To BOT or Not to BOT that is the question...

The word BOT comes from ROBOT and is a term often used to describe an automated process. A quote from Wikipedia says that "Typically, bots perform tasks that are both simple and structurally repetitive."
BOTS can be found within FPS and MMO type games also. BOTS can also be referred to as macro's which is generally in-game script to perform automated tasks. Although a BOT certainly does not have to be a macro or in-game. A BOT could be a external program written to simulate mouse and keyboard behaviour.
Ok so now that I have described what a bot is whats the big deal surrounding there usage within games? Usage of bots generally falls into several categories.

i) Gold Farming
ii) Leveling
iii) Helper type bots

I will attempt to explain each of these types in turn.
i) Gold Farming
This is generally thought to be carried out by the Chinese or other people from less well off countries in terms of earnings per head of population. They are generally found in MMO's where in game currency can be traded for hard cash. These so called "Farmers" are paid to play a game(s) and perform acts within that game that earn gold or whatever the in-game currency is. Generally these farmers are thought to use automated scripts/BOTs to kill creature after creature collecting in-game currency. It is not unknown for a single farmer to be operating many avatars at one time. You can generally tell farmer type behaviour when you see long lines of characters running around in world all following each other. After a shift is complete these farmers will then sell their in game currency to there supervisor/agent for local real currency. These supervisors will then sell this collected virtual currency to large virtual currency
sellers.

ii) Leveling
Similar to farming except in this case your not farming for in-game currency for farming for XP. Generally this would be performed by a player who wants to "LEVEL" their character faster to access content only available to higher level players. It can take a very long time in some circumstances of normal play to reach these higher levels. Therefore it is desirable to automate this process to access the higher content more quickly. Since players are generally limited a fixed amount of "play" time BOTs simply can run 24 hours a day 7 days a week if correctly setup. Although this type of BOT-ING can be thought to be player related. This is not entirely the case since so called "LEVELED" characters can be sold on places like eBay for large amounts of real money. It is not unknown for "leveled" characters to fetch thousands of pounds.

iii) Helper type bots
These type of BOT's generally assist the player in game to achieve a certain task. I think they come in a couple of different guises. The first type is perhaps the most harmless. This is a script/bot which might automate a generally boring action or procedure which for what ever reason the player see's as not fun or a waste of time etc. The second type which is much more destructive to game play is the Cheater type bot. Use of all types of bot could be considered cheating however but these types of bot generally are designed to assist in active game play for example in an FPS game a cheater bot may scan the screen for an enemy target and then move your sight very quickly to that targets weak spot and fire at them. Due to the nature of the BOT, the action would be carried out much faster than a human player would be able to achieve the same result or even do something about it. Therefore a "botted" player is perceived to have a significant advantage over other non-cheating players.

Ok so now i have described what a BOT is i would like to discuss type iii) helper bots and specifically the type that automates boring actions/procedures which are required. In this case I believe the use of BOTs is totally OK. The fact that a BOT is being used generally shows the receptiveness of the task(s) being presented to the player. It would seem then that any task that can be scripted and automated in this way by a BOT, perhaps should not be in game at all. This is because by its very nature it is highly repetitive and therefore becomes un-fun very quickly. Think about real life, could you script it? If you can, are you having fun yet?

I guess the challenge of any MMO designer is to some how avoid these repetitive in game tasks. There is even a name which has been invented to describe these repetitive in game actions, which usually results in increasing your experience level its called "Grinding".

One of the questions I have which I would like to leave you with, concerning this subject is this.. Is it really possible for a scripted and calculating computer program called an MMO to produce interesting and dynamic content? Thus far I have only seen Humans players produce such content within the virtual world, I'm am waiting however...