Guild Wars 2’s Cultural Revolution

Rowan Kaiser has written an additional editorial centered around Guild Wars 2, this time for GameRanx and focusing on the topic of the game’s economy and exploits. Here’s a snippet:

Guild Wars 2’s use of a capitalist auction house seems to place it within that liberal context. Almost every video game ever does as well: act within your own self-interest, and you’ll maximize your abilities within the game. Obviously this includes making money within the game, which allows you to improve your crafting or buy better items. Players who attempt to maximum the money that they can make within Guild Wars 2’s in-game systems are acting according to their own self-interest. Some of that maximizing may end up hurting the game’s economy in the long run, yes. In a liberal economic theory, this behavior would need to be regulated so that it couldn’t happen, yes. But ArenaNet is permanently banning players for exploits.

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The practical example given was the karma weapon vendor exploit from the first week of the game. Players who complete quests receive (karma,) which works as in-game coin, except it can only be used on vendors, and can’t be transferred to other players. Initially, powerful weapons what were supposed to cost 35,000 karma were available for only 21 karma points. Many players purchased a lot of them. Those who bought in the hundreds were permanently banned (although ArenaNet later allowed them to apologize and change that to a temporary ban).

While I can certainly see how this might be considered an exploit, I have issue with the permanent bans, and the language in the leniency post that implies that this is a one-time display but ArenaNet was still doing the right thing. First of all, the initial error was theirs, not the players’. Second, the players are behaving in normal game and capitalist fashion find advantages and utilize them. Third, ArenaNet had the ability to rectify this. They could easily delete all purchased weapons and refund the karma after correcting the price (alternately, they could roll back player accounts). Instead, ArenaNet found the players morally culpable, and took away their ability to play a game they had purchased.

ArenaNet and its supporters justify this by declaring that they’re acting in the long-term interests of the game’s economy. By banning players who (exploit) the game, they’re sending a message that they want an healthier community. (Moving forward, please make sure you that when you see an exploitable part of the game, you report it and do not attempt to benefit from it,) says the letter about the karma weapons. This is a form of social engineering, an attempt to convince every player in the game to be a better person and think about the betterment of the game world. A capitalist system is built around the idea that people are fundamentally self-serving, that they will exploit what they can, and the damage from the exploitation can be mitigated by laws and regulations. Guild Wars 2 is built around the idea that people are fundamentally good, so they will constantly be avoiding exploits, and that those players who don’t abide by that ideal should be removed.