Yes, that was my thought precisely. Which of those explanations might be useful in interpreting the drives of, for instance, people addicted to World of Warcraft?
One interesting thing with WoW, or at least pre-cata WoW, is that the longer you play the higher amount of social interaction is needed. Up to level 15 you play almost completely alone. Then you start being pushed into meeting some randos; maybe having joined one of their guilds by 30. By 50 you’re playing mostly with the same people, and by 60 you look forward to scheduled interactions with those people one to five times a week.
I haven’t played the new versions, but my impression as to why the recent versions are less addictive:
1) More time with randos, less with friends. No ramp up into the parts that require social ties so it’s harder to get over that hump.
2) More randomization of rewards leads to less strong feedback loop of “work hard → get stronger”
3) Homogenization of rewards and fewer social ties lead to less strong feedback loop of “get stronger → get prestige”
I view the social connections and the ability for anyone to feel prestigious with relatively simple work as a core part of the addictiveness.
Up to level 15 you play almost completely alone. Then you start being pushed into meeting some randos; maybe having joined one of their guilds by 30. By 50 you’re playing mostly with the same people, and by 60 you look forward to scheduled interactions with those people one to five times a week.
As I recall, at level 60, after you finish the 5-person content, you were forced into 40-person raids, where the amount of specialization/coordination/order-following required to make progress made it more like a tedious job than a game, at least for me. Curious if anyone has any insights into the design choice there, e.g., what was the thinking behind the end-game being 40-person raids, why wasn’t there more of a ramp-up between the near-end-game and the actual end-game, did most WoW players not find it so tedious, etc.?
In theory it seems like massively multiplayer games would be a good way for people to develop/practice social/coordination skills, and I think WoW and MUDs before it did help me a lot in that regard. (Before, I was really anxious of talking to people.) But I’m not aware of any games that go beyond trying to coordinate 40-person raids, scaling into hundreds or thousands or more. (And as I mentioned, even the 40-person content was tedious to me.) I wonder if there is any way to make larger scale coordination fun.
As I recall, at level 60, after you finish the 5-person content, you were forced into 40-person raids, where the amount of specialization/coordination/order-following required to make progress made it more like a tedious job than a game, at least for me. Curious if anyone has any insights into the design choice there, e.g., what was the thinking behind the end-game being 40-person raids, why wasn’t there more of a ramp-up between the near-end-game and the actual end-game, did most WoW players not find it so tedious, etc.?
This was (mostly) true at the beginning of the “Vanilla” period of WoW[1], but it soon changed. The Zul’Gurub[2] and Ruins of Ahn’Qiraj[3] raid dungeons were 20-man raids, designed specifically to be a bridge between 5-man and 40-man content.
Do not forget also the existence of Upper Blackrock Spire—originally, a 15-man raid dungeon (later changed[4] to 10-man).
(And, of course, with the release of Burning Crusade, raid sizes transitioned from 20 / 40 to 10 / 25.)
In theory it seems like massively multiplayer games would be a good way for people to develop/practice social/coordination skills, and I think WoW and MUDs before it did help me a lot in that regard. (Before, I was really anxious of talking to people.)
My experience was similar. Leading raids, in particular, was excellent social-skills training.
But I’m not aware of any games that go beyond trying to coordinate 40-person raids, scaling into hundreds or thousands or more.
Thanks, they’re interesting although the title “Everything I ever needed to know, I learned from World of Warcraft” promised a bit more than you’ve delivered so far. :) I’d be interested in other lessons you learned, especially ones that are more transferable to other situations (the Goodhart one was better in that regard than the loot system one).
My experience was similar. Leading raids, in particular, was excellent social-skills training.
Yeah, I imagine that must be the case for the guild/raid leaders, but don’t see what the footsoldiers get out of it. (Aside from practicing to be footsoldiers, which most people don’t really need more of?) I guess I’m hoping that MMGs can somehow deliver more learning opportunities for social/coordination skills than just giving a small number of people the chance to practice being low to mid-level managers.
Thanks, they’re interesting although the title “Everything I ever needed to know, I learned from World of Warcraft” promised a bit more than you’ve delivered so far. :) I’d be interested in other lessons you learned, especially ones that are more transferable to other situations (the Goodhart one was better in that regard than the loot system one).
Thanks! I may write more of these at some point, yes. (I’ve got a couple of old LW comments on the subject that I should probably turn into a post or two.)
(By the way, I do hope that you read the comments on these posts—this one in particular is almost a post’s worth by itself!)
My experience was similar. Leading raids, in particular, was excellent social-skills training.
Yeah, I imagine that must be the case for the guild/raid leaders, but don’t see what the footsoldiers get out of it. (Aside from practicing to be footsoldiers, which most people don’t really need more of?) I guess I’m hoping that MMGs can somehow deliver more learning opportunities for social/coordination skills than just giving a small number of people the chance to practice being low to mid-level managers.
The thing to understand here—and this is a (perhaps subtle) lesson of my post on loot systems, among other things—is that the distinction between “guild/raid leaders” and “footsoldiers” is not nearly so sharp as you imply; and the ratio of leaders to followers, not nearly so skewed.
I elaborate on this in this old comment. To what I say there, I add this:
Consider a raid requiring 40 people (such as the high-end raid dungeons in Vanilla WoW). Now consider a raid guild, or “raiding group”, consisting of some number of people in excess of 40—to account for absences, swapping out, etc.
How many leadership positions are there in this group of people? Just one? Oh, no. By no means! There are:
The guild/group leader. Responsible for managing the whole shebang.
The raid leader. Can it be the same person as the guild leader? Sure. Does it have to be? Not at all, and it often is not.
The guild officers. A guild leader typically deputizes several others—to help manage guild affairs (recruitment, other personnel matters, guild supplies and treasury, training and advice for lower-ranked members, etc.), to lead dungeon and raid groups in the guild leader’s absence, etc.
The raid officers. These, too, may all be guild officers, but not necessarily, and even if they are, the overlap between those guild officers with raid officer responsibility and those with guild management responsibility is incomplete. Raid officers assist with assembling a raid (often a complex matter), managing sub-groups within the raid, distributing loot, etc.
(“Class leads” are generally guild and/or raid officers who are responsible for having expertise on, and dealing with players of, individual character classes.)
Out of those 40 people, a full quarter could well have leadership positions of some sort. Some or even all of the rest may, at one point or another, gain leadership experience by leading dungeon groups, or running smaller raids (as I note in the above-linked comment thread).
If someone is addicted to a false world, instead of treating it like an opioid habit perhaps it is because that false world supplies something the real one does not or cannot.
World of Warcraft, for example, puts people into a tribal survival and adventure setting.
You can even form clans, like families, and work together for achievements.
Our modern lifestyle is very far removed from our humanity because we adapted ourselves to live in an adventurous climate.
The emphasis is more on personal achievement than familial coorperation, and the larger and farther reaching our systems of laws become, the less human we become.
Our inherent need for conflict comes out in the popularity of competitive games. Striving against each other makes us stronger and smarter. A life without conflict is a weak life.
Bonobos and chimpanzees are close enough related to mate, however their differing environments and physiology make them dissimilar enough to be considered different species. Physically, chimps are much more powerful and also more intelligent than bonobos due to conflict between and within chimp tribes, and predators that dont exist on the bonobos island.
Consider that different populations of humanity have had similar splits. The Irish lived on an island and had a brutal culture of art and war that lasted for thousands of years. They fought against each other for dominance over their island and Irish men were bred to be warriors.
This in contrast to the Bashada and other tribes in Ethiopia who have a culture of peaceful cooperation and a reliance on conflict resolution with violence as a last resort.
These differing cultures came to be because of scarcity of resources.
In the harsh desert climate, the more you can rely on your neighboring tribes the better chances you have for survival.
In Ireland, resources were more plentiful and so the culture evolved to be one of dominance and submission. Families were tighter knit and there was less of a need to be at peace with neighboring clans.
Fast forward to today, where we have a culture where cooperation is enforced by the dominant powers, there is relatively little conflict with nature, then add this to our mixed genetics and it is easy to see why some people would rather spend their lives fighting against others in a video game. Some people need that conflict to survive. If they have nothing to fight against they sink like stones.
Video game addiction isnt so much addiction to the game itself, but rather a need to express what our genetics need.
Conflict.
The concept of a core game loop seems to point to similar phenomenon when explictly setting up games.
Yes, that was my thought precisely. Which of those explanations might be useful in interpreting the drives of, for instance, people addicted to World of Warcraft?
One interesting thing with WoW, or at least pre-cata WoW, is that the longer you play the higher amount of social interaction is needed. Up to level 15 you play almost completely alone. Then you start being pushed into meeting some randos; maybe having joined one of their guilds by 30. By 50 you’re playing mostly with the same people, and by 60 you look forward to scheduled interactions with those people one to five times a week.
I haven’t played the new versions, but my impression as to why the recent versions are less addictive:
1) More time with randos, less with friends. No ramp up into the parts that require social ties so it’s harder to get over that hump.
2) More randomization of rewards leads to less strong feedback loop of “work hard → get stronger”
3) Homogenization of rewards and fewer social ties lead to less strong feedback loop of “get stronger → get prestige”
I view the social connections and the ability for anyone to feel prestigious with relatively simple work as a core part of the addictiveness.
As I recall, at level 60, after you finish the 5-person content, you were forced into 40-person raids, where the amount of specialization/coordination/order-following required to make progress made it more like a tedious job than a game, at least for me. Curious if anyone has any insights into the design choice there, e.g., what was the thinking behind the end-game being 40-person raids, why wasn’t there more of a ramp-up between the near-end-game and the actual end-game, did most WoW players not find it so tedious, etc.?
In theory it seems like massively multiplayer games would be a good way for people to develop/practice social/coordination skills, and I think WoW and MUDs before it did help me a lot in that regard. (Before, I was really anxious of talking to people.) But I’m not aware of any games that go beyond trying to coordinate 40-person raids, scaling into hundreds or thousands or more. (And as I mentioned, even the 40-person content was tedious to me.) I wonder if there is any way to make larger scale coordination fun.
You may be interested in my posts about WoW.
This was (mostly) true at the beginning of the “Vanilla” period of WoW[1], but it soon changed. The Zul’Gurub[2] and Ruins of Ahn’Qiraj[3] raid dungeons were 20-man raids, designed specifically to be a bridge between 5-man and 40-man content.
Do not forget also the existence of Upper Blackrock Spire—originally, a 15-man raid dungeon (later changed[4] to 10-man).
(And, of course, with the release of Burning Crusade, raid sizes transitioned from 20 / 40 to 10 / 25.)
My experience was similar. Leading raids, in particular, was excellent social-skills training.
EVE Online does this, as I understand it.
From the game’s release in November of 2004 to the release of the Burning Crusade expansion in January of 2007.
Released in September, 2005.
Released in January, 2006.
In March, 2006.
Thanks, they’re interesting although the title “Everything I ever needed to know, I learned from World of Warcraft” promised a bit more than you’ve delivered so far. :) I’d be interested in other lessons you learned, especially ones that are more transferable to other situations (the Goodhart one was better in that regard than the loot system one).
Yeah, I imagine that must be the case for the guild/raid leaders, but don’t see what the footsoldiers get out of it. (Aside from practicing to be footsoldiers, which most people don’t really need more of?) I guess I’m hoping that MMGs can somehow deliver more learning opportunities for social/coordination skills than just giving a small number of people the chance to practice being low to mid-level managers.
Thanks! I may write more of these at some point, yes. (I’ve got a couple of old LW comments on the subject that I should probably turn into a post or two.)
(By the way, I do hope that you read the comments on these posts—this one in particular is almost a post’s worth by itself!)
The thing to understand here—and this is a (perhaps subtle) lesson of my post on loot systems, among other things—is that the distinction between “guild/raid leaders” and “footsoldiers” is not nearly so sharp as you imply; and the ratio of leaders to followers, not nearly so skewed.
I elaborate on this in this old comment. To what I say there, I add this:
Consider a raid requiring 40 people (such as the high-end raid dungeons in Vanilla WoW). Now consider a raid guild, or “raiding group”, consisting of some number of people in excess of 40—to account for absences, swapping out, etc.
How many leadership positions are there in this group of people? Just one? Oh, no. By no means! There are:
The guild/group leader. Responsible for managing the whole shebang.
The raid leader. Can it be the same person as the guild leader? Sure. Does it have to be? Not at all, and it often is not.
The guild officers. A guild leader typically deputizes several others—to help manage guild affairs (recruitment, other personnel matters, guild supplies and treasury, training and advice for lower-ranked members, etc.), to lead dungeon and raid groups in the guild leader’s absence, etc.
The raid officers. These, too, may all be guild officers, but not necessarily, and even if they are, the overlap between those guild officers with raid officer responsibility and those with guild management responsibility is incomplete. Raid officers assist with assembling a raid (often a complex matter), managing sub-groups within the raid, distributing loot, etc.
(“Class leads” are generally guild and/or raid officers who are responsible for having expertise on, and dealing with players of, individual character classes.)
Out of those 40 people, a full quarter could well have leadership positions of some sort. Some or even all of the rest may, at one point or another, gain leadership experience by leading dungeon groups, or running smaller raids (as I note in the above-linked comment thread).
This matches my experience with WoW.
If someone is addicted to a false world, instead of treating it like an opioid habit perhaps it is because that false world supplies something the real one does not or cannot. World of Warcraft, for example, puts people into a tribal survival and adventure setting. You can even form clans, like families, and work together for achievements. Our modern lifestyle is very far removed from our humanity because we adapted ourselves to live in an adventurous climate. The emphasis is more on personal achievement than familial coorperation, and the larger and farther reaching our systems of laws become, the less human we become. Our inherent need for conflict comes out in the popularity of competitive games. Striving against each other makes us stronger and smarter. A life without conflict is a weak life. Bonobos and chimpanzees are close enough related to mate, however their differing environments and physiology make them dissimilar enough to be considered different species. Physically, chimps are much more powerful and also more intelligent than bonobos due to conflict between and within chimp tribes, and predators that dont exist on the bonobos island. Consider that different populations of humanity have had similar splits. The Irish lived on an island and had a brutal culture of art and war that lasted for thousands of years. They fought against each other for dominance over their island and Irish men were bred to be warriors. This in contrast to the Bashada and other tribes in Ethiopia who have a culture of peaceful cooperation and a reliance on conflict resolution with violence as a last resort. These differing cultures came to be because of scarcity of resources. In the harsh desert climate, the more you can rely on your neighboring tribes the better chances you have for survival. In Ireland, resources were more plentiful and so the culture evolved to be one of dominance and submission. Families were tighter knit and there was less of a need to be at peace with neighboring clans.
Fast forward to today, where we have a culture where cooperation is enforced by the dominant powers, there is relatively little conflict with nature, then add this to our mixed genetics and it is easy to see why some people would rather spend their lives fighting against others in a video game. Some people need that conflict to survive. If they have nothing to fight against they sink like stones. Video game addiction isnt so much addiction to the game itself, but rather a need to express what our genetics need. Conflict.