More on levels, was Re: [MUD-Dev] What is an RPG?

[Mike Rozak]

>From Michael Hartman, J.D. (http://www.threshold-rpg.com):

>> Levels can also be used by people to compare their rankings. I'd
>> like to point out that the urge for one person to compare himself
>> to another, through social status, money, etc. is a trait that's
>> very common amongst teenagers, and present in a much smaller
>> percentage of adults. Most adults that I know don't care whether
>> someone else has more money or a bigger car.

> Woah. Hold it right there. This statement is so incredibly wrong
> it has stopped being mere opinion.

I disagree with your disagreement.

While I agree than some adults play "Keeping up with the joneses"
(KUWTJ ), my perception is that fewer adults are into this than
teenagers. (Your perception of this may depend upon where you live
and who you know, and your experiences as a teenager. I have no idea
where one would find authentic statistics on this matter.)

As an example, I'll talk about some of the people I knew at
Microsoft. In general, they had enough money to buy anything they
wanted, and could keep up with almost any Joneses.

  Person 1: Extreme materialism - One guy I knew bought a 6000
  sq. ft. house on 1 landscaped acre for himself. He had a couple of
  very expensive cars, and a really-really huge TV.

  Person 2: Other extreme - This guy was worth much more than person
  1, but drove aorund in a beat up car. I never visited his house.

Of course, two people do not make for statistics. A better metric
would be to compare the percentage of luxury/sports cars at a
Microsoft parking lot, to average-priced cars, to low-cost cars. (It
would be more accurate if you knew whose cars they were, and how
much they could afford, which I did. The same also applies to
houses.) Of the people that could afford a very expensive car or
house, I'd say 20%-30% had one. 60% had mid-priced (for Seattle),
and the rest had cheap cars. The same ratio goes for housing.

Of those 20%-30% that had an expensive stuff, 1/2 to 2/3 were using
their expensive car/house as a status symbol, the rest had the
expensive house/car because they enjoyed it. For example: One family
I knew (husband, wife, 2 kids) bought a large house, but sold it a
year later because they didn't like their neighbors. (Something
about snobby neighbors.) Instead, they moved onto an 8 acre farm
with a small log cabin. The husband drove a standard pickup, without
anything plush inside. (He actually had a hard time getting a pickup
without the extras.) I don't remember what the wife drove.

In my experience, the number of adults that KUWTJ is somewhere
between15%-20%. My recollection of teenagerhood was that 30%-50% of
teenagers were like this. The people I meet may not reflect the
norms of society in general. Materialism might be dependent upon
location; I suspect that people in cities, especially ones like LA,
Bay Area, or NYC, have a higher percentage of social-climbers. I
have found people in Darwin (outback Australia) to be less
materialistic than in Seattle (yuppie US).  Furthermore, I tend to
be less materialistic, so the people I know are also less
materialistic. (Full disclosure: I have an expensive house, but not
to KUWTJ, since my nearest neighbor is 500m away.)

Of course, even if my non-scientific observations are correct, KUWTJ
might not correlate with players comparing character levels to see
whose is best, but I suspect it does.

By the way: Person 1 (materialistic) was an avid game player, with
all the latest games. Person 2 only ever played mine-sweeper or
solitaire. This could be pure coincidence though, since only about
20% of the people I knew at Microsoft played commercial computer
games, not enough for even a non-scientific observation.

Ultimately, the percentage of adults that are into KUWTJ is not that
important to me. What is important is my suspicion that designing a
game that emphasizes levels/money attracts KUWTJ people, while
hiding/eliminating level/money metrics attracts non-KWTJ people.

Mike Rozak
http://www.mxac.com.au
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev