by ZeroAerey25 . on Dec 31, 2007
Welcome to the dark side of online gaming.
The PlayNoEvil blog has a really interesting article about one of the biggest games in China right now: ZT Online. ZT Online is a game that has everything that North American players have been resistant to, including Real Money Transactions (RMT), gold farming, power-leveling, and even online gambling as part of the game design. Not surprisingly, it's making big money for its owners.
While wimpy Americans can whine about "cheating" in online games, quibble about Real Money Transactions (RMT), complain about gold farming, gripe about power-leveling, and otherwise aspire to a mythical "purity" of game play, the most popular game in China, ZT Online, from Giant Interactive has embraced all of these things.. and online gambling to boot.
It took a non-gamer, Shi Yuzhu, an entrepreneur who made his first fortune marketing "vitamin tonic", to look in to the heart of darkness of Massively Multi-Player Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) and build a game that beautifully exploited every weakness of game players and every revenue stream of the genre.
Read more about the game at PlayNoEvil and then join the discussion and tell us what you think.