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Beyond Management: Considering Participatory Design and Governance in Player Culture

November 7th, 2006 (Visited 2504 times) Tags:

I hadn’t seen this paper by T.L. Taylor until Michael Chui pointed it out — entitled “Beyond Management: Considering Participatory Design and Governance in Player Culture,” it discusses the question of whether and how and when online world design can embrace the notion of true player participation and collaboration in the game design process.

I suspect there are some designers reading this in a state somewhere between strong dismay and abject horror even as we speak.

I do urge reading the paper, but I think I might as well take a moment to take a stand and say that long term, significant involvement from players in the design process is inevitable. And this is because long term we will realize more and more that the design process here is of virtual places, not merely of entertainment product. The operation of the service, long term, is more like the true role of government: work towards the common weal (not governance which implies something different).

Back in a post a while back, also in response to T. L., I said,

If we wanted to get highly blue-sky about it, we ought to pursue the House of Commons metaphor, and introduce a means for players to select their representatives to things like Team Leads or Correspondent Programs, rather than the devs choosing them…

This doesn’t mean that players will be in charge of picking the stats on the Breastplate of Mighty Pecs, or anything. That’s not how it works in the real world either, after all.

But it does mean that I believe that sometime soon, we’re going to be seeing worlds surrender some of the implicit authority that server ownership grants, and inviting more direct player participation in design and administration. Maybe some of ‘em will even adopt rights documents… we’ll see.

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Faith wrote on November 8th, 2006 at 12:43 am:

[...] Comments [...]

Keeping on track - player - dev - gaming design relationship wrote on December 5th, 2006 at 9:43 pm:

[...] http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/11/07/beyond-management-considering-participatory-design-and-governance-in-player-culture/#more-790 QuoteI hadn�t seen this paper by T.L. Taylor until Michael Chui pointed it out � entitled �Beyond Management: Considering Participatory Design and Governance in Player Culture,� it discusses the question of whether and how and when online world design can embrace the notion of true player participation and collaboration in the game design process.http://firstmonday.org/issues/special11_9/taylor/index.htmlQuoteAbstractThis article explores relationships between players and the owners of the massively multiplayer online games (MMOG) they inhabit. Much of the language around these large scale communities currently focuses on �management.� Viewing these complex social systems as essentially mechanical in nature has led to a preoccupation with creating or retrofitting systems which can be constantly monitored, tuned, regulated, and controlled. Though the language often turns to things like �cheating,� �griefing,� and �disruption of the magic circle,� the underlying anxiety about unruliness, transgressiveness, and the emergent nature of these spaces as sites of culture needs to be more fully addressed, as well as the early formulations of the �imagined player� that shape the design process. Players are central productive agents in game culture and more progressive models are needed for understanding and integrating their work in these spaces. Drawing on the long tradition of participatory design this piece explores some alternative frameworks for understanding the designer/player relationship are proposed.ContentsManaged Worlds and Productive PlayersFormalism, Representation, and the Invisible PlayerConsidering Participatory Design and GovernanceBeyond Management [...]

Cael said on November 8th, 2006 at 12:46 am:

I think the right of property might cause issues in that case. People expect it, and it isn’t there. Most EULAs explicitly remove it, in fact.

Andy Havens said on November 8th, 2006 at 5:04 am:

Great article. Thanks for the post.

One of the things that’s been… puzzling… to me over the past few years is the lack of emergence of a massively-multiplayer, massively-modded online RPG of some kind. Not hacked… but expressly mod-able using tools provided by the publisher.

When we have fantastically successful examples of modding in non-MMO games like Halo, Quake, Doom and Unreal Tournament… even going back to Total Annihilation… I don’t get the gap. SL is clearly “all one big mod,” sure. But when you’ve got however many servers WoW requires now… and a game like Guild Wars, where every venture into the wild is its own instance… wouldn’t it make sense, from a developmental standpoint, to have some core servers, shards and instances that, yes, stay home with the original content for the players who want to play it straight. But then have variously wigged-out areas where Our Gang can go all “Lord of the Flies?”

I know that’s not exactly what Taylor is talking about; he means overall player governance of the system, I believe. Not “shard control.”

One thing that I noticed in the paper, though. Not much of a recognition that the game publisher has financial obligations to meet, both to employees and shareholders. As a player — who is a customer, and the word “customer” chiefly occurs in the paper in relation to the term “customer service” — you do have a voice in the management of any product/service you purchase or subscribe to. You have the right to communicate to the provider; the right to legal redress if they don’t provide a service in the way advertised; the right to a refund in many cases; and the ultimate right to take your business elsewhere. When I but a ticket to a movie, I have exactly $6.50 interest in the quality of that film. I can watch it and post a review, tell my friends to see it or not see it, rate it on IMDB, etc. etc. In no way, however, do I have the same rights as the producers, director or other principals involved in the production.

And in many cases, neither do the actors, writers, stylists, gaffers, Foley artists, etc. who actually make the movies. Yes, they have a bit more to say in some cases than me in my one seat… but they don’t get to drive the production schedule, make plot changes, arrange for new locations, etc. Why? Because the producers, owners and director — the people who MAKE the product — are trained to do so.

I go back to a statement one of my college professors made: “Because everybody can write, everybody thinks they can write.” In marketing, what I’ve found, too, is that because everybody watches ads, everyone seems to think they know something about marketing. Wrong. They know something about consuming advertising. I, myself, know how to eat. That in no way makes me a decent cook, certainly not a chef.

Being a participant in a virtual world or MMO is a great thing. It *feels* like you are involved in lots of activities that are very interactive. Many of them provide, though, a rough approximation of freedom. Or some kinds of freedom, within very specific UI and contextual boundaries.

Now… As much as these activities are specific to the game and enjoyment of it, within the game itself… there should be interaction and player-publisher relationships of all kinds. Sure. As Taylor points out (I’m rephrasing), good game companies listen to their players.

Player designed assets within the magic circle? I’m all for it. Character governance of character issues, again, within the narrative structure of the game? Fun, fun, fun. I’ll volunteer to be the first avie hanged for treason, just to get that terror out of my system.

If, however, players want what we call “a seat at the table” in lots of marketing books, they have to be ready to pony up. No matter what that table is, there is a price. If I want to simply pay my $15/month and play the game, and then have as much of a say as a guy (like Raph or Taylor) who has spent his life on this stuff… nope. I gots to earn my bones.

How does that happen? Taylor doesn’t mention that, at least not so far as I can see. In a publicly held company, you vote your shares. Is that what we’re talking about? Some kind of “players’ union?” Or something more fuzzily organic? Or a guild structure?

It’s nice to talk about. Yes. As a player with (I think) some good ideas, some talent for writing (ibid) but no formal programming training in gaming worlds, I’d like to have a voice in the industry. That would be cool. Sure. As a marketing dude, though, if my board came to me and asked me about my opinion on balancing “good customer management” (as Taylor calls the current situation at its best) with “heavy user design influence and social participation” (or whatever we’d call it), I would counsel to keep doing the former… and call it the latter for PR purposes. IE, speak nice-nice, try some new stuff, cover yer arse and leave the strong EULA in place.

JuJutsu said on November 8th, 2006 at 7:42 am:

One thing that I noticed in the paper, though. Not much of a recognition that the game publisher has financial obligations to meet, both to employees and shareholders. As a player — who is a customer, and the word “customer” chiefly occurs in the paper in relation to the term “customer service” — you do have a voice in the management of any product/service you purchase or subscribe to. You have the right to communicate to the provider; the right to legal redress if they don’t provide a service in the way advertised; the right to a refund in many cases; and the ultimate right to take your business elsewhere.

Yup.

When I but a ticket to a movie, I have exactly $6.50 interest in the quality of that film. I can watch it and post a review, tell my friends to see it or not see it, rate it on IMDB, etc. etc. In no way, however, do I have the same rights as the producers, director or other principals involved in the production.

True for you as an individual retail customer but the world changes when the customer has market power. Walmart may not have legal rights over the activities of its vendors but it frequently has muscle and uses it. An individual player like me has neither rights nor market power but let us be clear about the driver: it’s lack of market power that makes the difference.

What I wonder about [given my biases] is whether or not “heavy user design influence and social participation” is something that could be used by a company to create a differentiated product that would make a bucketload of money. When I asked Andy his opinion that’s the big question. If he says no, that’s fine. If some other company does it then I’d have a second round of rather more pointed questions

BTW kudos to Michael Chui for bringing the article up, it was a very interesting read and I’m going to read it again several times.

Prokofy Neva said on November 8th, 2006 at 8:37 am:

And this is because long term we will realize more and more that the design process here is of virtual places, not merely of entertainment product. The operation of the service, long term, is more like the true role of government: work towards the common weal (not governance which implies something different).

Absolutely. As people spend more and more time online, they will want it to become more and more like their real-life communities where they aren’t paying fealty to lords and cringing before Kings and hobbled in their creativity and freedom in elitist, medieval guild economies. And they will want to port into virtuality some of the institutions they hammered out over centuries in meatworld, like representative government (as much as tekkies would like to pretend this system is corrupt, and code a program even more corrupt in their favour which doesn’t even have a “no” vote).

I’m glad these truths are now being generated in academic papers. Any system that has devs chosing some players over others is as corrupt and potentially evil as a system of a tyrant chosing overlords or quislings to run people against their will through force.

I don’t think all games will change in this direction, as some people will enjoy having the game gods do everything for them, make everything, and control them thoroughly, even while they bitch about it. But the rest of us will demand — and get — more flexibility in worlds.

Andy Havens said on November 8th, 2006 at 8:39 am:

@Jujutsu:

Indeed — and as your marketing guy, I would be advising you to look for ways to tap into user-created content, value, participation, socialization, grouping, tagging, marketing and service. Words I might avoid, however, are “ownership” and “governance,” unless a model can be found whereby the risks of those issues are as distributed as the benefits.

Michael W. said on November 8th, 2006 at 10:02 am:

I just bought nwn2. A game that essentially allows you to build your own persistent world (for example check out http://www.cerea2.com)

They are hiring world builders, quest designers, weapon crafters, dialogue writers… so there is a fairly strong level of user involvement.

However, in professionaly produced MMORPGs, where companys are now spending 50 million, I would guess players would expect a certain level of immersion, even when it came to self governance.

I think Raph came to a similar conclusion when he mentioned he wanted to integrate web forums into SWG’s “Holocron”

People want to be able to suggest, argue, protest, and praise the world they spend 6 hours a day in, its only natural and inevitable. How developers do that will be the important thing, and the ones that can do it while still giving a sense of immersion will be the winners.

Not everyone who plays MMORPGs like to RP, but I would assume 99% of players enjoy escape from real world activities…I think designers need to bring imagination to every aspect of their game.

Most players don’t read the forums, unless you really like the sound of your own voice, bored at work, or enjoying trolling, they aren’t very fun.

StGabe said on November 8th, 2006 at 11:24 am:

I’m not sure I completely agree with that.

Many businesses such as Starbucks or Disneyland provide real world places and sell a service that is fundamentally based on the nature of that place. They don’t have consumer-elected representatives.

Arguably there is a voting process and it occurs without the need to elect representatives. It happens through people simply picking the places they are interested in and spending money there.

I do think that we will see some games offering SOME player governance but I’m not sure that it is “inevitable” as a dominant model. I think that players respect and like having a lot of authority in one trusted source and that diluting the “vision” of a world by allowing equal access to it can be damaging.

Allen Sligar said on November 8th, 2006 at 1:30 pm:

This article should be read in conjunction with Amy Jo Kim’s book. Really great stuff, nice find Michael…

“Indeed — and as your marketing guy, I would be advising you to look for ways to tap into user-created content, value, participation, socialization, grouping, tagging, marketing and service. Words I might avoid, however, are “ownership” and “governance,” unless a model can be found whereby the risks of those issues are as distributed as the benefits. ”

Also good advice from Andy. The issue is setting up the mechanisims for user driven communities that are equitable, logical, fair and based upon level of contribution and dont suffer from people “gaming” the system. I think a stong sense of community standards (something Amy goes into pretty well) is important.

Michael Chui said on November 8th, 2006 at 2:28 pm:

Andy: T.L. is a she. =)

I had some vaguer ideas on this subject back here where I talked about elections and appointments. I haven’t given it a whole lot of thought, since my work isn’t moving in the same direction, but there’s a fine tradition of copying previous work in setting up governments; no reason not to apply the same thinking to virtual worlds and see if it can work.

The reasoning, in essence, is that while yes, somebody has to have a finger on the off-switch, why not let that person be elected? And as compensation, divest an amount of the subscription fees (read: taxes, in a normal gov’t) to pay them for their time. Like the office of POTUS, you don’t take that job for the money; the money is make it so you don’t avoid the job simply because something else pays better.

This was the original announcement of the First Monday issue: http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2006/09/first_monday_sp.html The third, umm… third of it isn’t out yet. I’d say I’m waiting patiently, but it took me a while to actually come around to reading the second segment.

Amaranthar said on November 8th, 2006 at 3:17 pm:

It depends on the MMO, but I think allowing players to be involved is a recipe for real trouble in a MMO that’s designed as a “world”. In something like SL it might be a great idea though (but I’m not very well equiped to say on that kind of product).

Look at UO’s history. The problems they had with players, the seer programs (in various forms, and include the volunteer newbie helper program here), and even look at the few but important problems with GMs. And we don’t have to limit this to UO’s problems, I guess. It’s not just the problems that are real, either. Player suspicions and jealousy come into play, big time.

My point is that inviting players into the system is going to invite all the problems already seen into the system itself. Accusations, real and immagined, will be multiplied.

My personal opinion is that game producers/developers should stay far away from the players. As far away as possible. Just put the game out there, listen to feedback, and do what is deemed important for that game’s design and ideal.

Amaranthar said on November 8th, 2006 at 3:20 pm:

Adding to that last, unless of course the game is all about player input (i.e SL), which isn’t good for a “world” style game IMO.

MikeRozak said on November 8th, 2006 at 3:55 pm:

Here’s an alternate question: Rather than will particpatory design happen, ask, how will participatory design be managed/limited/quaranteened?

On one hand: Disneyland and Starbucks don’t allow customers to spraypaint grafitti everywhere or allow individual guilds to take control of the Pirates of the Carribean ride.

A differnet take: NWN2 lets players create their own worlds; Players are gods in their own worlds, but once they enter someone else’s worlds their actions are more restricted.

And still another: SL gives property owners control over their plots of land, although objects from outside the plots can still be allowed entry.

And another: IRE lets players control cities/guilds.

Evangolis said on November 8th, 2006 at 11:41 pm:

I’m a bit put off by the repeated qualification of the ‘disruptor’ definition. Frankly, I think that what the article seems to be driving at is really encompassed by the ‘disruptor’; it simply fails to recognize that the ‘disruptor’ can be a good influence, although they will more commonly be a bad. In the world, most disruptors wind up in jail, but a few wind up in history.

Disruptors are trying to change the game world to fit their vision (albiet often a selfish one); this seems to me also to be the role the article is advocating for player governance. While I agree there is value to be gained for all by increasing player inputs to a world, I don’t think this value is without cost, and that cost will be greater latitude for disruption. See the choices SL has made regarding the regulation of object creation for an example of the tradeoffs.

Evangolis said on November 8th, 2006 at 11:43 pm:

For some reason, the link I meant to post didn’t. Here is another try.

Raph said on November 9th, 2006 at 12:10 am:

I fixed it, Evangolis.

David (Tal) said on November 9th, 2006 at 5:18 am:

There are three things that players usually ask for:

Features
Content
Mechanics

Features are things they would like to be able to do that they can’t. Not all features may fit well in the “game” part of the VW. For example, “I want to raise my enemy’s corpse from the dead and have him serve me as a minion instead of respawning” probably won’t work. But sometimes they can have a lot of merit.

Content is additional things for players to do or use. So content requests usually take the form of “I wish we had more of X” Some content requests are big, some are small.

Mechanics request usually take the form of asking for a change to a system or mechanic that someone is unhappy with. Sadly, these usually end up being cries for nerfs. “His class is too powerful!” “My profession isn’t as good”. Still, on very rare occasions you get well thought-out requests for changes that would make the whole system better.

I think the first step in participatory design is that you really need to be listening to your players and then closing the feedback loop. If someone comes on to your forums and says “I have this cool idea about guild halls” then that post deserves a reply somewhere, even if just to say “a bunch of people have asked about guild halls, which we think is a cool idea, so here’s our thoughts on the topic based on what you all have posted” The trick is to engage your players. It’s hard because players outnumber developers and developers have work to do too. But if you have a community team that can do the bulk of it for you, and distill the ideas down so that your developers can then make posts or replies or blog entries or whatnot about those ideas, your players will overall be happier because you’re listening..

It’s still up to the development team to actually decide what changes to implement and how, but it lets the players know that you care what they think, and that you understand that they’re the ones playing your game and probably know somewhat what they’re talking about. And even if you end up having to say “no” to some things, the point is at least you said it, and hopefully you backed it up with reasons why it has to be a no: “Would require new art/require new code/unbalance this other thing/be too easily abused/ruin all the developer’s wife or husband faction/etc.”

Allen Sligar said on November 10th, 2006 at 11:11 am:

@Amaranthar

“Look at UO’s history. The problems they had with players, the seer programs (in various forms, and include the volunteer newbie helper program here), and even look at the few but important problems with GMs.”

As a former UO Counselor my experiance was that most of the people I worked with we’re pretty solid, this was one of the seriously good player empowering programs Ive ever seen in a game. However I did hear of some questionable behavior on other shards….

Helping Roles
IMO giving players a role, that allows them to help other players is a really great way to reduce CS overhead, gives those players a different experiance, and gives those players not in the program something to aspire to.

World Roles
Players whos goal is to engage the world in a “political” sense should be allowed, there needs to be a mechanic that supports this and does not impinge upon other players game play or lets them opt out. Say something like a player “citizenship” mechanic, (ala Rome) where a player opts in they are bound to certain mechanics, like taxation, ownership in towns/fuedal lands of property, and commerce.

This would allow players taking on world roles to build faction and support and etc from people who opted into the mechanic and not those who are uninterested and found it undesirable.

As a player rose in rank in a world role they would engage in more activities that allowed them to influence the game world. But always be reliant on the support of other players, either directly or indirectly.

Just some thoughts.

Andy Havens said on November 11th, 2006 at 2:19 pm:

I just attended a really nice conference a couple days ago with examples of encouraging user involvement and participation through various social networking platforms. One of the best take-aways for me was the idea of providing specific, guided things for users to do, rather than “carte blanche” spaces or areas where expectations were not set out at all; ie, limit the ways in which users’ interactions were solicited, but not the reactions within those parameters.

For example, one company that presented hosted contests related to health challenges where individuals or teams posted ideas for ways to effect grass-roots changes in healthcare issues. The forums, blogs, wikis, etc. related to this activity were ALL relegated to conversations and resources that had to do with the contest entries. Replies to those entries were OK, as were rating, discussions, etc. But there were no free-floating topics that weren’t somehow linked back to the *goal* of this program — coming up with grassroots solutions to healthcare problems.

Most game forums and player-government ideas I’ve heard of seem a bit too “horizontal” compared to this. Not enough purpose. Which is fine if you’re running a whole, real country where you’ve got everything from roads to schools to the army to the FDA to worry about. The root goals of a game-spaces should (I hope) be fundamentally less complex. If that’s the case, then player-focused management or involvement should be aimed at those goals that will increase player satisfaction, pretty much. If that (let’s short-hand it as “fun”) can be quantified for a particular game in certain terms, then perhaps player involvent might increase overall fun.

But it would need to be done within the mode of the game, wouldn’t it? For example, simply voting on new features might *feel* like a simple method of player involvement. The publisher lists a bunch of possible new features and lets players vote on which should be prioritized. But that is involvement outside the magic circle, eh? My character isn’t changing the world… I’m changing the laws of physics… Is that why I play games?

I’m not sure. I don’t want my favorite authors to write books the way I’d write books. I just want them to write *more*. I don’t want my favorite games to be playable in a way that I’d design them… I just want my characters to be able to *do more.* Not more of what I (Andy) would do, but more of what they (Mr Undead Guy) would do. And I’m not sure that my (me player) involvement in governance will give me (my character) more stuff to do.

Beyond Management: Considering Participatory Design and Governance in Player Culture

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