[MUD-Dev] MEDIA: Virtual Dopers Crave High Scores

[David Kennerly]

In "Virtual Dopers Crave High Scores," Daniel Terdiman wrote:

> For example, in Galaxies, smuggler-class players traffic in
> spices, spells that increase characters' skills.

...

> In A Tale in the Desert, players discovered that by dosing their
> characters with a potion called Speed of the Serpent, they could
> gain extra waypoints, a valuable attribute allowing for instant
> travel ...

There's a disconnect.  The designer drugs :) mentioned above produce
superior play performance on the characters in the game; whereas,
common addictive drugs, such as nicotene, caffeine, diet pills,
cocaine, and heroin do not have anywhere near the benefits.  No
amount of cigarette smoking will get you an "A" on a test, make you
a subject matter expert (apart from cigarette-smoking), or teleport
you to the beach and back.  A more appropriate analogy might be if
there were a game consumable that temporarily seemed to increase
abilities on the client but actually decreased abilities on the
server.  The addiction, almost by definition, means a compulsive
activity that is irrational and self-destructive.

If you want to discuss a "virtual drug," one obvious analogy is an
implementation gambling.  A trip to any casino (or even just the
airport terminal) in Las Vegas is a far more frightening tour of
mindless behavior than a trip to an internet game room.  Each
gambling player is losing on average, yet they continue and
continue.  For example, suppose a potion that temporarily increased
a factor of combat effectiveness with a small probability yet
usually decreased combat effectiveness.  Depending on the
distribution it might be like video poker.  This is not dissimilar
from loot distributions.  But in all the MMOs I've played the net
result is a positive gain for the player.  If it were a zero-sum
game, the house, overall, loses at a fixed rate.  But it's not.  The
house mints the game tokens.

Of course the perennial argument is that the ladders are addictive.
I think it's a case of philological corruption.  A game may be
interesting.  A set of players participate obsessively and may
rationalize that the game is addictive.  Yet for another, and orders
of magnitude larger, set of players obsession does not develop.
Therefore, it is less meaningful to say the MMOG is addictive than
to say some other behavior, such as cell phone usage, is addictive.
All things that a population enjoys doing are not necessarily
addictive.  To do so ascribes too much responsibility to the object
and too little responsibility to the subject.

-- David Kennerly -- http://finegamedesign.com
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