Tuesday, May 25, 2004

Wired News: Virtual Dopers Crave High Scores
The designers of Achaea, one of the biggest online text-based games, have recently introduced a virtual addictive drug -- known as gleam -- as part of a story line in which a crime ring has been attempting to infiltrate the game's cities. And some players can't take it fast enough.

"What we wanted to do with gleam was we wanted to see how the player base would react to something that's pretty bad," said Matthew Mihaly, the CEO of Achaea publisher Iron Realms Entertainment. "It's really nasty. We didn't tell them it was addictive.... (Non-player characters) showed up and said, 'Hey, I've got this stuff here, wanna try it?' Being new, they pounced right on it."

Achaea characters who take gleam get hooked quickly -- suffering typical addiction symptoms: violent vomiting, shivering, irrational sobbing, begging for the drug and even overdoses resulting in death. Some of the game's players are angry about gleam's introduction into their world.
via boing boing.

By al - 11:13 a.m. |

Comments:
I'm not into MMOs. Then again, my desire to socialize with fucktards is pretty low. I wonder if The Urbz (Will Wright's Urban Sims game) will have Crystal Meth?
 
Sorta on the topic, I was running a game (D&D) and I threw in some drugs to see how the players reacted. Fairly interesting results. Upon the realization that the drugs were harmful and addictive (i.e. experimented with a few of his men on the effects of overdosing and withdrawl... he was a Drow after all), he took it upon himself it ween himself off the stuff and then do the same for the rest of his little army. Of course results may vary. Some players are just so drawn to accumulating wealth and power that the fact that it's addictive or harmful in the long run just don't register.
 
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