Several alert readers mailed me about the articles in the New York Times and Forbes about North Korea's use of gold-farming bots to obtain hard currency. The North Koreans have a difficult time getting cash because of the sanctions they've earned. So, they code up some bots who can go into huge South Korean games like Lineage and farm for virtual gold there. The North Koreans then sell the virtual gold on South Korea's gigantic virtual currency exchange market for Won.
Why does this make sense? Well, consider the alternative: Yen Farming. Send laborers to Tokyo, have them farm Yen, trade the Yen for Won, then send the Won home. But laborers are people. People don't farm as hard as bots. Moreover, they don't follow orders like bots do. The laborers might just keep the money and stay in Japan. Basically, when it comes to gold farming, bots are better than slaves.
The use of botting in games is not new, but the intervention of a government provides a certain impetus. Governments can command and direct large-scale activity, enhancing the effects of botting and gold farming beyond mere nuisance.
In a way, it's also a fun moment. The designers make games that ostensibly have a clear line between human players and the AI. The designer's AI exists to give the players a good time. But here we have a large outside actor designing new AI for the game world. The new AI manifests as "player"-characters. This fudges the line between PC and NPC. It points to a future in which AI and human intelligence mingle and socialize together. What if you fell in love with a charming young avatar only to find out she is a fraud-bot?
O, the normative, political, and regulatory issues! My my. And the design issues. Any generally-tradable currency will be farmed, and farming drives the value of the currency down to the marginal cost of farming it. It was already low, with the human gold farmers. Now it goes lower, with the bots. Maybe this means you can't use currency to gate content. Well, you can use currency, but it just can't be generally traded between the players. Or, your world could have social norms against "buying your way forward," which would keep the value of currency high. Its hard to squelch the demand for farmed gold, but it can be done. I would favor a player-run judicial system that boots people for not playing by the rules, whatever they may be. This is how board games work, right? You don't play with people who ignore the rules.
"I would favor a player-run judicial system that boots people for not playing by the rules, whatever they may be."
Very risky. The type of people you would least want to be in control are the most likely to want to obtain office. Case in point, the leader of Eve's player council the CSM is a Goon, a group notorious for disrupting games.
Posted by: Stabs | Aug 16, 2011 at 17:00
The Goons? Yea they are famous of ruining MMOs where ever they go.
Posted by: Rits | Aug 16, 2011 at 22:58
Happy to see the issue has graduated from equivalence to steroids in the MLB to something more serious like Global Thermal Nuclear War.
In board games we have house rules. We can not seem to be able to enjoy AAA video game art and have house rules at the same time. So honorable people are stuck in Luddite-Slave-World or they utilize Avatar Right #1: QQ mor nub. It wasn't always like this. Something about video game companies figuring they are providing a service or some such nonsense.
Not sure it would matter though, as human beings no longer assemble cars IRL. Pandora's box and all that.
This is like Rick Perry's epicenter of jobs. Half those jobs created by treasonous printing of money, the other half are wage slave servants brought in to service the front half due to a lack of bartender bots.
Posted by: robusticus | Aug 17, 2011 at 10:15
Do they? I think they have that reputation but wonder if it is deserved or self-created.
Posted by: Nick LaLone | Aug 20, 2011 at 00:55
one of the stories i heard was that they create guilds in a new game using names of other popular pro guilds who migrate from games to games. when those guilds arrive they'd not be able to use their own guild name, then the Goons would ask them to pay a certain amount if they want the name back.
other stories regarding RMT, gold dupe, or something on those lines. i think they also charge new recruits for membership fees and them kick them out.
Posted by: Rits | Aug 21, 2011 at 21:44
Ok, the subject of Goons in Eve is a major diversion from the posted topic, but...
- The Goon currently elected to the head of the CSM is The Mitanni...in RL, a respectable DC lawyer. In Eve he's the best known as having been the Goon spy-master responsible for orchestrating the downfall of the Band of Brother alliance when one of BoB's directors defected to the goon side. On the whole, he's a pretty dang smart guy.
- He and the Goons that do get elected to the CSM (and yes, the Goons bloc-vote and there's one or two per term that get on) have so far conducted themselves rather well individually.
- Because of the nature of Eve and the tricks the game makes legitimate, Eve's Goons are a legitimate force. Yeah their recruitment scam racket is well known (you have to pay to join the SA boards or be sponsored by a established Goon to get in for real)...in a game where multi-billion ISK heists make headlines and multi-million scams and thefts fly under the radar.
- Eve's Goons alternate between doing stuff that's genuinely awesome, stuff that's darned annoying (being in the same system with a Goon fleet = lots of inane chat spam) and stuff that is downright low and dirty even for Eve (one incident involving a player's RL photo comes to mind).
Posted by: Elle Pollack | Aug 22, 2011 at 14:07
Interesting article, I thought the vast majority of North Koreans were starving and didn't have the luxury of technology. Guess I was wrong.
Posted by: Alex | Aug 27, 2011 at 13:43