the most interesting result of our conversation. To me the most interesting aspect of the conversation was a definition of hardcore. When we speak of “hard core” gamers we often think of gamers who spend hours upon hours at a game console. But many gamers who take a casual approach to gaming already do this. I have been in raids where the biggest arguments were indeed over “phat lewt” but the arguments ran like this…

“No I don’t want it YOU take it”

“No you deserve it, YOU take it”

This was the same group of people who would spend raids having fun, playing music and word games while raiding. It was all great fun. But where the definition of hard core gaming comes in is not in the amount of TIME invested in playing but rather then amount of EMOTION invested in playing. Anyone who has ever played an MMO has met someone who takes raiding so seriously that they would sell there own mother into slavery just for a successful raid; these are the people to whom virtual goods mean more than real friendships. Think of how much worse things would be if these same people really were allowed to OWN those virtual goods. In the end, even if the game was still playable, the people who played it would no longer be someone you wanted to game with.

Sometimes we just don’t know how good we have it.

If you are interested in hearing the podcast on which I was a guest, go out to the Itunes and download the latest episode of Shut Up We’re Talking.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather