The gaming industry is becoming more and more hacked... and I'm not talking about your traditional hacks, server side, information grabbing, server crashing hacks... I'm talking about your "cut and paste into the game folder" script kiddies.
I understand the whole "wee this is fun" crap... but there is a greater issue here, and much more at stake.
What does the end-game of hacks look like? Well let me take you there.
Firstly, its bad for the overall (already not so kind) internet morale. Hacks in an individual game make everyone in a bad mood killing the community around a game, and also very un-trusting of anyone with real skills. Its a downward spiral from there, and that is just within an individual game. As the hacks become worse, the players cant stand to watch their favorite game go down the toilet, so they leave, and those that do choose to stay just become hackers themselves because they can't stand to loose. At this point eveyone is hacking, and when new people find the game and try it out, they realize, this is just a cess pool of hacks, and then the game is soon offline. Dead.
For the overall gaming community, across all games, this apathy towards fair play seems to make people feel that its acceptable to hack other games because it went so well for whatever previous game they hacked, and the bad morale seeps into other games like a disease, until over time, all games are in such a bad shape that nothing is playable... ever. Bad community, no fair play, no fun.
I know that there is always the call for better anti hack software, but at the same time, there are always more people out to bust the code than those who make it. Its a matter of personal integrity rather than countering.
The only other endgame I see possible would be a complete loss of rights. EX: The government, or closed corperations being able to scan your whole hard drive before you start a game, or even while in a game, witch would be a complete loss of personal privacy.
Here is a website that has the same endgame goals as hacks:
http://www.mavav.org.
So, in closing, when you do see a hacker, tell them to stop working for the man, sign up for mavav, and go protest in person rather than protesting in a game. Hopefully that will alienate them to some extent.
I blame lax enforcement by game companies. They dropped the ball early on, and let an attitude of "hey, nothing's happening to cheaters" pervade. Seriously, it's trivial to spot the majority of common hacks. A little GM presence goes a long way to reassuring players that the company is serious about keeping the game enjoyable for all.
On the plus side, it makes it easy for me to evaluate whether a game is worth playing or not. I just count how many blatant ToS violations I see within the couple weeks trial period, and how many times the GMs make an appearance and deal with it. More often that not the company does nothing and lets the spammers flood the game. That makes it easy to walk away and take my wallet elsewhere. A simple googling for "private servers" is also a pretty good indicator whether a game will turn out to be another shit-filled cesspool or not.
Wanna know the sad thing? I've tried dozens of MMOs over the past few years, and to date I've spent exactly... $0. Atlantica Online nearly got me, it was one of the few games I quit not because hacks were rampant (I play REAL strategy games, and was disappointed by Atlantica's simplicity). Most other games didn't stand a chance. Just log in and walk over to the town center. 9 times out of 10 you'd be greeted with chat spam from gold farmers. That's another good sign the game's being run by incompetents.
Mon Aug 31 2009 11:49PMThat is true... how often do you actually see a GM in any game? Honestly I think I've seen possibly 2 after about 5 years of playing Rpgs online.
I'm sure many of the f2p companies wonder why their profit margins on the shop items are so low? At this point, if they where to advertise, they should advertise that they actually have gm's that patrol the game. And then stand up to that claim.
Tue Sep 01 2009 12:33AMMMORPG.com writes:
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