TruthScape.com  9  The Truth About RuneScape's Community and Its Impact on Children       9  Specific Dangers and Behavioral Concerns in the RuneScape Community

Even Worse Lessons - Player-Versus-Player Combat and The Wilderness Game Addiction

Like most online games, RuneScape has its own economy, with players exchanging goods and sometimes services for gold. Having a certain amount of money is very beneficial in RuneScape, but just as in the real world, many RuneScape players get obsessed with wealth, viewing it as an end unto itself. They spend countless hours earning millions and millions of gold pieces, for the sole purpose of bragging to others about being rich.

This situation is exacerbated by a historical problem that Jagex has not properly resolved. In the early days of RuneScape, Jagex would give out special holiday items, like Christmas party hats, Halloween pumpkins and Easter eggs, for fun. At first, these items were just for fun and nobody took them seriously. However, they were tradable, and since only the early players got them, they were in short supply. As the game grew, newer players wanted these coveted rares as well, so many players started selling them for millions in gold.

Jagex was unhappy about this—since the items were supposed to be for fun, not a way to get rich—so they discontinued the items and pledged never to make tradable holiday items again. However, they never removed the existing rare items from the game. Since more players and more money come into the game every day, the price of these items skyrocketed. One of the items, called a Christmas cracker, is now worth almost a billion gold pieces!

Pursuit of these items has led to incredible levels of greed and envy in the game. Many players aren't on RuneScape to raise skill levels or do quests or socialize: they are there to get a party hat or other “rare” to show off their “wealth”. Pursuit of money as its own end is a bad way to play a game—just as it a bad way to live in the real world—so this is another bad behavior that kids are learning.

Because these items are rare, their prices are always going up, presenting a moving target that some kids can never achieve; this fuels the money obsession and leads to a lot of frustration. Consider that to get a billion gold requires about 4,000 hours of earning money at the maximum rate that even most experienced players are capable of. That's the equivalent of two full years at a full-time job!

Some players can't make money fast enough actually playing the game, so they turn to merchanting, which is the RuneScape term for buying and selling items to try to make a profit. (You can see some high-end item merchants in Figure 84.) Merchanting itself is not all bad—though many merchants tend to be very dishonest—but it’s really sad when kids spend all their time standing around trading rather than playing the game. Even worse, many young players get exasperated trying to earn the money they “need” for one of these rares, and end up quitting the game—or more often, resorting to scamming or cheating.

Why does Jagex not get rid of these destructive items and all the problems they cause? They aren't saying.

Even Worse Lessons - Player-Versus-Player Combat and The Wilderness Game Addiction