From Gold diggers to glitching

When I think of MMORPG’s, I think of the quests, characters , and adventures one has on these types of games. However, after reading some of the articles for this week it changed my perspective on how I view this games. For example In the article "'Gold Farming': Real-World Production in Developing Countries for the Virtual Economies of Online Games," by Richard Heeks , it talks about how people use games such as World of Worldcraft and other MMORPG’s to make profits. At first when I read this I was not only surprised but also amazed on how people can even make such profit off selling “game money” and other items in the game. For me this takes the fun out in even playing that game. I mean why would you want to play a game and actually waste your hard earned money on 5 million gold or that amazing lightning blade that is so rare. This only proves to me that some gamers out there are so desperate to get the best armor or have the richest character that they are willing to fund “Gold Farming” people to continue promoting cheating. Yes, whether some of you may disagree, I believe this just increases more gamers to be more cheaters. Although Gold Farming can be seen as a positive since in a way its helping underclass people make a little money, its still does not make it ok for them to ruin fun of the game. I mean think of it this way; we have gamers that actually go through each quest and go defeat monsters or what not and earn their gold or levels the fair way. Then we have the other type of gamers who just don’t bother to go through the quests and buy their way into the game in order to advance. To me this is just another way of using outside sources to cheat in a game. Speaking of cheating, there was another article that talked about a different form of cheating: Glitching. In the article Cheaters: A Special Report by Gamer Informer Staff, it states how in games such as COD4 glitching is often used by gamers to win matches. I personally have experienced this playing call of duty 4. For example while playing a map online, some of the other gamers where off the map killing other players. This not only helped them rank up, but they pissed off a lot of players that were actually playing fair. Although most systems have warnings stating that glitching will result in been banned of Xbox Live, most people that do glitch never end up been banned. AHHH! When will this ever get controlled!?..Anyways there was another article(Computer Game Modding, Intermediality and Participatory Culture by Olli Sotamaa) that actually approved gamers of using their own modds to add to the games( examples of this are counter strike). I mean this is ironic since modds often create a better chance for the creator to cheat on his on mod. However, Most of these type of players state that this is not their intention. That they only want to create new and creative maps to their favorite games. I mean I up totally up for the mod since it adds variety to the game. The only thing that I would ask is if they don’t use it to cheat in anyway. To conclude, I find that some gamers would do anything to win or be better in a game. Whether it be from purchasing from Gold Farming people or glitching your way into a game, we must realize that people who do this in the virtual life could possibly do this in real life. Which raised the question, Should we be concerned how cheating in games could affect gamers especially young ones, in real life? I believe the only way to answer this is to monitor this more closely and hopefully spread the word around to help stop cheating in video games.