Do You Feel Like A Rock Star?

I've just finished reading the second chapter of Ted Castronova's new book "Synthetic Worlds", which is excellent so far (I especially like the acknowledgments - thanks Ted!).

Chapter 2 argues that online worlds are worthy of serious study because of the number people currently using them (10-20 million at the time) and the macro level effects on the real world that such a large number of people using virtual worlds will have. It then goes on to ask why more and more people are using virtual worlds and presents the situation as a migration: virtual worlds are a new frontier and people will migrate to them if they present a more attractive proposition than the real world.

This is interesting as I've often heard online games developers complaining that if they don't get their worlds right people can just leave, whereas real world leaders have a captive audience. Ted's book points out that this isn't really the case. Admittedly people will always need real world food and shelter, but in just about all other respects people can choose to live, work and socialise in virtual worlds rather than their own. The residents making a living in Second Life, the people who claim to live in Norath and the (mythical?) Chinese gold farmers being examples of groups that have already made that choice.

Some of the ways in which a lot of virtual worlds can seem more attractive than the real world are shared by Second Life: the ability to choose an appearance or gender of fly for example. However, Second Life is very different from most other virtual worlds when it comes to "providing a never-ending sense of increasing importance and power to the player" (to quote Ted quoting Dave Rickey). Whereas most virtual worlds always provide a wide range of achievable goals and constantly reward and congratulate players for their accomplishments, real life and Second Life do not.

I have a love/hate relationship with games like World of Warcraft: although I know the game is manipulating me, setting up ultimately pointless goals that I will easily achieve, it makes me feel great. I end up resenting the time I spend burning for no real gain, but crave the wonderful feeling of accomplishment that the game gives me.

Second Life is the opposite. Learning to build or script or animate or texture in Second Life are real achievements: if you become skillful enough in any of these skills you can earn a real world living from them either in Second Life or real life. If you become good enough, Second Life fame and real life fortune can come, but Second Life does very little to make you feel great along the way. Sometimes learning is rewarding in itself, but frequently it is frustrating and it's certainly a long way from the constant feeling of achievement that ticking off levels in other MMOs can give.

There has been quite a lot of discussion on this subject recently: Robin Hunicke comparing building a hat in Second Life to playing World of Warcraft, Prokofy Neva talking about how Second Life has become Second Job and Damion Schubert telling us that one of the lessons "Vegas Can Teach MMO Designers" is to make important customers feel like rock stars. So, do you feel like a rock star? Does it matter?

Comments

[Damion Schubert]

My lesson is misquoted, I believe. Vegas doesn't treat everyone like a rock star. However, they go out of their way to make 'the important people' feel like rock stars, those important people being the ones that gamble a lot.

MMOs should be doing the same as well. This goes doubly for content-creation MMOs where there is a very clear idea of the important people: those who make content other people find compelling.

[Jim Purbrick]

Hi Damion,

Sorry for the mix up (I must actually sort out a powerpoint viewer on this machine and read your slides rather than relying on the second hand versions of your talk that I picked up in Austin).

I think Second Life does a pretty good job of making the best content creators important feel like rock stars, you can make money out of it for a start! It's a very delicate thing for Linden Lab to do without being accused of favouritism and feting, though. I've spoken to a number of residents who miss the Linden picks in Second Life which they felt were a big acknowledgement of their efforts, but had to be removed as their were accusations of favouritism and Linden just didn't have all the resources to check everything out. The media industry that has sprouted up around Second Life still does a pretty good job of heaping praise on the best creators though.

Ren has talked about how other MMOs should treat guild leaders as special on Terra Nova due to the amount they enhance the game for others.

I still wonder whether Second Life needs to acknowledge residents efforts more though. Would recognising the absolute skill level of creators in Second Life as well as their relative skill be a good thing though? Even though I know there are lots of people better than me in WoW, I still felt good getting to level 24.

[Jim Purbrick]

Damion, I've corrected the mis-"quote", sorry about that.

[Torley Torgeson/Torley Wong]

Babbage, you have exactly hit the nail on a head with a cosmic hammer of the gods (Thor's even, only more steampunk) and this is exactly, precisely, undeniably why I spend so much time on Second Life: no, not to learn "job skills" as such, but to learn PEOPLE SKILLS. My hope is one day (provided my ears get better too) I will be able to have as much comfort being face-to-face with people offline as I do inworld, for longer durations of time, without feeling so drained, and just being... me.

On a related note, this reminds me of when I was asking some friends from The Matrix Online to come to SL... they asked "Why?" and I said, "Whelp, when you code in MxO, it's just make-believe, but when you code in SL, you're really scripting!" Hehehe.

I've learned a lot about humans so far in Second Life's safe-but-thrilling environment, and this is part of the reason for my rampant fanaticism. I think personally, the poles are flipped to me: SL is to me what "RL" is to most, and that's where I find my comfort.

[Damion Schubert]

No worries on the quoting issue.

As for your posts of favoritism, what I would argue is that we should fly more in the face of that. If someone is creating value for our game, we reward them, and if people cry favoritism, we point them the clear path to getting the same reward (which is creating value for the game).

The Neverwinter Nights guys told me privately that the hardest thing about the NWN experience was ensuring that the good content bubbles up to where you can find it. If player's first experience in SL or NWN is a half-finished penis sculpture, there's a not insignificant chance that they say 'the hell with this' and leave.

When I was working on my own player created content game at Ninjaneering, we put a lot of thought into how to do this. Our game was a Hollywood themed game, so having player 'reviewers' was a natural fit, and social favoritism became a social space enhancer instead of a detraction. We also were looking at having 'Player picks' and 'Critic's picks', a trick many weekly newspapers do in order to create multiple winners in each category. =)

I'm sure you guys have put a lot of thought into all of this. Still, in social spaces, I tend to agree heavily with Dr. Cat, who says that attention is the currency in these online spaces. Leveraging that can be more addictive than money.

My 2c.

[Jim Purbrick]

Damion, I completely agree that the top content creators should be found and rewarded.

The problem with the Linden picks was that it wasn't a clear path, some people would be rewarded, other people would create great stuff that would be missed simply because a Linden hadn't seen it. Like everything else in SL, finding the best content had to become a decentralised process run by residents.

My question really was whether rewards for absolute rather than relative progress should be included *as well*. Should you get a "ding" for linking 2 prims the same way as you might get a "ding" for killing 10 rats in other games?

[Alan_Kiesler]

Your trackback link is not working. Anyway:

http://sungak.net/weblog/archives/20

--Alan