Glory and Shame
by Jonathan Baron
The Problem with Glory
Okay, you know that shame is bad, but there are other emotions multi-player gaming can tap into that are quite positive; namely, shame's opposite, glory. Shame can feed glory - the greater the shame, the greater the feeling of glory. What did Conan say when asked what's good in life?
But there are plenty of opportunities for glory, or at least opportunities to reward players and make them feel good about themselves, that don't require the other players be humiliated. What then is the problem with glory? Ask yourself this question: what is the problem with money? Stressing glory, even when it comes without shaming others, emphasizes achievement over development. Although we may think we're motivated by recognition in multi-player games (and, the more competitive people would argue, in most of life's activities), the reason we keep coming back after we know what we're doing is due to our development in the social fabric of the game's community. The distinction can be confusing, and I will try to clear it up some. I'll start with the most recognized forms of today's true online games, how they handle issues of achievement versus development, and by extension, how gracefully they manage matters of glory and shame.
*Pure Meritocracy - the Ultimate Glory Game*
In the massively multi-player realm, this sort of game is best represented by the multi-player air combat simulation. This can also apply to some degree to the first person shooter, but I will restrict my comments to the air combat sim, as it has a long, established history. These games demand skills rare in human beings, skills that you're expected to master to become a force in the community. Earning respect here is not like religion, as devotion alone won't get you there. If you can't think in terms of three-dimensional geometry, and interpolate multiple vectors in your head, then you'll never achieve star status here. It doesn't matter how many hours you play. There is no cumulative character scheme. You cannot earn extra hit points for your fighter aircraft. Put another way, achievement and development are very closely coupled.
Glory and shame here are unambiguous. The two major examples of this genre broadcast notice of your demise, when you perish, to everyone in the game world at that time. One goes so far as to broadcast the game names of both the victor and the vanquished. Not surprisingly, both games have an unspoken ethic that approves of, encourages in fact, attacks with words as well as war planes. Finally, both player communities prefer to resolve major disputes through duels. If they could issue dueling challenges by slapping each other with gloves, they would. Yes, most of the players of these games are men.
That said, both have developed communities that have, over time, matured to include members that aren't hot shot fighter pilots. This is, in part, due to the spiritual influence of the underlying subject matter of these games; that is, aviation in an important and actual war that is still in living memory. In part this is due to the sheer age of the genre. Its first example, Air Warrior, is 12 years old. The point is that the ultimate depth and eventual development of elders, as opposed to just killers, in these communities was not a direct product of the design of these games originally.
*Multiplayer air combat sims like Air Warrior heavily emphasize glory and shame through achievement*
Is this genre successful? Few genres in computer gaming have been as enduring; indeed, in computer years, the genre dates back to the Pleistocene epoch. Is it a worthy model of multi-player game design? Yes, if you'd prefer a small, dedicated customer base. Ninety percent of the people who try these games don't hang around. Quite simply the glory and shame levels are so high, in particular the shame level for new players, that there will only be a mass market for this sort of game when society as a whole gives over to the worship of sadomasochism.
*Cumulative Character Games - The Devoted All Go to Heaven*
Best represented by the fantasy role-playing adventure genre, in these games you can get there through devotion alone. Nobody, regardless of native skill, intellect, reasoning ability, or reflexes can be anything more than meat in these games until they've put in time acquiring attributes an qualities bestowed by the game itself. Being smart can help you become a force to be reckoned with faster, but you have to pay your dues.
Although at first these may seem like purely achievement-oriented games, probably because you usually spend your first few hundred hours acquiring skills and game stuffs. They do evolve, however, into development games. Players either acquire so much stuff that it loses its meaning and utility, or they carve out a niche for themselves, deciding, in effect, to leave the rat race behind them. In either case, players will eventually develop beyond, or in spite of, the reliance of these games on game-created goodies to drive their game mechanics. Although most examples of the genre are established in early medieval settings, online FRP design is dominated not by the pre-Christian mythology of swords and sorcery, but by pure, raw, unseasoned capitalism. You are who you are because of what you've got, what you've acquired, what you can afford to buy.
*Multiplayer role playing games like Ultima Online focus on development*
But, like the occasional over-wealthy soul, player communities move from achievement to development when they learn there's more to life than money, and you're not something special because you have more of it. Just like the meritocracy-based game, cumulative character games over the years develop rich and warm societies that value their members and bring out the best in them. And just like the meritocracy game, they do so for reasons that seldom have anything at all to do with the intended design of their creators. To-date the only cumulative character online game that was ever designed, from the very first, to create a mature, multi-tiered society where money didn't matter was the original Multiplayer Battle Tech which is, alas, no more.
Next: Achievement Vs. Development
