The Greatness of the Game

Games infuse our world. People infuse our would. Thus it is no surprise to encounter people who think they are bigger than the game itself: sport players using drugs, politicians taking bribes, priests molesting children, starlets breaking the law. Karatechop.

Karatechop deserved his ban. Regardless of Blizzard’s predicate acts, regardless of the innocence of his motivation, the fundamental truth is that the actual results of Karatechop’s behavior violated the core integrity of the game. If he had killed fourteen boars rather than fourteen bosses no would have noticed. It is true that comparatively speaking boars are challenging to lower level characters and using Martin Fury to kill them would have been as insulting to such low level characters as killing bosses are to raiders. But the effect of Karatechop’s actions on his fellow players is not the correct metric; the best metric is the effect of his actions on the game itself. The truth is that bosses are more important than boars; the game is designed that way. Imagine the world without boars. Now imagine it without bosses. From loot, to achievements, to quests; a core element to Warcraft is killing bosses. Boars are a minor sideshow. When Karatechop went around one-shotting bosses he didn’t just hit the game, he critted it.

Moreover, Karatechop’s account is not essential to the game. I realize that this is a pill some players don’t want to swallow. They have invested much time, energy, and passion into their characters and the idea that their account can be cut off in a flash without recourse is disconcerting. There seems to be an unspoken agreement that banning is a severe punishment. It’s not. It’s not if the metric is the impact on the game itself. The harsh truth is that the loss of Karatechop will have a negligible impact upon the game as a whole.

The Alternative

Before I played Warcraft I played several games based upon a micro-transaction business model. Nominally, such games are free; there is no cost to log-in to kill a few monsters and do a few quests. However, to progress in the game and experience all the content, you must buy in-game items (pets, gear, mounts, etc.) with real money. The more money you spend the more of the game that is accessible to you and thus the stronger you grow.

One consequences of the micro-transaction business model is that the people who are best at the game are those who are willing to spend the most real life money. It is common for the top players in popular games to spend $5000 a year. I once spent more money in three months than I did in an entire year playing the World of Warcraft.

Believe it or not the sheer amount of money I spent on micro-transaction games was not what caused me to quit them. The bigger problem with the micro-transaction business model is the way it warps developer’s priorities. In your average micro-transaction game, only about 5%-10% of the people actually pay. Most players are free loaders. When it comes to customer service, bug fixes, game design, and anything else you can think of, money talks. Wait, it’s more like screaming.

Playing favorites

The skewing of competition based upon the possession of real life monetary resources is the inevitable consequence of the pure micro-transaction model because such disparity is precisely the source of profit. If the real life disparity in monetary resources didn’t exist, the developers couldn’t afford to support the 95% of the population that is free loading. Imagine Blizzard trying to support the game if only 5% of the people paid $13 a month and everyone else played free; they’d shut down within the week. The only way a micro-transaction game can afford to carry the freeloaders is because a minority is funding it. And when that minority cries, you bet your ass the developers are going to listen; that’s their income talking.

In a micro-transaction model the marginal loss of a player is binary. If the player is a freeloader, the marginal loss is almost non-existent; if the player is a payer, the marginal loss can be significant. In plain language, the developers play favorites. But in a subscription model every player is equally dispensable; the lose is unitary. The loss of any one player has a negligible impact on the game as a whole. Each marginal loss is the same loss since everyone is paying the same monthly fee. A subscription model offers no incentive to the developer to play favorites; the micro-transaction model requires it. The net result is that developers funded by a subscription model are driven, consciously or not, to put the needs of the game first. Consistently catering to a minority can only hurt and never help. On the other hand, the management and expansion of a micro-transaction game is molded to suit the needs of the paying customers.

When you get right down to it all people who pay to play on-line games are engaged in “rent a developer;” what the developers see as good for the game bears a direct correlation to who is paying for it. In this sense the only difference between a subscription game and a micro-transaction game is the diversity of the income stream. Yet that diversity matters, it matters enormously. Because the greater the diversity of income streams the more dispensable each income stream becomes; the less one is beholden to any single interest group; the more one is inclined to do what is best for the game as a whole. It is for this reason that a game where each player individually is dispensable but where the game itself is indispensable is a better game to be playing than one where the game itself is dispensable but a few individual players are not.

The greatness of the game

When the whole Martin Fury debacle came about my reaction was to thank god, once again, that I was not back playing my former games. Because I know what would have happened if Karatechop had been one of those players spending thousands of dollars a year in a micro-transaction game. Absolutely nothing. The developers wouldn’t have dared. The impact on the integrity of the game be damned; the impact on the bottom line is what would have mattered.

For all the incantations of fun, Karatechop committed the sin of hubris. He put his needs above the needs of the game itself. That was intolerable. Just as it was intolerable when Paris Hilton thought she could drive around drunk without consequence or when baseball players thought they could take banned drugs without fear of the consequences. It's the developer's job to play god, not mine or yours.

If all you want is selfish greatness, go play a micro-transaction game that for $5000 a year allows you to play god to the developers. If you want to be playing a great game, however, you need a different perspective. For a being of greatness stands on top and looks down upon the masses, lets go with a Martin Fury, one shots the bosses. The greatness of being is standing on the bottom looking up, conscious of the miracle of creation towering above you, perceiving how disposable you truly are. That’s when you see the greatness of the game.