News Flash! Escapist magazine Doesn't All Suck!

Ok so the head lines a little over the top but honestly, I can rarely read all the way through the fluff pieces that fill up the latest trendy industry web-zine blog-thingie. That's probably as much to do with the gawds awful layout that they use to give it that whole 'zine-thingie. Yuck.

Anyway, today they talk about gold farming:

Then there's the question of the game designers' intent. Having worked with designers, I know they hate farmers more than a lot of players do, because the farmers are finding and exploiting design weaknesses in products they've worked on for years. Some people would say, "Hey, tough luck. If your design is weak, it's your own fault."

Well, Darius pretty much nailed that one. He goes on to add:

Others would take the stance that people who agree to play a game are entering in an implicit contract to not only play by the rules, but to play reasonably within the designer's intent.

These "others" are the same ones who believe that there is some sort of code of conduct among the player community and not following this unwritten code constitutes cheating. Most of these codes come into play in PvP and VW's where game rules are largely up to the player. You can see where that all leads. Yeah, when someone else isn't playing the way you want them to play that's cheating... uh huh. Let's invite 7 million kids over to the house this weekend and tell them not to get into any trouble while we go to the movies. Here's a thought for an AGC talk: "If you don't want people doing RMT in your game, design it out of the economy."

I really can't get designers or players who have an issue with the concept that my best friend Kevin wants to give me some gold because I need to buy a mount and since I play a hell of a lot less than he does so he's got the scratch among his 7 alts.

Does it really make any difference if the above scenario is altered to a worse case and I don't know Kevin and his name isn't Kevin and I used my lunch money so he could buy lunch and pay his light bill? "Others" might think so.