Where Did "Content Locusts" Come From?

The term "content locusts" came up today in a Google+ post by Richard Bartle discussing the direction of "free-to-play" online games.

This term content locusts has come into use as a shorthand way to decribe the phenomenon that, when a new computer game (especially a multiplayer online game) is released, there is a sizable subset of players who will begin playing that new game as soon as it's available, try to experience its primary content as rapidly as possible, and then move to a new game. The notion is that these players are like locusts -- they swarm a new game, buzzsaw through its content, and then fly away (often complaining that the game was "too short" or "too easy").

I remember having mentioned a few years back that the Achiever Bartle Type was most closely related to this behavior, mostly because the behavior seems keyed directly to the Achiever motivation that "game" means a challenge to be beaten.

That got me thinking: what was the earliest use of this term?

There are several forms of the basic idea. The earliest mention I could find of "locusts" in the context of computer games was a comment by "Wolfshead" (saved by Google on May 29, 2004) describing player guilds in EQ: "The EQ Devs were caught off guard by the tenacity of the uberguild phenomena. These guilds consumed content like locusts and in many cases actually tested major encounters."

The next mention showing up is by Mike Sellers at Terra Nova on June 13, 2005: "As far as I know instancing has been introduced to reduce the immersion-shattering practice of camping, lining up for spawn points, and seeing popular dungeons or hunting grounds having been essentially clear-cut by roving locust-like bands of players."

The first reference I can find that specifically links content, locusts, and Achievers was my "Will The Real Explorers Please Stand Up?" blog entry (inspired by the Terra Nova discussion of the same name from January through July of 2005): "Achievers tend to become bored quickly -- like locusts, they swarm to a new game, burn through anything resembling "content," then zoom off again to consume the Next Big Game."

According to Google, the first use of the specific term "content locusts" is in the "Time flies when you're having fun" post by Isabelle Parsley (AKA Ysharros) at the Stylish Corpse blog on November 24, 2009: "It takes work to provide a smorgasbord of content that the content locusts can NOM NOM NOM their blind hungry way through, but that the … let’s call them content slugs can enjoy much more slowly and completely."

Finally, the use of the term "content locusts" that ignited its widespread usage appears to have been the "Content Locusts Killed My MMO" article by the very same Isabelle Parsley at MMORPG.com on January 27, 2012: "I like to blame the content locusts for this, at least to a large extent – that small percentage of players whose goal isn’t to experience content but to consume it as fast as possible as they race inexorably through a game."

Following that article, 2012 was littered with uses of the phrase "content locusts." And the design of SWTOR seems to have been directly related to how quickly the term entered general usage -- it's what most people who used the term were talking about.

Assuming anyone else is intrigued by this kind of linguistic archeology, can anyone else find earlier expressions of this idea?