Massive online games and loot distribution: an elusive problem

Massively Multi-player Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) and Massively Multiplayer Online games (MMOs) are complex socio-technical distributed systems. In these environments, a huge amount of players interact to have fun and develop their characters. Looting systems have been developed to help allocating valuable in-game objects, gained after finishing quests, as fairly as possible among the participating players. The medium/long term effects of the adoption of different Looting Systems on players have not yet been adequately investigated, in spite of the fact that they could impact heavily on players’ satisfaction. In the present work, we move a first step in this direction in order to offer several hints for improvement to game designers and companies developing and managing MMORPGs and MMOs.