In Black Desert one indulges in a Korean peculiarity: players are rewarded for leaving their computers running, even when they are not sitting at them.
Those who sleep, win. In some games, it is lucrative and advantageous to keep the computer and the game running while the actual player does something completely different, perhaps not even being at home.
The first time I encountered this “peculiarity” was in a MOBA that today hardly anyone knows. Players would place their characters on a kind of “marketplace” with a player shop and then go to bed while their PC stayed on. Their character would sit there for 8 hours, offering goods. During that time, one could do nothing else in the game – so they could go AFK. A completely ridiculous action from my perspective back then. I couldn’t explain for many years who came up with such ideas. And why the developers didn’t just implement an auction house, like in other games.
Later in ArcheAge, it was the same: players regenerated energy faster when they were online, so people just stayed logged in for hours while they were actually working or at school. Then the Western publisher realized: This is blocking our servers and other people cannot play. Endless long queues and a lot of stress at release were the consequences.
Normally, such players would have been kicked out of the game by an “AFK auto-kick.” But ArcheAge didn’t have that at the beginning, and when it was later introduced, it was easy to bypass. Because in the Korean version, that was not provided at all.
Again, a strange situation that no one could understand for a long time: Why does ArcheAge have such huge queues? It was then sold as “We are just incredibly popular.” That may have been true, but it surely also included a bit of “people will do anything to not log out” in the mix.
In Black Desert, AFK playing is really worthwhile – there is even a top 5 for clever AFK play in Black Desert
In the new MMORPG Black Desert, players gain even more benefits by simply letting their computer run: The “workers” they employ only repeat their tasks when the player is “logged in.” Otherwise, they just finish their current job and then become unproductive. Gathering materials goes AFK significantly faster. Those who log out as soon as they stop playing are at a disadvantage.
Moreover, players regenerate energy faster and – the crown jewel – can even “AFK fish.” A game mechanic where the character simply fishes automatically. The whole mini-game normally associated with fishing is ignored. The unattended hero fishes slower than when manually controlled but steadily. This brings gold, increases fishing skill, and is intended by the game. No bots, dubious macros, or anything else are required – fishing bots have been common in games like WoW for a while now.
Here, a YouTuber created a top 5 list of things you can do AFK in Black Desert. No. 5 doesn’t work in our version because you can’t create patrol points, but the other things work well. It may look like real satire, but it’s meant seriously:
Now, from our perspective, this sounds completely nonsensical: Who benefits from computers running at night or during the day when no one is sitting in front of them? What kind of ridiculous game design is that?
This is due to a peculiarity of the Asian MMO model. People play in so-called “PC cafes”, in PC bangs, and rent a computer by the hour. The money they pay for that partly flows back to the publishers of the game. For the developers in Korea, such “AFK hours” are profitable as long as someone pays for their seat in the café.
This peculiarity should disappear from ports
In Europe, such mechanisms are unnecessary and should disappear from the ports. Here we play at home. No one at Daum benefits if players are logged in AFK. They have no deal with our energy suppliers or internet providers.
For many reasons, I do not want to let my computer run at night or when I am not sitting in front of it: electricity costs, material wear, a rudimentary environmental awareness, and it’s also loud. If I have it running in a second window while I do office work, it distracts me and makes the computer unnecessarily hum.
This is the problem with Asian ports, not the gender lock
This example shows why ports from Asia are often so difficult. You can feel the cultural differences. In Korea, it is “worth it” for the provider to incorporate extreme time sinks into the game. 20 minutes in which one can be AFK while something is being produced, or a distance is being covered. Here in the West, such game mechanics that expect us to sit idly in front of the computer during that time simply seem inexplicable and strange.
Our games go different ways. Instead of riding for 20 minutes, a Western game would have a portal or allow fast travel. If one crafts the same item x times in Guild Wars 2, then the production process accelerates towards the end. Why would ArenaNet want me to watch bars slowly fill up for 20 minutes? They gain nothing from it. However, their colleagues in Korea would benefit from it, as I would have to rent an additional hour in the PC café.
In the column about gender lock, I advocated for accepting games from the East as they are – with their peculiarities like gender lock and aesthetics. But this AFK thing – that would be a “meaningful localization” of games if such mechanics did not make it to the West. Or what do you think?
