Mummorpiggers

As I've mentioned before, I'm a gamer in pretty grand fashion. However, there's one genre I've never found anything redeeming in. Massively multiplayer online games. My feelings about MMOs have meandered back and forth between snide ambivalence and outright disgust. Now, part of that is just a general distaste for people. I tend to play games largely to escape society and by their nature MMOs force the players to interact, not just with people they don't know but with the sort of people who propagate in an online environment. Unfortunately some of these people are trolls, people who take advantage of the anonymity Brian tapped on previously. Now, not all of the people who play these games are this caliber of virulent doucheweed but enough of them are to ruin the experience.

If it were just that I might keep at it. I might keep working to find a group or game that made the genre salvageable. Really the worst part about these games to me is the fact that they are intrinsically exploitative. All games are really; hell the standard structure of modern human interaction is largely based on principles of exploitation. I just find MMOs to be a sick, insidious herald of the worst abuses of my community. Even if we're only discussing free to play games, a necessary aspect of the field is the generation of a low grade addiction. The game seeks to generate the most sense of reward possible, make the gamer feel accomplished without having the reward effect the game much. Gotta keep the effect down so they don't run out of content too fast.

When they do start running low on content they tend to just tack on some endgame content (which has been known to make things people spent months working on obsolete). When the trickle of new players/old players trying something new start complaining about how the best parts of the game (see new content) are all endgame, after all the ugly grind, they streamline the grind so much that its worthless to try and develop the skill set. Abuse picks up as a whole group of new players don't have any idea how to play "right". The more new content they need the less work tends to get spent being something more than just addicting until the whole endeavor just turns into keeping players craving. Kill the story, kill the joy, just keep the junkies twitching. And of course it works, from a market standpoint. Massive returns, high sales, great for business but bad for the community. The tactic spreads due to success and more and more companies throw more money at the shallow, addicting aspects of game play. Our joyous escape more and more loses its art and picks up more business. History doesn't have much good to say about that things that go down that route.

-Eshi