Category: General

There are, what, 20+ million people playing MMOs? And some 90% of those players are in various refinements of MUD? I think we all owe Richard Bartle a dollar. Is that cool with everyone? Just a buck, from each and every one of us, for getting the ball rolling. Considering how much you have spent on MMOs, it is not a lot. He can work out how to divide the cash with Roy Trubshaw, the less visible co-creator.

Maybe fan faires and whatnot could start that. Have a Bartle Box. We keep doing that until he has $20,000,000. These days, he would probably prefer that in pounds or Euros, but we can start with the Americans. Actually handing him a dollar whenever you see him feels a bit crass, but he would always have cash for cab fare while he was in the US.

Shall we brainstorm?

: Zubon

When Massively.com first started up I thought to myself, oh great another site to gather and repeat all the news I’ve already read. Well, I was happily quite wrong. They have consistently put out new, original content as well as having a lot of exclusive first looks at upcoming MMOs. Sure they fill up my feed reader faster than I can keep up with it, but I have to admit they are serving up a *lot* of really great content. Congratulations on a job well done folks!

– Ethic

Libertarians, unhappy with the world’s land-based governments, have begun the project of seasteading, building their own nations in international waters. They are prepared for pirates. There will be no ADAM.

The discussion thread at Marginal Revolution raises the interesting argument that liberty is the happy result when a bunch of authoritarian groups found a country together and cannot agree on which gets to be in charge (that or civil war). You can speculate on how that might apply to competing/successive game development teams.

The FAQ-writers are clearly our people:

What will people do onboard?
Our first response is “the same things anyone else does”, but perhaps we don’t get out much. As long as there’s an internet connection, it might take us quite awhile to notice that we were on a small, isolated platform.

Oh, and the guy in charge is Patri Friedman, who I knew in college, so I had to give him a shout-out.

: Zubon

James Q. Wilson has been guest-blogging at The Volokh Conspiracy. (If you don’t know who he is, his Bureaucracy is a political science classic, and you or your kids likely use[d] his textbook for AP US Government.) While there, he has more or less summarized the difference between academic rigor and the blogosphere (he is guest-blogging on crime and imprisonment, hence the specific):

Can I Be a Meaningful Blogger?
A lot of readers have suggested that I am not a helpful blogger because I refer people to other studies for data to support my arguments. These critics are probably right. Were I devoted to blogging full time, I would quote all the data and summarize all of the studies, thereby getting nothing else done. I had assumed when I started my blog messages that people would pause, think, and look up facts. A few have, but most seem to have opinions they like to express quickly. There is nothing wrong with this, except that it doesn’t advance knowledge. Let me join the opinion parade by offering a few of my own: This country imprisons too many people on drug charges with little observable effect. A better solution can be found in Hawaii, where a judge uses his powers to keep drug users in treatment programs (it’s called Project Hope; look it up). The costs of crime are hard to measure (so are the costs of confinement). The reader who does not want to drive five miles to find the book, Prison State, that discusses this in detail is wasting my time and his. It is not hard to study deterring crime, but I can’t imagine trying to teach someone in a blog how to do a regression analysis. I wish I could do that, but it would take time, and blog commenters seem not to have much time.

Now for a few more facts, but I warn you that to believe my assertions you will actually have to go out and read something. [snip]

This is not a shot at y’all, since you have seen the academic rigor that applies to my ramblings. I just enjoy the “you’re really not playing in the same league as me.” A respected designer posts some thoughtful comments on game balance, and the comments thread descends into a battle of whether WoW suxx0rs. A professor posts in his field of expertise, and “Tyrant King Porn Dragon” responds while goofing off at work. Posting your opinion is fun and all, but there is only so much point in talking with people who won’t do the Bayesian updating.

: Zubon

And yeah, he could stand to include more links.

Arnold Kling discusses Nassim Nicholas Taleb, distinguishing between two types of jobs. Billers are wage workers: high floor, low ceiling, meaning that you get your wage with little chance of bankruptcy or riches. Players are gambling on commissions, big payouts, etc.: no floor or ceiling. A great accountant will earn little more than an average one, while an author might sell millions of books or die in penury. This latter economic state is often described as a tournament: the winners win big, and the difference in winnings between #1 and #2 will be far larger than the difference in quality of #1 and #2.

MMO development companies are players. We have big winners, games that go bankrupt or nearly so, and scattered moderate successes and hangers-on in between. Despite their differing subscriber numbers, WoW is not 10 times better than EQ2 (whatever that would mean). Most indie games will fail, and others will be bought by EA or something.

MMO developers are billers. If you work for Sony or NCSoft, you get a paycheck rather than a percent of the take. Just like you the player, your friends on the development team are not going to get rich and drive into the sunset with a Ferrari full of hookers and blow. Well, Nicodemus plans to, but he’s a special case. When you think about WoW being flush with money, you can remember that their community manager is still eating ramen.

And a few places (mostly indies) skirt the line because developers have stock, options, a share of the company, etc. If the game hits it big, folks who are vested will cash in. Or they will continue to work long hours for free Mountain Dew.

My perfect example is 38 Studios. Professional athletics is the usual example of a tournament game, where a great pitcher gets millions while someone 2% worse hopes to keep a spot on the Mud Hens. Now that money is invested in a game studio. If you work there for a wage with no profit sharing, that wage is what you get. Curt Schilling stands to lose millions, and you risk needing to find a new job. Or he might be the owner of the next WoW. We’ll see how that tournament works out.

: Zubon

Last time we talked about user content, and how it would inevitably have to be brought in, and properly managed. But now we’ll see the other next best thing we’ll surely be talking about in ten or fifteen years: Population Control.

This one is funny because it immediately gets people’s panties in a bunch, and forces them to think. That’s why I like it so much. It’s also a bit more nebulous and theoretical than user content, so we’ll have to draw from a few places in order to offer something presentable. Namely, the history and evolution of both the real world and virtual worlds, human nature and a nice dose of prophet complex.

Continue reading The Next (two) Best Things (pt. 2)