CS5038 The Electronic Society

1
CS5038 The Electronic Society

• Lecture Online Games
• Lecture Outline
• What are Virtual Worlds and MMOGs
• How many people are playing
• Types of Games mainly Fantasy Genre
• Example World of Warcraft (WoW)
• Where do players come from?
• Problems with private servers
• The In-Game Economy
• Linking to the real economy how to make real
  money
• Example Second Life
• Cheating in Games, and company responses
• Gold Farming
• Unresolved legal issues
• Criticisms of online games addiction problems
• Non-Game virtual world uses

2
What are Virtual Worlds and MMOGs?

• A virtual world are computer-simulated
  environments, typically quite similar to the
  real world (3D with realistic physical laws and
  societies),
• Users interact in the world via avatars.
• Persistence The world should be active and
  available 24/7Events should happen even if a
  user is not connectedPlots continue to
  unfold(in reality there will have to be some
  downtime for maintenance)
• Primary use is games, but also used for education
  
• MMOGMassively Multiplayer Online GameHundreds
  of thousands / Millions of people interacting via
  avatarsCommunicating by text or VOIP
• Note This phenomenon is quite new, and different
  to eCommerce, eHealth, eGovernment etc. It is
  more similar to the beginning of cinema or
  television.

3
How many people are playing?

• Charts from MMOGCHART.COM

4
How many people are playing?

• Note MapleStory said to have gt50 million players
  in all of its versions

5
Types of Games

• Fantasy Genre Dominant (94)Remainder include
  Sci-Fi, Superhero, combat, social
• Business Model Typically pay for client software
  for a one-time fee pay a monthly subscription
  to play
• ?? 30 billion industry
• Typical Features
• Character development increasing abilities
• Economy currency and trade of items (e.g.
  weapons / armor)
• Guilds or clans organisations of players
• Game Moderators supervise the world

6
Market Share June 2006
7
Example World of Warcraft (WoW)

• (Currently most popular MMOG)
• Currently gt50 of overall market
• gt11.5M subscribers (November 2009)
• 4M China (2006)
• 2M North America (2006)
• 1M Europe (2006)
• Initial player cost US20
• Daily play cost US0.50
• Different pricing model in China CD key to
  access game
• Piracy less of a problem due to need to connect
  to servers
• Reason for major success compared to earlier US
  games

8
Where do Players come from?

• Extremely popular in Asia
• South Korea 38 play online games (pop.50M),
• Advanced Broadband infrastructure
• More people play the MMORPG Lineage than watch TV
• Well-funded professional video gaming leagues
• TV channels devoted to games
• China
• 20M MMOG players
• Majority of World of Warcraft players based in
  China
• Also Japan, Taiwan
• Growing popularity in North America and Europe

9
Private Servers

• Run by volunteers -gt free
• Private servers -gt less popular in west than the
  official servers
• In Asian countries private servers popular
• High fees for official servers
• 100MB/s fiber optic internet connections, US30
  a month
• Costs of running a server in China very low
• Damage commercial MMOG development
• Many gamers feel the companies make game progress
  slowly to make more money
• Private servers allow faster progression

10
Virtual Economies

• In-Game Economy
• Players can specialise, gaining valuable skills
  which others will pay for
• Leads to competitive advantage division of
  labour
• Commerce magic weapons, houses, goods and
  services can be bought and sold in game-currency
• Need for property rights, and protection against
  crime
• Second Life recognises IP rights for assets
  created in the world
• Game economy mirrors many aspects of real
  economies
• For example problems with inflation

11
Virtual Economies

• Link to Real Economy
• Users willing to spend real time and money for
  virtual resources
• Magic weapons, real estate, game-currency and
  characters are bought and sold on auction
  exchanges for real money (e.g. eBay)
• http//www.gameusd.com/ lists virtual exchange
  rates
• Examples
• Island in Project Entropia sold for U.S. 26,500
• Virtual space station for U.S. 100,000
• Level 60 EverQuest characters sell for up to
  5,000
• Criticisms
• Many regard trading game items for real money as
  unethical
• Usually violates terms of EULA (end-user license
  agreement)
• Blizzard (WoW) has banned it (but hard to
  enforce)
• April 2006 Blizzard banned gt5,400 players and
  suspended 10,700 (for farming, often using bots)
• Sony launched Sony Station Exchange for
  EverQuest to legally buysell

12
Virtual Economies

• Link to Real Economy
• Valuations of secondary market (real money trade
  of virtual commodities)
• 400m in 2004
• 20m in real-world dollars made by dealers in
  virtual currency and goods (2004 figure)
  Professor Edward Castronova http//pc.gamezone.com
  /news/01_05_04_10_11PM.htm
• Somewhere between 1 Billion USD to 3 Billion
  USD in 2006.
• Some virtual countries wealthier than real ones
  (higher GNP per person)
• See BBC article Virtual kingdom richer than
  Bulgaria
• New trends
• Companies beginning to use Second Life as a means
  of marketing
• Politicians campaigning there
• Mark Warner (former governor of Virginia
  possible Democratic candidate for president in
  2008)
• First politician to give an interview in Second
  Life.

13
Virtual Economies

• Some people have made the buying and selling of
  virtual property their full-time jobs.
• Case Julian Dibbell (http//news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/t
  echnology/3135247.stm)
• Buys and sells virtual cash, weapons, armour,
  homes and other artefacts from the Ultima Online
  game
• Game developer Origin does not prohibit activity
• Game has well established economy (less
  inflationary problems)
• Real world transactions take place on eBay or
  Tradespot
• Producers of economy are the teenage kids
• Have a lot of time but no money
• Do the hard work to produce items to be bought
  and sold
• Consumers are rich who do not want to invest time
• Much money to be made from accounts of long time
  players
• Selling the items individually can generate large
  profit
• Can make profit of 1,000 (US) per week
• Some players making gt100,000 annually
• Risky business without real-world laws to protect
  virtual property

14
Virtual Economies Second Life

• Second Life gives property rights to players
• Allows players to create new objects from
  primitives
• Allows them to decide if these may be copied,
  modified or transferred
• Residents actively trade their creations
• 230,000 items are bought and sold every month
• In-world currency Linden dollars are exchangeable
  for hard currency
• Total value 60M (in real dollars)
• 7,000 profitable businesses
• Avatars supplement or make their living from
  their in-world creativity
• Top ten in-world entrepreneurs averaging 200,000
  a year
• Example of Web 2.0 online collaboration and
  sharing
• Business Model virtual property company
• Residents lease property 20 per virtual acre
  per month
• 25,000 residents, or about 3 or the population,
  lease property
• Monthly revenues of 1m
• Companies taking notice
• Toyota is selling virtual cars
• Hopes for viral advertising

15
Cheating in Games

• Botting
• External program simulates player actions for
  common tasks
• Usually prohibited and is a bannable offense
• Rarely enforced
• Duping
• Exploit a bug in the game software to duplicate
  valuable items
• Very damaging to virtual economy
• Sharing
• Multiple people share an online game character
• Scams against new players
• Uneven trades or bad-faith dealing
• Players misrepresent value of goods or substitute
  lookalike worthless items

16
Cheating in Games

• Companies Responses
• May take different viewpoints
• Ignore cheating
• Ban it (Blizzard)
• If a company does not take cheating seriously,
  game may lose players
• Cheats also bring subscription money
• Technical responses tradeoff Efficiency versus
  security
• More code on server slower but more secure
• Example wall hacks

17
Gold Farming

• Gold Farmer a player who farms items for the
  sole purpose of sale to other players via an
  out-of-game venue (e.g. eBay)
• Most MMOGs include terms of service that forbid
  this
• China dominant in market, but also in Eastern
  Europe, Mexico, Philippines
• 100,000 people in China employed as gold
  farmers (December 2005)
• Represents about 0.4 of all online gamers in
  China
• Typically work 12 hour shifts, sometimes up to 18
  hour shifts.
• When I entered a gold farm for the first time, I
  was shocked by the positive spirit there, the
  farmers are passionate about what they do, and
  there is indeed a comraderie between them ... I
  do see suffering and exploitation too, but in
  that place suffering is mixed with play and
  exploitation is embodied in a gang-like
  brotherhood and hierarchy. When I talked with the
  farmers, they rarely complained about their
  working condition, they only complained about
  their life in the game world. Ge Jin, a PhD
  student from UCSD
• http//uk.youtube.com/watch?vKH1LGdjZUKQ

18
Gold Farming

• Ethical?
• Some players feel that this is unfair and
  "spoils" the game
• Others believe they should be allowed to buy
  items if they do not wish to spend the time to
  earn them
• Effect on Virtual economy
• Inflation (introduces more money)
• Skews the cost of a variety of game items
• increasing supply of those easy to acquire items
• increasing demand for the more difficult items
• Gold farmers make the game more difficult for
  players to "grind" their way to in-game wealth
• Company responses
• Usually banned
• Significant manpower required to perform
  investigations
• Players need to spend large portions of their
  time on repetitive actions or "farming anyway -
  difficult to distinguish farmers for reselling
• Termination of a compliant user account -gt very
  bad publicity
• Termination of a gold farmers account -gt very
  little benefit

19
Virtual Crime

• Virtual gangs and mafia have emerged in South
  Korea
• Powerful players mug and steal from weaker ones
• Demand that beginners give them virtual money for
  their protection
• Case Chinese Exchange Student (in Japan)
• Mugged players in Lineage II
• Used software "bots" to beat up and rob
  characters
• Stolen virtual possessions sold for real cash
• Arrested by police in Kagawa prefecture, southern
  Japan
• Case Evangeline (The Sims Online)
• 17-year old boy going by the in-game name
  "Evangeline
• Built a cyber-brothel customers would pay
  sim-money for cybersex
• His account was cancelled but no legal action

20
Virtual Crime

• Case Li Hongchen (Beijing) sued Artic Ice
  Technology
• Hacker broke into game and stole his biological
  weapons.
• Court ruled that weapons had indeed been his
  property
• He had invested time and money in acquiring them
• Arctic Ice was forced to pay damages and recreate
  all weapons lost
• Case Qiu Chengwei (Shanghai) killed Zhu Caoyuan
• Qiu obtained weapon in game and lent it to Zhu
• Zhu sold weapon for 7,200 yuan (real money)
• Qiu went to the police to report the theft
• Police said weapon was not real property
  protected by law
• Zhu promised to pay, but Qiu lost patience and
  attacked Zhu at his home

21
Virtual Crime and Real Police
Example from South Korea Some countries like
South Korea have special police investigation
units for "virtual crimes 40,000 cyber crimes
reported in the first six months of 2003 22,000
related to online gaming
22
Unresolved Legal Issues

• Clicking I agree on an end-user license
  agreement (EULA)
• Could mean property rights are lost
• Game and contents remain the intellectual
  property of company
• Attorney Greg Lastowka (US) In the US, I think
  that youd have a hard time making a case in
  court for the loss of virtual property because of
  license agreements.
• Power seems to be in the hands of game companies
• Case Peter Ludlow, Sim citizen Professor at
  University of Michigan
• Started a newspaper, The Alphaville Herald
• Documented crime and prostitution in Alphaville,
  largest Sims city.
• Ludlow promptly kicked off the game(continues to
  write outside of game)
• Case Earth and Beyond (Electronic Arts) shut
  down September 2004
• One player had just bought an avatar for 3,000
• Players sometimes organise uprisings or boycotts
  to reclaim their rights

23
Virtual Crime

• Stealing Players Accounts
• Most common technique is via trojans which steal
  account details
• Trojan is disguised as a program to give a
  character special powers (e.g. invisibility)
• Trojan distributed through games' chat rooms or
  by e-mail.
• Trojan secretly collects users login and
  password information
• Information sent back to the hacker
• Hackers then sell the virtual items (gold or
  weapons), for real world cash
• Player accounts can be worth up to 10,000
• Player accounts also stolen by in-game
  nontechnical attacks
• Pose as a game administrator (staff of game
  company)
• Ask naïve player for account details
• Alternatively offer hints on cheats or offer
  membership of gang

24
Virtual Crime
Stealing Players Accounts Also done via hacking
company servers Case September 2006 Hackers
break into database of "Second Life" Accessed
650,000 player accounts Information included real
life names and contact information, and game
passwords, credit card information was
encrypted Developer asked players to change their
log-ins "I reported that my SL account had been
hacked on Sunday. Of course, the only reporting
that could be done was a message to Customer
Support and Live Help as the individual was
selling off my first land and deleting my
inventory ... I know of two other accounts that
were hacked ..."
25
Virtual Crime

• Identity Theft
• 250,000 characters created in Lineage (Korean)
  using stolen identities
• Characters likely put to work in gold farming in
  China(Korean ID number required to sign up to
  play Lineage in Korea )
• Most Ids stolen from non-players
• Used to sign up without their knowledge

26
Game Criticisms

• Addiction
• June 2005, it was reported that a child had died
  due to neglect by her World of Warcraft-addicted
  parents
• A player has also died from playing non-stop
  without eating or sleeping
• August 2005, China introduced restrictions on how
  many hours gamers can play

27
Virtual Worlds non-game uses

• Managing a city or a country
• Form support groups for cancer survivors
• Rehearse responses to earthquakes and terrorist
  attacks
• Build Buddhist retreats and meditate.
• Second Life examples
• Peter Yellowlees, psychiatry professor
• Leases a virtual island in Second Life for 300 a
  month
• Simulates schizophrenic hallucinations
• Understand schizophrenia by visiting virtual
  island
• Therapists help autistic children
• Also for long-distance learning.

28
Summary

• What are Virtual Worlds and MMOGs
• How many people are playing
• Types of Games mainly Fantasy Genre
• Example World of Warcraft (WoW)
• Where do players come from?
• Problems with private servers
• The In-Game Economy
• Linking to the real economy how to make real
  money
• Example Second Life
• Cheating in Games, and company responses
• Gold Farming
• Unresolved legal issues
• Criticisms of online games addiction problems
• Non-Game virtual world uses