Hardware Geeks

For Western gamers, when somebody says “MMORPG,” some of the titles that are most likely to spring to mind include Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, NCSoft’s City of Heroes or Square-Enix’s Final Fantasy XI.  What about on the other side of the world, though?  A vast number of Eastern MMORPGs have been pulling in a steady paycheck from a variety of customers, particularly throughout China and Korea.  These games can sport a radically different underlying philosophy from their Western counterparts, and thanks to an article on Danwei, we are allowed a glimpse of what an MMORPG can become when it sanctions and even engages in the very practices that Western MMORPGs are trying very hard to stamp out. It’s a bit of a long read and the English isn’t tip-top, but it’s very interesting and easy to skim, so I recommend you take a few minutes to peruse it.  (Note: RMB refers to the national Chinese currency, not to be confused with RMT, which stands for Real-Money Trading in MMORPGs)

The article is too long to neatly summarize, but it basically covers the experiences of a young Chinese woman named Lu Yang with the online game ZT Online, published by Chinese company Giant Interactive Games.  In all of the Western games I mentioned earlier, players are encouraged to spend time to level their characters and teamwork is mandatory to achieve the best kinds of equipment in the most difficult dungeons.  A certain level of fairness and civility is also expected from players, as activities such as “ganking” (repeatedly wiping out helpless player characters) are generally frowned upon in the community.  Finally, games like WoW and FFXI are particularly touchy about RMT, or the practice of using real money to buy in-game assets such as equipment or in-game currency.  ZT Online is different.  Very different.

In ZT Online, your character’s power is not determined by how much time you spend grinding and leveling, but rather by how much real money you are willing to invest in the game.  The more money you invest, the higher your level and more powerful your equipment.  As such, players are encouraged to go ahead and buy whatever they need to become as close to gods as possible in the game, and Giant Interactive not only welcomes the practice of RMT, but is actively participating in it as such.  RMT outside the system is still frowned upon, though, as that is money going to other people rather than to the developer and publisher.  As such, ZT Online still has some systems in place similar to those in Western MMORPGs that lock equipment to a character once it is acquired, preventing sale or trade.  Animosity between players is promoted and encouraged, as opposed to teamwork, and players are rewarded for killing as many enemies as possible throughout their playing stints.  Equipment, money, prestige and more are all awarded based on how much pain and suffering you inflict on your fellow players both personally and through your minions (players who haven’t paid quite as much as you).  Hostility, ruthlessness, and greed are all rewarded over any type of honorable behavior.  Lu Yang initially starts out buying as much as she can to create a powerful character, but just as with many other MMORPG’s, she eventually grew tired of the grind, one that was not only sucking her time as most MMORPGs tend to do, but was also directly affecting her pocketbook far more heavily than standard subscription fees would.  As a monarch of one of the game’s ten kingdoms, she attempted to both organize more peaceful, cooperative activities and to speak out against the game’s profiteering ways.  In response, her character was “jailed” in-game so that other characters in the prisons could repeatedly gank her for “honor” and “prestige.”

I feel like this article almost reads like Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.  I’m not the kind of person who will decry a game like GTA IV because I think it will lead to cop-killing, reckless driving, and misogyny.  Certainly, the way a person plays a game reflects more on them than the content available within the game.  But in a game like GTA IV, the player is still discouraged from acting in irresponsible and psychopathic ways - the police and armed forces are there to punish you if you step over the line, and without cheating it’s nearly impossible to win against their combined forces.  In a game like ZT Online, there are no boundaries and the devil’s advocate is built into the game.  Hopefully, this is not the business model that many companies will choose to pursue in the future.  Granted, it is a lucrative way of running a game.  According to the article, last year (2007),

The Company had successfully listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and its third-quarter operating income was 405.2 million yuan, with a profit of 290.2 million. This represented an astonishing 164% and 152% climb over the same period the previous year. The company had a book value of 6.8 billion RMB.

For those without a calculator handy, that means that the company’s third-quarter operating income was roughly $580 million, with a profit of $415 million.  In the face of numbers like that, how long will it be before Western developers being considering systems that, if not so blatant, still prioritize the glories of money and power over the ability to just have a good time?

Please share your thoughts with us in the comments section.  Thanks to Penny Arcade for the original link.