OT: Making money by playing games

Pandiani · Jan 20, 2008

Hello everyone,

I have found one interesting article about guy who used to earn money by automating playing games. Here's full story: http://spectrum.ieee.org/dec07/5719

I was totaly unaware of this, I didn't know that there are companies that trade virtual goods (money) for real money and vice versa? I know there are people whose passion is to play online games and wining and earning in virtual world. But the fact that there are people who, for example don't have enough time to play a lot and then use money and credit cards to buy "virtual goods" in games is totally unbelievable to me. Did you know of this before?

Where this world is going to?

surferb · Jan 20, 2008

That's crazy! I felt like I spent too much time playing Diablo in college. I had items that could sell for good money on ebay, but I never did that. Games like Everquest and World of Warcraft take it to a whole new level. My roommate's main Everquest character, and he had others, logged enough time that he could have made about $30k at minimum wage in a span of about a year and a half. Granted much of that time was at night, but he wished he had more time to spend. Many have been fired, ruined marriages, etc. Oh gosh...

And then there's Second Life, a virtual world with a real economy. I don't think there's any objective, but real companies host meetings there, advertise, etc. A great place to pick up chicks...

Pandiani said:
Hello everyone,

I have found one interesting article about guy who used to earn money by automating playing games. Here's full story: http://spectrum.ieee.org/dec07/5719

I was totaly unaware of this, I didn't know that there are companies that trade virtual goods (money) for real money and vice versa? I know there are people whose passion is to play online games and wining and earning in virtual world. But the fact that there are people who, for example don't have enough time to play a lot and then use money and credit cards to buy "virtual goods" in games is totally unbelievable to me. Did you know of this before?

Where this world is going to?

Peter Nachtwey · Jan 20, 2008

This has been going on for a long time

Pandiani said:
I was totaly unaware of this

This has been going on since the first games were on the Internet. Back in the early 90's I was aware of a AOL game called Never Winter Nights.

I also knew the game could be hacked. A friend of mine with two monitors on a computer could play the game on one monitor and see, in a debugger, which memory locations were changing in the other monitor. Eventually he could add or subtract items in the database. Then the game company got smarter are started using something like check sum so make sure the database was secure and the hacking race was on.

Usually it is the other players that are willing to buy gold, armor, experience points or even fully developed characters.

In China there are small companies of game players that just kill the same monster over and over again. If many players act as a team and learn the tricks then the monster can be killed in short order and the rewards are then sold. I wonder if the games companies adjust the rewards if a monster is killed too many times.

South Korea is another place where they take gaming very seriously. They have tournaments there with cash prizes. Some are professional game players. So surferb, you are in South Korea now. You should know about this.

Check this out.
http://www.thecgs.com/CGS_Blizzard_Dell_Unite_for_WoW_Revival
It looks like there are some here that also play for money.

Pandiani, I think your chances at becoming very good at control are much better than becoming a professional game player. You need a very fast connection to play games on the internet.

surferb · Jan 20, 2008

Pete - local games can be "hacked" easily with a debugger. People even write programmes that make this easy for you. The difference with online games is that they keep a central database and keep track of items/gold. I'm sure they use hashes/encryption/etc to augment the situation.

It sounds more like this guy wrote a program that acted more or less like a user - that is, it interfaced with the virtual world. This is like a Diablo app that I had that would pick up items right when they appeared on the screen, before anyone else could get to them - but more sophisticated (50k lines of code).

Korea's a trip - I wandered into an empty "gaming hall" on the 9th story of a mall. It was huge. They had a schedule posted. You're right, it's a spectator sport here and professionals are like athletes.

Peter Nachtwey said:
This has been going on since the first games were on the Internet. Back in the early 90's I was aware of a AOL game called Never Winter Nights.

I also knew the game could be hacked. A friend of mine with two monitors on a computer could play the game on one monitor and see, in a debugger, which memory locations were changing in the other monitor. Eventually he could add or subtract items in the database. Then the game company got smarter are started using something like check sum so make sure the database was secure and the hacking race was on.

Usually it is the other players that are willing to buy gold, armor, experience points or even fully developed characters.

In China there are small companies of game players that just kill the same monster over and over again. If many players act as a team and learn the tricks then the monster can be killed in short order and the rewards are then sold. I wonder if the games companies adjust the rewards if a monster is killed too many times.

South Korea is another place where they take gaming very seriously. They have tournaments there with cash prizes. Some are professional game players. So surferb, you are in South Korea now. You should know about this.

Check this out.
http://www.thecgs.com/CGS_Blizzard_Dell_Unite_for_WoW_Revival
It looks like there are some here that also play for money.

Pandiani, I think your chances at becoming very good at control are much better than becoming a professional game player. You need a very fast connection to play games on the internet.

Tark · Jan 20, 2008

Peter Nachtwey said:
This has been going on since the first games were on the Internet. Back in the early 90's I was aware of a AOL game called Never Winter Nights.

I use to play AOL's Never Winter Nights. There was a hacked copy of a program the the GMs (Game Masters) used to hack the game, but gold in the game wasn't as important as gold is now in the MMOs of today. PvP (Player vs. Player) came about from this game.

OkiePC · Jan 20, 2008

I used to play Atari for t-shirts and coupons at local department stores. I got my first computer (1st place prize: Atari 400) playing Asteroids in a city-wide tournament at the age of fourteen.

After learning how to program quite proficiently, I remember telling my Dad I wanted to be a video game programmer someday.

He said, "Son, it's just a fad. Video games have no future."

Jeebs · Jan 21, 2008

Rather old news, lol.

World of Warcraft, one of the largest MMO's (counting 8 mil accounts in europe alone), has spawned a number of 'corporations' that sell ingame items/gold/leveling. This however is not supported by Blizzard and is a bannable offense.

Another MMO that charges money for benefits is the text-based OGame.

Both these games have/had their share of 'automated' players, yet the downside of automated play is it is too accurate, timings are to accurate etc. New scripts are used each day to locate and find automated players.
And ofc they don't react well in certain circumstances, lots of fun freak out these 'bots'.

surferb · Jan 21, 2008

Nice - I wanted to be a game programmer for a litte while. Then I took some programming classes...

OkiePC said:
I used to play Atari for t-shirts and coupons at local department stores. I got my first computer (1st place prize: Atari 400) playing Asteroids in a city-wide tournament at the age of fourteen.

After learning how to program quite proficiently, I remember telling my Dad I wanted to be a video game programmer someday.

He said, "Son, it's just a fad. Video games have no future."

icky812 · Jan 21, 2008

Online virtual gold trading for games such as Warcraft, Everquest, etc is a huge market. One of the largest virtual gold companies, IGE is expecting to gross $7B dollars this year.

That's right, $7,000,000,000 dollars in real cash traded for virtual gold. And that is just one companies take. The market really is that large on a worldwide scale. There are dozens of smaller companies out there as well.

Most of these companies use Asian labor at dirt cheap wages. Consider how many kids you know that are just out of school that still live at home who would be all over getting paid to play video games for a 12 hour stretch. These kids are the labor base that the gold farmers use.

Why hack when all it will get you is a a bunch of banned accounts? There is no need to go to all the trouble of reverse engineering the game when you can get labor for next to nothing.

Sure the game companies know they are out there, but it's really hard to know who is running a huge internet cafe or is farming gold. Aside from that the game company is getting their $15 a month from each account the farmer uses, so unless the farmers are eally hurting the economy then there isn't any need to change what's not broke.

kurt.brinker · Jan 21, 2008

search ebay for world of warcraft characters. I never got into wow but some friends of mine did. They both sold their accounts latrer on for $500+. Look at this listing. http://cgi.ebay.com/Druid-Warrior-GLADIATOR-WoW-Account-1300_W0QQitemZ160200601427QQihZ006QQcategoryZ4596QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

There is also cal (cyberathlete amateur) and cpl(cyberathlete professional). There is big money in the championships if you can master the game.

Jeebs · Jan 21, 2008

$1300 for only that? And a $610 serious bid....

Sheesh wonder what I could get if I tried to sell my account.......easy money methinks.....

surferb · Jan 21, 2008

From what I've seen the payoff is very little compared to the time invested, ugh, committed - I won't say wasted because someone probably had a good time

Jeebs said:
$1300 for only that? And a $610 serious bid....

Sheesh wonder what I could get if I tried to sell my account.......easy money methinks.....

OT: Making money by playing games

Pandiani

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surferb

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Peter Nachtwey

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surferb

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Tark

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OkiePC

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Jeebs

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surferb

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icky812

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kurt.brinker

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Jeebs

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surferb

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