Anda's game

As I posted on prompt criticality, Cory Doctorow has written "Anda's Game", a short story on Salon about MMOs, IP rights, play, and the power of the people. It is a science fiction story, although it seemed to match what Constance Steinkuehler talked about at State of Play 2, where armed mobs in Lineage 2 bring vigilante justice down on the farmers. It's also a good, quick read and IMHO gets a lot right. It's CC licensed, a first for Salon, although you have to click through Salon's annoying "read this advert to read our content" but if that 10 seconds keeps Salon alive, so be it.

Comments

[Raph]

1.

Yay! He showed me a draft of this ages ago, and I have an autographed copy tacked up in my office. Now I can actually point people to read it. :)

[Jamie Hale]

2.

A very pleasant distraction on a Monday afternoon. Thanks!

J

[dave]

3.

Very interesting. What happens when your game design allows people to exploit children to make money? Have you inadvertantly created a slave farm, or a way to feed children in third world countries?

I mean, now that this idea - using labor to farm money out of MMOG's - is out, wouldn't designing an ebay-resistent game just be denying food to starving children?

I think MMOG's are getting closer and closer to being recognized as a semi-legitimate workplace. The taxman cometh?

In all honesty, I believe the moral path would be to make these games ebay-resistent, otherwise it's just appeasement.

[Andrew Burton]

4.

> In all honesty, I believe the moral path would be to
> make these games ebay-resistent, otherwise it's just
> appeasement.

What worries me about that statement is Doctorow's mentioning of bots. I've been thinking more-and-more about what could be done in Second Life and City of Heroes if they provided as friendly an API as something like iTunes does.

I'd hate to think that future "worlds" would lock themselves (their code and access) down tighter in reactionary fear that a bot could end up outsourcing a starving child.

[dave]

5.

That's funny because this morning I was thinking that allowing bots instead of suppressing them would be a way to steer farmers away from outsourcing children. I think that's in the story too, as a reason why it was happening, that is, a crackdown on bots led them to use slave labor which was less predictable than bots.

Overall, the piece seemed very much like how the illegal drug manufacturing trade operates.

[Andrew Burton]

6.

That's funny because this morning I was thinking that allowing bots instead of suppressing them would be a way to steer farmers away from outsourcing children.

That's the way I would look at it, but Doctorow kind of leaves it open-ended, with the hope that the children could unionize. It still concerns me that some developers would look at the first part of "Anda's Game" as a rough patch to go through before that job market was regulated... Hopefully, you're right; I just don't put much faith in the common sense of game developers. ;) *ducks*

Overall, the piece seemed very much like how the illegal drug manufacturing trade operates.

Or Kathy Lee Gifford's bluejeans factories.

[F. Randall Farmer]

7.

Ego check! What are we thinking?

Dave says "I mean, now that this idea - using labor to farm money out of MMOG's - is out, wouldn't designing an ebay-resistent game just be denying food to starving children?"

You're kidding, right? (I will assume you aren't.)

I originally considered an rebuttal based on an ethical/economic-related argument explaining opportunity costs and how directly-supporting the starving kids would be orders of magnitude efficient, but then I realized that this reply didn't even need to reach to that lofty of an abstract argument.

An appeal to facts is so much better.

Let us remember what is fiction and what is real.

Do we want to facilitate all of the real, documented, effects of virtual item farming on the off chance some poor kid will get hardware, software, and connectivity in the deep Sahara?

Some real data -

1) Kids grades in school are going down in Korea, directly correlated with online gameplay (reported by Whang at SOP II.)

2) Kids are farming to support their compulsive (if not addictive) gaming habits.

3) Game operators (and sometimes players) dealing with (at least partially) unwanted farmers, potentially decreasing product market penetration. [Here's a question - do we know how many players are turned AWAY by rampant farming? Do we know how much subscription revenue is lost to a developer from external market trading?]

4) Organized farming collectives (people and bots) being facilitated by external market speculators. These services are a likely target for RL organized crime syndicates.

---

The idea that virtual farming helps the uneducated, 3rd world, starving kids is pure unmitigated bunk. That's like saying a state lottery is good for education. Those desperate for rationalization may say the words, but they ring hollow. You can't just consider the upside without considering the costs.

Using this reasoning, increasing the difficulty of treadmills would, by extension, be a Good Work for Mankind.

After a second thought, I'm sure you were joking.

[dave]

8.

If you've got a group of people making a meager amount, but enough to eat, off of farming games, and then the designers take that option away - you've, in a very real sense, taken food out of their mouths.

So in the short term, it sucks for them, but it's the right thing to do in the long term for the reasons you mentioned.

If the goal is to save little girls from becoming slave labor in 3rd world countries, then your MMOG ought to either be ebay-resistant, tolerate bots, or mitigate the rewards of doing a task repeatedly in a short period of time.

And yes, the part you quoted was meant to be bait. Modest Proposal/Devil's Advocate stuff. ;)

[Constance Steinkuehler]

9.

Small reality check: The notion of 'sweatshops' of virtual currency farmers in China is a bit of a folk tale (read: mitigates our hate of them if we think they are poor saps tethered to a computer and starved for their life). After talking to the folks who *do* virtual currency trade including adena from Lineage II and, in fact, run the offices where this goes on, it turns out their working conditions are pretty sweet, even by my American standards. They work hours similar to other jobs in China but are fed and given benefits above and beyond the average less-skilled workforce.

Wanna worry about the overworked and/or starving poor? Worry about graduate students and game designers.