Farming and Grinding

A BBC news story about gold farming in MMORPGs (now worth a reported $3bn to countries like China and Vietnam) prompted a Facebook discussion. Is gold farming a slightly surreal indictment of our short-attention-span culture, that prompts many players to sub-contract out the parts of the game they don’t enjoy playing for themselves? Or is it indicative of a design flaw that forces players to spend time doing things that are no fun in order to get to the parts of the game that are?

I had it in mind to blog on this issue at greater length, but Darrell Hardy has beaten me to it. And check out the rest of his blog while you’re over there. The man talks a great deal of sense, and does so very readably.