Making money in commercial games Part 2: The programmer.
There have always been reasons for programmers to find ways to automate a game they are placing. AC was automated quite easily, and people like me, wrote some very interesting scripts. EQ has been automated for the most part. DAoC has some automation *detection* logic that doesn't work to well and I hear it has quite the automation crowd as well. These are three of the larger online games, but the smaller ones run into the same issue.
If this has happened all along, what is the problem? Well, people are getting better at what they are doing. It takes them less time to hack the next game out and create an automation library. Some game development teams have even invested in generic UI automation systems that process the resulting graphics output (monitor) and only have access to the input system (keyboard/mouse). While I can't say I've run across the external developer bragging about how well their screen scraping software works, I can say that I've run across the internal developer that will talk your ear off about HIS screen scraping software. Automating the game is simply too big a win on both sides of the fence to not do it. It is great from a testing perspective where you can find more bugs in your software and simulate thousands of clients, but even better when you can make money off of it.
Getting a hack out faster isn't necessarily the end of the world. It may be a crappy hack of the game and only provide minimal automation support. I know most games get automated using SendKeys through a basic script engine. Hacks are getting better than that though. I know I've worked over a couple of games at the network level gaining the ability to rewrite packets and patch the client process so I can even use their encryption/decryption packing/unpacking routines for my own goals. Lots of times I wind up getting myself kicked off because I modify something out of a bounds that the server knows about and I get myself crashed. But this is almost like a game in itself. Get bored with DAoC, play HDAoC (H for hack). I think hack has the wrong term. I'm simply investigating more of how the game works to protect my investment in my character against the developers missing an obvious flaw in their system that might have negative effects on me ;-) Good spin eh?
Hacks are getting faster to produce and better in terms of integration with the game. While the developers are trying to find ways to prevent the hacking at the technology level they are completely ignoring how they can change the game world to reduce cheating. Humans cheat in the real world, but the cheating is mitigated by physical laws that prevent too much cheating. Here is a partial posting from Raph Koster from the MUD-Dev alias. Raph was a designer on UO.
We see this sort of automation with websites like EQEcon, but I
don't know =f there's automated software "going all the way."
There are design things you can do to reduce this. EQ is susceptible
becaus= of its centralized player market (the Bazaar). Having
multiple markets wi=h some sense of distance between them can
hamper arriving at optimal price=, for example. No centralized
market, and instead using player shops, woul= put a serious dent
in it, I suspect.
He thinks by having multiple locations where things can be sold, creates a problem for automation software. Makes it harder for me to drop off my product. If that is the case, then just adding a single few minutes to my selling time, can start to limit the amount of revenue I can generate. It also means that I have to take my time as a player to go find you in some cases to get my loot. As long as the game doesn't provide instant portalling of some sort, making it easy for automation to be at all places at once, then you can start to reduce the effects of automation on the game. Raph is only pointing out a single principle here. There are many others that can greatly enhance your game's defenses agains the common automation hack.
Back to the money. As I pointed out earlier the reseller is making bank. I'm getting figures now from people claiming they can make 600 in a week with only a single machine doing manual operation (sign me up!). I've gotten a recent figure from a fairly trustworthy source that 3000 in a week is an average week with a relatively large battery of machines (14 in this person's case). That isn't bad my friend, not bad at all. I probably have 14 machines laying around my house.
With figures in the 3000 a week range, and the automation artists relying on basic scripting in most cases, it makes sense that they'll start hiring programmers. You see, nobody (none reported at least) has bridged the gap between the virtual world, real world, the web, and a merchant system. Nobody has the abilities (yet) to deliver a seamless buying/selling/creation experience where the automation artist doesn't still have a great deal of work ahead of them in terms of maintenance. Doesn't this sound like a familar problem for those out there making this type of thing happen in reality? Sounds like these guys are just as bleading edge in terms of merging B2B communications between their auction/merchant systems, automating communications and delivery to clients, solving logistics problems with delivery, and manufacturing problems with respect to supply and demand.
With these types of *problems* in the real world, a programmer has to endure a great deal of stress. After all, real life consequences reside. They can now get the same experience virtually, make some extra money on the side, and in the meantime possibly build a business from the ground up. A new kind of business, the Macy's of virtual goods you might say.
So as you are playing your game and wondering about whether the human player next to you is human at all, look at the state of this *industry* a few years back when the Borg ruled AC (fully automated flocking behaviors), EQ had to lock down Ebay because thousands of items were being bought and sold daily, and realize that is only the beginning. It is only a matter of time before you start playing side by side with computer characters, and either the game developers are going to get their first, or the automation experts are going to beat them to it.