Kill Ten Rats

I recently suggested that you separate the intrinsic reward from the extrinsic reward in your gaming. Do you enjoy doing it, or are you just pursuing the imaginary shiny? My notion was that while our primitive simian brains reward us with neurochemicals for raising that number on the screen, it is probably better to do things we actually enjoy rather than chasing imaginary carrots on digital treadmills.

I am fascinated by the phenomenon of judging an activity by the reward at the end, rather than the quality of the activity itself. Adding achievements to a game increases its ratings. It is not just cognitive dissonance from people spending all that time chasing transparent dangling carrots; people really seem to get more enjoyment from that extra “Hurray! You did good!” from the achievement pop-up. My reaction to the Borderlands ending was that it was incoherent, but many commenters are far far far far far more bitter that they were not given a giant gun for beating the boss.

I understand why people repeat certain dungeons for loot, but some seem to lose the idea of having fun in the game apart from character advancement. An ideal design would make the most fun content the most rewarding (I know, tastes, preferences, play styles, etc.), rather than reinforcing the idea that you must slog through something to get the best rewards. That would seem like better word-of-mouth advertising. I usually hear players raving about how fun the early advancement is, rather than the late game. Is that just the novelty of the new shiny? A design change switching to late-game slogs as a slowdown technique? Or are we just irritable because the units of advancement are futher apart, and everything is fun when you level twice an hour?

Outside MMO-land, most games don’t have much in the way of extrinsic rewards. And looking at MMOs from the outside, all those digital shinies are still inside the game, providing no value unless you keep paying your $15/month, providing no value once the next wave of planned obsolescence hits.

: Zubon

Left to her own devices, my cat spends most of her time in the basement. I think it is because her favorite blanket is there. We close her downstairs when we go to bed, because otherwise she will make trouble. Come bed time, suddenly and consistently, she does not want to be down there and runs from me. Being a creature of habit, she runs down the stairs. And then looks surprised at how she was trapped.

: Zubon

There’s an online game with terrible graphics, terrible PVP, terrible gameplay, terrible controls, and it’s a massive grind. Yet the game has several million more player accounts than World of Warcraft. They call this terrible game Mafia Wars. I must admit, this is a free game that doesn’t require a graphics card, so it’s hardly a fair comparison to MMORPGS. But so many people willingly grind levels in bad games that there are implications for how MMORPGS handle the grind.

For the uninitiated, Mafia Wars is a browser-based game popular on social networking sites. You are are rewarded for recruiting other people to join your team. Gameplay consists of clicking on buttons that say “Do Job” or “Fight”. There really isn’t any gameplay to it at all. The only thing that happens when you click one of these buttons is that a leveling bar goes up, you gain some stats, and you’re closer to clicking on buttons for bigger jobs or clicking the fight button next to higher level players.

So the question is, why do people grind levels in a game with no gameplay?

Things that are valuable are measured precisely and monitored closely. This is why diamonds sell by the quarter-karat and are kept under lock and key, while your water bill comes in hundreds of gallons and you might put off fixing a dripping faucet.

Lateness implies disrespect for yourself and others. You have only so much time, and treating it cavalierly suggests that it has low value to you. Or perhaps you are strategically late, on the assumption that everyone else will be waiting when you get there. You find others’ time cheap. All we have in this life is fading time, and wasting others’ is slow murder by degrees. But it costs you nothing, as long as you are the last to show up.

“It’s only five minutes. How impatient are you?” No, it’s five minutes per person. In a twelve-person raid, five minutes late is an hour wasted. And it is rarely “only five minutes.” In a forty-person raid, fifteen minutes late is ten hours. I have seen raids and groups that consistently take as long as an hour to pull together. How many entire days are wasted per week waiting for the raid to start?

Lateness cascades. The group is not together yet, so brb bio. He’s still gone, so get a drink. We’ve been waiting ten minutes, someone needs to go check on the oven. Now we’re starting too late, someone won’t have enough time to finish the dungeon, gotta run, good luck. Recruit again and repeat. People learn that being on-time means waiting while lateness is not punished (indeed, people seem grateful when a late-comer lets them get started), so why put any effort into being on time?

But it’s hard to be the guy who says, “We do not have a full group/raid logged on and available at the start time, so this week is canceled. We’ll try again next week.” “It’s only five ten fifteen thirty minutes,” and I guess we’re committed to going through with it after waiting a half-hour. No one wants all that time to have been wasted.

: Zubon

This year, I renew my often-flagging resolution not to look forward to things. There were three MMO releases I was looking forward to in 2009. The first made me physically ill just from looking at the graphics. If you and your friends made your own version of WoW in your garage, it would look very much like the second. The third I tried with my wife, computers side-by-side, prompting the following exchange:

“I wonder if this gets fun at any point, or if it always sucks.”
“Okay, just so you know we’re on the same page here.”

Here is to low expectations in 2010.

: Zubon

I just wanted to say thanks for spending a little of your precious time here at KTR over the past year. It’s been a lot of fun getting to know so many of you and talking about a common passion we all have. Hope you all have a safe and happy New Year’s Eve and a great 2010.

I’d also like to thank a group of sites that have sent a lot of traffic here over the past 12 months and they are as follows:

VirginWorlds, thanks Brent.
All the great folks over at Massively.
Scott Jennings at Broken Toys.
Everyone at Guild Wars.
The staff at WoW.com.
Keen and Graev.
Syp at Bio Break, probably the best MMO blog out there.
Tipa at West Karana, you rock!
All the people behind the Official Guild Wars Wiki.
The folks at Guild Wars 2 Guru.
Who can forget about Tobold?
Sanya’s amazing Eating Bees.
Green Armadillo over at Player Versus Developer.
Syncaine at Hardcore Casual.
And finally everyone over at MMORPG.com.

– Ethic

2010 is nearly upon us, and while things are dark and quiet during the holidays in the MMO kingdom, I feel a dawn is coming.  Let’s look in to my prejudiced, postulating crystal ball.

Continue reading 2010 – Hopes, Dreams, and Fears