Author: Zubon

I bought ice cream this weekend. While I was not looking, the boxes shrunk again. They went from 2 quarts to 1.75 quarts a while ago. I adjusted. They are down to 1.5 quarts now, and everyone seems to have gotten the memo at once.

On most products, people are most sensitive to price differences, then quantity, then quality. The immediate price difference is also essential: even if an appliance will obviously cost $50 more per year to use than the one next to it, a $75 difference in price will swing an overwhelming amount of business to the cheaper one. For some things, you really care about quality and are a connoisseur, but on the whole you will notice a $5 difference before you notice a less fine patina on the finish. So price is immutable. You will not charge more or less than $15/month for your MMO, because if you charge more, you are a ripoff, and if you charge less, you are obviously the ghetto MMO.

Quantity is the next thing to vary. You can fake that with a bigger box: people do not look closely. Note when you buy paper towels, that they translate “big rolls!” into smaller ones. They are trying to avoid that problem, where people pay more for 8 small rolls than 6 big rolls. In MMOs, our variant is “36 zones! 128 playable classes!” How many of those zones are repetitive or procedural content? Did you get those classes by taking every possible combination of skills and giving each package a name? “Hush you!” So your detergent has a “new concentrated formula!” that requires more per load in some random-sized box.

Quality? Who notices quality? You can’t tell on half the things you buy. The same products come off the line and go into boxes with a half-dozen brand names. The terrifying thing is that people enjoy it more when it comes in the higher-priced box. And do you notice a 5% difference in quality on most things, really? Cut the pickles a little thinner, use 2 fewer pepperoni slices on the pizza, put a little less meat and a bit more pasta on the plate. Price is the same, the unit (1 hamburger) is the same, so your buying habits are probably the same. Make the game get by down one member on the Q&A staff, minus a tester, released a week early. People notice the number of zones and the ship date, not how optimized the graphics coding is; the few who do care are the whiny customers we could stand to do without. You will probably have a new job when it’s time to pay the piper, and the next guy will blame any problems on you anyway.

You hardly noticed yourself losing one hair at a time, but you woke up bald one fine morning.

: Zubon

I stop at Taco Bell every couple of weeks. I order one Beef & Potato Burrito and two Big Taste Tacos. In the past year, those prices have each increased by a dime, so the order is now $4 after tax. I have spent more time pondering that 8% increase than it will ever cost me to pay it.

I ponder because it is odd that I felt price sensitivity. Not enough to even look around the menu for new items, but I noticed. I get the principal of watching the cents so the dollars take care of themselves, and I can see the cumulative effect in my bank statements, but I really don’t care about a few dimes. And yet, somehow, I do.

People will drive across town to save $5 on a $15 item but not $5 on a $125 item. Because 1/3 off is big! But it’s the same $5. If it is worth your time to save $5 on one, it is worth your time to save $5 on both.

$15 a month? I spend more than that per person on a nice dinner. That is a couple of movie tickets. I get a ridiculous amount of value for my money.

I would probably be happier with an MMO that charged me more and took less time, with concentrated awesome instead of grind, travel, downtime, and things meant to prolong subscription fees. I would probably be happier with a premium game that charged me $30/month and had great servers, fast customer service, and less rabble. (Show of hands developers: half the people at twice the price, you in?)

But I still notice price sensitivity when I could have WoW for $15.

: Zubon

Game 1: unreliable servers, up right now, but freezing and giving me rollbacks.
Game 2: in beta, should stay there.
Game 3: in beta, will probably still need that NDA even after it launches.
Game 4: account servers will not let me log in to give them money, nor will they send me a password reset e-mail.

I’m going to bed.

: Zubon

They are hired in young, generally in their late teens and early twenties. They are energetic and excited about getting paid to do something they really enjoy (and probably have been doing on a small scale for years without pay). They tend to have more experience than you’d think, less than they think, and hopefully are able to take direction well.

In those early years, they are worked hard. As much as you can get out of them, as soon as you can get it, before they realize this is not as glamorous as they thought. Yes, even the ones who heard about the working conditions were still being a bit optimistic. Make sure to have the appropriate chemical stimulants on hand to let them keep going to the limits of youthful endurance. Until they get burned out, these are the best years to work them until they are dry.

They will get burned out soon. The disillusionment process can be traumatic, and many try to hide it because they cannot admit it was a losing decision. They will keep going, pushing those hours, hitting those stimulants hard. If you look back in a few years, you will see how their bodies have changed, not from aging, but from the work itself.

Eventually, both aging and the work catch up to them. In any other industry, they would still be young, but here you can see how used up they are. Now is the time to cast them off for the next crop, and there always is a next crop of eager young things who want to take their places, and will do so cheap.

A few survive this process. They are the old hands you sometimes see around, increasingly as names rather than faces. They become producers, running the shops that employee that next crop. Some of them join the cycle of exploitation, knowing exactly what illusions the young ones enter with. Others think there must be a better, more humane and sustainable way to do this work, and they found their own projects with better conditions. This latter group seems less visible and prosperous, although more outspoken.

: Zubon