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Study: Vanity on the rise among college students - CNN.com

February 27th, 2007 (Visited 11686 times) Tags:

So a little while back, Jeff Freeman said (in his inimitable politically incorrect way):

MMORPGs are real close to being like the Special Olympics already, but I think we ought go the other way with them. Away from everyone is special.

…while still allowing everyone to be special in their own way (or one of eight ways).

And I was reminded of it today, because I read an article over on CNN that says that students taking the Narcissistic Personality Inventory have shown a huge increase in self-centeredness.

…students’ NPI scores have risen steadily since the current test was introduced in 1982. By 2006, they said, two-thirds of the students had above-average scores, 30 percent more than in 1982.

So I just pose the questions: should we be thinking about whether our games are teaching people the wrong thing here? Can we even make a successful MMO that doesn’t lie to people and tell them they are all special?

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Patronizing the Player…

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Reader Comments

Allen Sligar said on February 27th, 2007 at 12:36 pm:
“Can we even make a successful MMO that doesn’t lie to people and tell them they are all special?”

I think perhaps you should have a long conversation with a High School principle, whos got maybe 8-15 years of experiance, ask them how successful they think a game would be that DOES not reinforce generation Y’s predisposition toward thinking they are all unique little snowflakes.

Why would you want to create a game that prematurely illustrates thier mid-life crisis, you’d be stealing their parents thunder (baby boomers)
Tom Welch said on February 27th, 2007 at 1:19 pm:
“Can we even make a successful MMO that doesn’t lie to people and tell them they are all special?”

Maybe it’s the games I play or maybe it’s the people I know, but as I see it the lie is one that everyone figures out anyway. The exception to this is probably the case where the gamer in question really is “special”.

I guess I am getting pretty cynical about MMOs these days. You see people in-game with uber loot, tons of gold, and titles galore. What does that mean? Well, if the player sporting those goods are proud of having attained them they are probably a preening fool. What did they do that was so special? They showed up. Show up enough and you’ll get a cookie. Show up enough and you’ll get a nice drop. Heck, show up enough to the right places and you’ll get a diploma.

If games really do approach the consumer with the notion that they are special then I think ultimately the same games prove to the player that in the end they aren’t special at all. If you bought a game promising to reveal you for the hero then you’ll learn the truth a year later when you are one of hundreds of level-capped, somewhat equally geared, cookie-cutter replicas of the same limited toon everyone is capable of becoming.

Or maybe as a player I am so narcissistic the accomplishments of others in a make-believe game don’t matter to me. I’d believe that, except my accomplishments don’t mean anything either.
PJMRM said on February 27th, 2007 at 1:38 pm:
Just nerf the hell outta them all! That is a good debasing experience
Tom Welch said on February 27th, 2007 at 2:51 pm:
D’oh. I did it again. Addressed a direct question without supplying an answer.

To the first question, if you want to think about what you are teaching players go ahead, but I don’t think it does any good. Player experiences are so varied that I’d wager nearly every one of them walks away with a different lesson learned. And in the long run that lesson is, “This bores me now. I’m going to do something different.”

To the second, yes. I believe you can make MMOs that don’t deceive the player into thinking they are special. Maybe my understanding is wrong, but all those Habbo Hotel-alikes are exactly that. They are a place to be. A place to exist that is different. They don’t try to deceive you into thinking you are artificially special. You create your own specialness out of what you bring with you. Or maybe those games are rife with “I got the most junk in my house. And I got it first.” mentality. But regardless of Habbos, MMOs can be honest. Those would be the virtual worlds that producers think (or perhaps know) just won’t sell enough to make the investment worthwhile.
moo said on February 27th, 2007 at 3:01 pm:
Games don’t make people think they are ’special’. It’s escapist fantasy, the whole point is to be the star of the show, to NOT be like real life where we are all well aware of how not-special we are.

I think the problems of Generation Y have more to do with bad parenting, both parents working all the time, and giving kids all sorts of fantastic stuff like $600 video game consoles without making them earn it.

If today’s adults want less self-centered kids, they will have to spend less time watching television and more time raising responsible kids. (Like that will happen). Kids learn from the example of their parents and from the hardships and experiences they go through. It also wouldn’t hurt to get rid of the “self-esteem” crap that passes for schooling these days, and teach them to value hard work, accomplishment and lifelong learning instead. http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html?seenIEPage=1
Morgan Ramsay said on February 27th, 2007 at 3:24 pm:
Raph asked:

Can we even make a successful MMO that doesn’t lie to people and tell them they are all special?

Fight Club tells the audience that they are not special; unfortunately, they are the audience. They are watching everything happen on screen. They know they can walk out at any time. They know they can choose to not listen. They have the power of choice whereas the characters in the linear screenplay do not.

“Unfortunately, narcissism can also have very negative consequences for society, including the breakdown of close relationships with others,” he said.

I think a lot of researchers are short-sighted in their conclusions. Science fiction has told stories for decades about the breakdown of close relationships due to technology. Does anyone really believe that television and the Internet are naturally conducive to close relationships? Most Web-enabled people in Western society, at least, sit in cubicles—at home. The breakdown of close relationships is not a threat to society; in fact, it’s an evolution, and the future of mankind. Unless, of course, someone somewhere creates something sometime that brings people together to form close relationships.

I remember a science fiction about space explorers landing on an alien homeworld. On this world they find a strange structure with no doors. The rooms inside the structure are connected only by teleporters. Similarly, our Internet provides windows to other worlds, to other people, but inside our cubicles we need not actually travel anywhere or physically meet any people.

We just look out windows.

The study asserts that narcissists “are more likely to have romantic relationships that are short-lived, at risk for infidelity, lack emotional warmth, and to exhibit game-playing, dishonesty, and over-controlling and violent behaviors.”

Again, technology. eHarmony and Darkyria are two of many social networks made for short-lived relationships. They are not even the worst of them. There are networks made specifically for sexual encounters. There is even Red Light Center, an MMO game for adults and cybersex. How about teledildonics? Or simply dildonics? Or supermarket self-checkout computers? People seem to be naturally inclined to create technology that limits the degree of personal contact necessary for societal interaction.

“We’re encouraged a lot to be individuals and go out there and do what you want, and nobody should stand in your way,” Kader said. “I can see goals and ambitions getting in the way of other things like relationships.”

Unless goals and ambitions concern relationships.

“People are worried about themselves — but in the sense of where are they’re going to find a place in the world,” she said. “People want to look their best, have a good time, but it doesn’t mean they’re not concerned about the rest of the world.”

Besides, some of the responses on the narcissism test might not be worrisome, Dalane said. “It would be more depressing if people answered, ‘No, I’m not special.”‘

That says it all right there. I’d say the study indicates that today’s college students have a more positive outlook and are more concerned about the significance of their lives. That’s a good thing.
Psychochild said on February 27th, 2007 at 3:53 pm:
The success of WoW has lead people to believe that you can’t challenge the player. I think there’s some truth in this, in that people just want a feel-good entertainment experience in our games rather than something that will challenge them. Anything keeping someone from nearly instant gratification is derisively labeled as “grind” and pronounced as the doom of your game. Not that we should have grind for grind’s sake, but sometimes it’s nice to know that you persevered and conquered an obstacle; even if that obstacle is just an artificial construct in an online game.

And, as Allen Sligar points out above, I think the audience developed this way outside of our games. So, I don’t think we necessarily “teach” narcissism, but we probably do reinforce it with most of the games. But, that doesn’t change that fact that people often see failure as not fun and therefore not something that should be part of a game.

Not an easy issue for game developers who want to make a difference.
Aaron said on February 27th, 2007 at 10:05 pm:
The problem here seems to be the definition of “special”. It is certainly viable for an MMOG to not treat all of its player’s like living legends. Obviously, different players enjoy these games for different reasons.

There are plenty of folks who enjoy MMOGs primarily for the virtual society and virtual world. Those people don’t need to feel like heroes. Why is crafting, and now diplomacy, recognized as a viable inclusion in these games? These generally offer no hope of heroism (though players do occasionally become well-known merchants/suppliers). Players focused on virtual society and exploration just need their characters to demonstrate a capacity for significant individuality.

In SWG, I didn’t care that the creatures my Creature Handler brought back to the cities were sub-optimal in battle, as long as I had something to offer by showing people creatures they’d never seen or were hard to capture. And my character skulked, through one of the mood emotes, which offered him outward personality. How often has SWG’s intial character customization been praised by players; particularly in regard to non-powerful factors, like clothing? A large portion of MMOG players are attracted by expressions of individuality not directly related to power and overcoming traditional obstacles.

Even with combat… How popular were/are the games like Star Wars: Battlefront? That’s one of my favorites of all time, and I wasn’t some grand hero (referring to the first game, not the sequel). I was just one of a grand army. Granted, that was an action game and not an adventure game, but we can again look to SWG for that. Similarly, I was one of countless Stormtroopers. But that didn’t bother me, as long as there was no one Stormtrooper character and adventure. I didn’t enjoy the faction-related quests, but I enjoyed the hell out of killing any rebel scum (usually NPC) or other non-Imperial I happened across in my journeys. I was just a grunt, a low-rank soldier…but I was a grunt with a particular look, a particular style of combat, a particular preference of enemies and locales, etc.

Personality trumps heroism for many gamers. Don’t ensure every player is “special” in the sense of power and achievement. Ensure every player is “special” by demonstratable personality traits and personally-relevant experiences (experiences unique enough that other players can be expected to listen or share without thinking “yeah, I’ve done/seen that before”).

.
I disagree with Psychochild that anything other than instant gratification is labelled a grind. The grind accusation is so common in MMOGs because, at least relative to other types of games, the journey in an MMOG isn’t very gratifying; only the end achievement is.

In an FPS game like Halo, the player is working toward a new level/weapon/story-element, but each encounter (referring to individual AIs within a battle) is dynamic and fulfilling. Just considering combat, I have certainly experienced fulfilling encounters in an MMOG, but they have been few and far between. After the novelty in those first few weeks of playing a new MMOG dies off, I would enjoy Bejeweled more.

And yes, games, like any other media, have a conditioning effect. That’s not to say they are wholly or even largely responsible for any non-gaming behavior. I’m making no claim as to the power of any particular game’s influence. But if largely passive media like films commonly have such obvious and popularly acknowledged influences on persons, then more active media like games probably influence lives with even greater effect.
Cael said on February 28th, 2007 at 1:57 am:
> I was a grunt with a particular look, a particular style of combat, a particular preference of enemies and locales, etc

Really? Because i thought the idea was to be an anonymous interchangeable cog in the machine. I remember seeing ST units with no names, only numbers. No faces, only helmets. No customisations, all uniform.

By being nobody special, they made themselves really special.
JuJutsu said on February 28th, 2007 at 6:42 am:
So I just pose the questions: should we be thinking about whether our games are teaching people the wrong thing here?

I’d say it depends on whether you’re in the business of education or the business of entertainment. What business did you tell investors you were in?

Can we even make a successful MMO that doesn’t lie to people and tell them they are all special?

I’m not sure. Would it be fun?
robusticus said on February 28th, 2007 at 7:57 am:
I watched, I think, one movie in the theaters all of last year. I loved it, it was a great flick, I encouraged everyone I know to go see it. Turns out, it won best picture at the Oscar’s. Does that make me special?

So you have these interactive movies where everyone is the star and the hero and that’s really cool and very valuable.

Then you have virtual economies backed by USD. And tournament games. Where rare skill trumps everything. Where the players bring the rarity, not the developers.

I don’t think those two schools of thought are exclusive.

Another example of mine, runescape is banned in my house, but moparscape (or highscape or xscape or blahblahscape, etc) is greatly encouraged. The fact that the former is legal and the latter isn’t indicates to me, yes, we ARE in fact teaching the wrong lessons.

Great of y’all to actually entertain the thought. I think that’s totally cool, by the way.
Raph said on February 28th, 2007 at 8:27 am:

I’d say it depends on whether you’re in the business of education or the business of entertainment. What business did you tell investors you were in?

You know I’ve said those aren’t actually different, right? I think it’s irresponsible to make entertainment without thinking about what it is saying to people. That’s how you eventually get to Roman Circuses.

Would it be fun?

I don’t know either… that’s why I am asking!
Michelle readman said on February 28th, 2007 at 8:30 am:
I’ve yet to fire up my athens journal access powers, but that CNN article’s analysis seems to focus too heavily on the negative conclusion, that people where getting dangerously self-centred.

With most population statistics, there are three ways to raise the average. You can push up the high end, making the extreme even more so. You can push up the tail, reducing the range and those at the ‘bottom’ are no longer so far from those at the ‘top’. And, of course, you could just drag the entire pile further up.

I really need to go seek out the actual results for this, as I have a strong suspicion about what I will find. Whilst the top may have crawled on some, the lower end will have actually moved on further. I personally would like to think that shifting the lower end on is actually a really good thing, as it can be quite harmful for a body to view others as more important than themselves.

As for games, most MMOs I would say are immune to this sort of thing, especially those that have no single clear aim (worldly, as opposed to gamely). Whilst they can help teach people how to be self-centred around other people, it is the existance of other people that helps to keep things in check.

Although it must be noted that I am biased with regards to the effect of MMOs on people’s personalities. A certain one played a big part in helping me survive (UK) college.

Single player games are more likely to cause problems with respect to Narcissism. There are no other people to keep your perceptions of power under control, and your character is the only one that seems to be able to do anything, and can infact do almost anything. Things were classically made worse by skimping on the creation of a full world, resulting in very one-dimensional places were the absolute only thing to matter is the player’s character.

As an industry, this is probably something we should address, but not for the same reasons. One-dimensional worlds may be cheaper to produce, but most stories that have been successfull in the long term have featured depth to their characters, and interactions outside of what the main characters get up to. Certainly such features would increase the appeal of games to a female audience, I suspect.
cl said on February 28th, 2007 at 8:46 am:
There should be no surprise this is a question on our minds. We have created a society where winning isn’t the point to competition. That the game is the point. There is no balance. For years America was about money, status, winning, trophies, the sports car and getting the girl. Now the pendulum has swung the other way. Now we are about no grades in school, games with no winners or losers, compact cars, and no one bothers the girl so she has to find some other way to entertain herself (sure that last one might have been an exaggeration).

This everyone is a winner crap doesn’t work in real life and we are starting to see the philosophy crack under pressure. Last year my son played baseball like most 10 year olds…he got a trophy. We aren’t sure where his team placed in the league…there wasn’t a tournament…there was just a trophy with his name on it.

So everyone grows up expected a return for their time investment. Where is the challenge. No challenge in baseball…because we are simultaneously telling the boys the score of the game but telling them it doesn’t matter. And in the end it does. Same thing in school. And same thing on TV. And the same thing in their video games. You show up…you put your quarter in …and you’ll get the reward because you put in your time.

And the consequence? I am having to work with my now 11 year old son on his problem solving skills…because life has challenges and sometimes you actually have to do more than just show up. Sometimes you have to put some effort in beyond pressing the start button.

So yes…an MMO that is challenging and lets people become special by being special instead of showing up…yeah…that would be a good thing.

cl

P.S. And I am still a little miffed about the US Army handing out “Black Berets” so that everyone can feel special. Special is as special does…showing up isn’t enough. And in the real world (as with an MMO) if everyone is special…no one is special.
Relmstein said on February 28th, 2007 at 9:06 am:
Design a MMO where you don’t portrayed your customers as being special and treat them as interchangable cogs in a machine, isn’t that Raiding?

On a side note didn’t that movie the Incredibles deal a lot with the philosophy of “Everyone’s Special”? Just mentioning it cause it seemed to be a much different subtext then what you normally find in most kid’s movies.
Sean said on February 28th, 2007 at 9:34 am:
Children are a blank slate, and are then shaped by the people and culture around them. The fault lies mostly in the parents, and the ineptitude of most public schools to inspire kids to go on to great things. I think the role of video games is minor in this respect.

Life is one miserable journey is you spend all your time feeling entitled. You will always fail, even in success, because the expectations are not met.
Dan Enright said on February 28th, 2007 at 10:49 am:
My thoughts on this particular discussion are along the lines of Mr. Welch’s. I don’t find that mmorpgs to date have lied to, or taught their players that every one of them is special; or at least not successfully done so.
When you look up the literal definition of the word “special”, or ask yourself “When do I feel special?” you begin to realize that “special” is primarily a synonym for “unique”. Making players feel unique in a mmo, mmorpgs in particular, is something that many mmo designers have struggled with since the dawn of the genre. Making yourself as an individual feel special or unique is something that mankind has struggled with since the dawn of human society.

Making every player feel unique I would dare say has been to many ambitious designers one of the “holy grails” of mmorpg design. Why has it been such an influential goal? For one, most people enjoy feeling special, or unique, even if it’s a “shared uniqueness” within a network or society of people with common goals or interests. For another, people will pay to feel unique, and in many cases pay a lot to feel unique. Just look at the real world collectors markets, any real world collectors market.

Have mmorpgs succeeded in making individual players feel special? Absolutely

“I was the first in X game to get to X level”

“I won X unique item from X one time dynamic event”

“X item is named after my character in X game”

Have attempts been made to make every player feel special in a mmorpg? Absolutely

- Stretching the limitations of visual character customization

- Allowing the branding or naming of collected or crafted items

- Stretching the limitations of housing customization (which btw is far less effective when not publicly visible to people you don’t know)

Final thoughts: Has modern society, at least as we perceive it here in the western world, been pushing towards a universal “everyone is unique and special” mentality. I believe so, and so naturally games are following and contributing to that trend.

Now excuse me while I go bid on a numbered limited edition copy of Evil Dead signed by Sam Raimi even though I already own half a dozen different editions of the movie, then post of picture of myself holding up to my webcam on myspace.
Robert Foerster said on February 28th, 2007 at 11:12 am:
Nah, it’s just a game. If someone feels special because of a game, well they are a bit off if you ask me. I play because it’s enjoyable, and when I’m around other players i know well, we talk about our gaming experience and what we’ve “accomplished”.

It’s not unlike the real world, great you did well, maybe you are successful, but frankly, nobody needs to hear it from your mouth. Especially those who don’t know you.

The only people that notice wealth, or in this case, a player with title and exploits, are those that want it. Everyone else is busy working or in this case again, playing.
Zedman said on February 28th, 2007 at 11:32 am:
“Can we even make a successful MMO that doesn’t lie to people and tell them they are all special?”

Who ever promted this question obviously missed the point of of titles such as everquest awarcraft to name but a few.

By default if a fantasy world is to continue it has to reflect the values we hold most dear, ie friendship, fun, MONEY and POWER, otherwise it has all the appeal of a single player game with the attention span ranging from 1 min to several months, as opposed to many years the average player stays with a good online role play game.

Why is this? well, playing with your friends is fun, no argument !!, make frinds online, if its some spotty yank who cares u cant tell online as long as you get on with them, it could be some board housewife with hours to kill while the kids are at school or a retired pensioner, the point is you dont have pre concived perceptions by there appearance or there language, its how you interact with them.

ARE you special !!!!, the answer is , not at first you are a “noob” ( new player )

BUT you have a fresh slate just like starting a new job, but you can be special or u can just log on for an hour kill a few “orcs” computer generated bad dudes etc OR you can become a leader and put exceptional effort into the game, inspire others organise 50+ players on organised raids to kill overwhelming odds, you can be the cleric that selflessly heals others and is not away from keyboard making a cuppa just when the other 49 people are depending on you to heal the Great warrior that the event hinges on.

My point is it just like real life, apart from its totaly dependant on the effort you put in and your natural abilitys to interact with others and learn about the world your in, OHHHH wait, thast just like real life isnt it ??

6 year player of Everquest just throwing in my opinion, im 43 years old, finaly I got got bored but consider all my time with my virtual friends well spent ( ie immense fun ), some of these people are now real life friends,

What did you do last night whatch TV )))))
bob said on February 28th, 2007 at 12:26 pm:
“Can we even make a successful MMO that doesn’t lie to people and tell them they are all special?”
I guess I would question that statement. Although MMOs like WoW narratively treat the player like THE hero (the world’s one and only) as single player RPGs do (where this is true), the actual gameplay constantly reminds the player that they have no impact on the world whatsoever. I find this breaks the suspension of disbelief every time it happens, and I do think MMOs would benefit if the designers gave up that notion, since the games aren’t actually supporting the idea (i.e. the works are not conveying the intent of the creators).

On top of this, a game like WoW doesn’t even allow a real individual identity for characters. The player is constrained by the designers’ notions of what the player should be and do, and they aren’t allowed to deviate from that in any way. In WoW, there is only one way to interact with every item and character in the game; the only choice is to interact with it or not. And since every other player is under exactly the same constraints, every character is exactly the same, differentiated only superficially by their name and whatever variability of appearance they are allowed.
Raph said on February 28th, 2007 at 2:18 pm:

It’s interesting to see everyone arrive at different things that make them feel special!

The thing I was referring to is the notion that MMOs reward everyone equally if they just put in the time; skill is not the barrier to reaching max level, persistence is. But reaching max level is portrayed as the pinnacle achievement.

There’s lots and lots of reasons to do it this way, and I have even argued in favor of doing it this way in the past, saying that “treadmills aren’t bad” in an effort to make people see that otherwise most people will never reach max level because vanishingly few people are good enough to really reach the top.

But i think these alternate explanations are equally valid, really.
Cid Yama said on February 28th, 2007 at 3:22 pm:
I think the problem will be solved when the technology evolves. Currently what can and can’t be done is severly limited. When the technology arises that allows individuals and NPCs to directly compete with each other as in the real world, things will change. One thing I would like to see would be the ability to adventure as a member of a group including NPCs, that I do not control, who make their own decisions and act with regards to the world around them and their relation to me. This will be resolved in the future when each NPC character can have their own evolving AI. Then you can have worlds without goals and objectives other than those you develop for yourself.
Aaron said on February 28th, 2007 at 4:18 pm:
In regard to what MMOGs teach people, the mere presence of other players does not always encourage good social skills. In many cases, players are encouraged to view others instrumentally first. Why do you group with this person? Because that person is the class you want in your group. That person’s personality is secondary.

That’s not always bad, because needing other people for various reasons is a common catalyst for personal relationships. But I’ve been in many MMOG groups in which the relationships remained instrumental, and that is not good conditioning. It is not good when a player never values another far beyond that fellow’s usefulness.

.
In response to your last statement, Raph, I think a good virtual world (if that is a focus of the particular game) recognizes the interconnection of separate player goals. Some goals should require mainly persistence, others mainly skill, but all should eventually come together as roles in a collective kosmos. Enable different players to contribute to the same world experience by fulfilling separate criteria.

It’s not necessary for a blacksmith to become a master smith by overcoming obstacles that are parallel to those of a paladin becoming a master paladin. They don’t both have to be persistence-based, strategy-based, or tactic-based. One of the things that makes the real world beautiful and compelling is that we are not all measured by the same standards. Some will be resilient, some will be clever, some will be resourceful, but our different natures ultimately can come together to improve the experiences of all.
Karl said on February 28th, 2007 at 4:29 pm:
I can’t believe no-ones mentioned Eve (www.eve-online.com)

A game where there is no endgame, level cap, or mob grind. A player driven environment where the hardcore rule the sandbox, and where one sneaky backstabbing can change the face of the universe.

so I say, yes, we can. the problem is hardware and gaming-morals.
Allen Sligar said on February 28th, 2007 at 4:41 pm:
“treadmills aren’t bad” in an effort to make people see that otherwise most people will never reach max level because vanishingly few people are good enough to really reach the top.

But there are so many players who want an easy curve (the WOW 8mil) or hate the grind (MMOG vet players who reject the notion that ginding is fun) that the minority of those players who value goal’s, achievements and community building in a MMOG get shut out or they compromise.

And I’m just going to go out on a limb here and say there are a lot of gamers who want to have a real impact on the world in which they play, they want to build treadmill’s and see the interdependancies of a game with complex systems. I guess what I mean is there might be a lot of players who want to be a part of the evolution of a world rather than consumers of pez dispensers.

“Special is as special does…showing up isn’t enough. And in the real world (as with an MMO) if everyone is special…no one is special.”

I agree with that and the inverse is true, in a MMOG where no one is special, a system that encompasses varied skill sets, individuality, and lets people play to thier strengths, you know special when you see it, and that IMO is where the magic is.

There is a difference between envy and admiration. The former destroys the latter encourages engagement.

Theres a reason people look back fondly on UO, and it wasnt because they got to chop trees, and leapfrog large piles of ore around….it was working a treadmill (of your percived) own making.
Morgan Ramsay said on February 28th, 2007 at 7:04 pm:
cl wrote:

If everyone is special, no one is special.

That’s not the whole truth. If everyone is special—assuming everyone refers to human beings—then that means that our species is special. Speciality can scale, too, from individuals to groups and then some.

Aaron wrote:

Because that person is the class you want in your group. That person’s personality is secondary.

That’s an interesting challenge for designers. How would you ensure that personality supercedes class in the cooperative selection process? On the other hand, businesses typically select employees for their qualifications before considering their personality, unless personality is part of the set of qualifications necessary (e.g., front-desk representative.) I do not think that class-based selections are unnatural and merely a part of how games are designed. Games do a fairly excellent job of modelling reality.

Allen Sligar wrote:

There’s a reason people look back fondly on UO, and it wasn’t because they got to chop trees, and leapfrog large piles of ore around… It was working a treadmill of your own making.

Maybe. I look back at Ultima Online—I played on a rogue shard—and think how much fun I had chopping trees. The reason I had so much fun was because on that particular shard I could write a script for EasyUO that would set my lumberjack to work on the Moonglow forest. He would chop trees and set the lumber on the ground. I could come back an hour or more later and pick up the pieces. But you obviously cannot do what I did on a populated server. Your lumber would get stolen! (I still have all my scripts.) I had fun watching my creation succeed. But that’s not the only reason. Ultima Online provided a level of interactivity with a great attention to detail that has yet to be matched by present MMO games. I’d have to play Ultima Online again to list all my reasons, but the bottom line is that I had fun, especially with the resource and crafting systems.
Rob said on February 28th, 2007 at 9:06 pm:
*Can we not have Blog writers that think they are totally special either aswell?

Thanks
Morgan Ramsay said on February 28th, 2007 at 9:14 pm:
Can we not have Blog writers that think they are totally special either as well?

Can we not have vague blog comments, too? According to Technorati, there are over 55 million blogs connected to Technorati. I’m sure there are blogs whose writers don’t think themselves special, but that’s also why you don’t hear of them.
PurpleChair said on March 1st, 2007 at 5:36 am:
The problem is that games like WoW exhibit very warped value systems where all that really matters is your statistical contribution to combat, and anyone who takes this kind of attitude to real life is a total gimp. If MMOs - and games in general, really - reflected a wider diversity of aims and motivations than just killing opponents and collecting assets and ‘experience points’, then perhaps their players might take something more positive away from them?

But, you know, any attempt to encourage some genuine human spirit in games will be hamstrung by technological constraints, until we start letting players define their own victory conditions - the kind of thing you see in the Animal Crossing online community, for instance. Everyone’s a winner in WoW because players can collectively beat down on NPCs without a second thought, and that’s (basically) all they need to do to “succeed”.
Amy Van Vechten said on March 1st, 2007 at 8:19 am:
The public has been worried about young people for some time now.
Blaming parents is nothing new, either. Even parents blame parents.
In fact, six in 10 parents rate their generation as “fair” or “poor”
in raising children. For more information click
http://www.publicagenda.org/research/research_reports_details.cfm?list=33.
Allen Sligar said on March 1st, 2007 at 11:18 am:
Morgan:

“I had fun watching my creation succeed.”

Thats kinda what I was getting at you lumberjack haxxor!

Seriously, how much of the fun in OU was based on the embedded (not sure how Raph terms it) interdependancies. What I mean is the randomly generated spawns etc, and creating your own meaning. I know in my case and those I played with it was a big part of it.

Awhile back I re-read gun germs and steel, from the perspective of “how would that look in a game” I concluded that something like that would end up being hard to do but maybe the potential appeal would be off the hook for a certain segment of the gaming population.
Andy Havens said on March 2nd, 2007 at 2:26 pm:
Talk about yer question inside a question… (I love this “meta” stuff, btw, Raph)

I would argue that a society, such as the US, which focuses on providing as wide a variety of entertainments and leisures as possible is already making its members feel as “special” as it’s gonna get, regardless of the content explicit in the media themselves.

IE, if you’ve got enough time, money, and social capital left over (after spending it on necessities) to play games, read books, watch TV/movies, surf the web, do sports, go to plays, hang out, IM your buddies, etc. etc. etc. for some relatively decent chunk of time every day… that’s a significant indicator of “specialness.” It’s a reward. You’ve “made it.”

Nature rewards effort with rest and relaxation. You work, then you play. You eat your veggies, then you get dessert. So… if I’ve got all these choices for sweets (entertainment, including games), I must have been a very, very good boy.

That is what I think drives the narcissism (if that’s what it is; I don’t buy the argument, btw, that strong ego or even good self image = narcicism), more than the specific narrative content of the entertainments themselves.

My dad, when in high school, probably only had a couple hours a week for leisure. He worked a couple after-school jobs, did a bunch of extracurricular things in order to help get into a good college, etc. etc. Some of those were “fun,” but none were what we’d call “entertainment.” None were pure “leisure.” Marching band in New York state in October is not leisure. When I was in high school, I probably had 20 hours a week of leisure to read fun books, watch TV, go to movies w/ friends, etc. By having more of a choice, and by being able to choose fun things, I’m sure this contributed to a sense of entitlement on the part of me and my generation; we deserve this, and should get to do it and maybe get more of it.

Now? The choices are even more amazing, eh? The Internet. Games. Video tapes and DVDs. Millions of songs on MP3s. Cell phones. Laptops. I’m not saying it’s *easy* to be a kid. But I’m saying that the choices are closer to their egos, and that there are more of them, and that many of the choices that they get to make are the equivalent of dessert; they get to pick the fun stuff out for themselves.

That will build a sense of entitlement and ego pretty quick, when you are in charge of creating your own library of content from a world of 100 million songs, 10 million movies, 3 billion web pages, etc. And then creating your own blog, your own SL avies, your own MySpace pages, etc. etc.

It doesn’t matter WHAT they see, watch, play, do, read. It matters that they CAN. The media are the message. And the multiplicity of the media is the meat. Or, in this case, the cheesecake.
Morgan Ramsay said on March 2nd, 2007 at 3:54 pm:
Andy, just a suggestion. Check out the book The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz. Sheena Iyengar’s research into the psychology of choice is also an incredible resource.
Shan said on March 4th, 2007 at 9:07 am:
Two completely different things being conflated here by just about everyone.

That’s ok — they do look similar — but they are totally different.

The issue with “kids these days” that so many people above are providing anecdotal evidence for is neither one of instant gratification, nor being unwilling to work hard for things of value.

The issue is being overly protected from disappointment. Previous generations of parents recognized — perhaps just by being ignorant — that disappointment was a pretty normal part of life, and got their children used to it. Arbitrary rules and corporal punishment were two ways that happened.

These days, parents go out of their way to protect their kids from being even normally disappointed (everyone gets a trophy, no grades, all those things and we’re just now starting to have a backlash against this kind of parenting. Mostly, for about 20 years, we’ve been cheering it along.

So, while parenting is certainly different, and having different outcomes (I’ll leave judgments of better or worse to others) is computer gaming actually any different from the pretending to be cowboys or indians or spacemen that went on in previous generation’s play?

I would argue that it isn’t substantively different. Kids were then, are now, and will always be the “special” heroes of their own play.

People talk about the death penalty of MMORPGs and argue if it should be high or low: when I was a kid, if you were “shot” playing soldiers with the kids from Faukland St, you stayed dead for a count of 100, but if you were shot on Roselands Av you stayed dead for only a count of 10. And oh how we argued about which was better!

Play is, largely, an escape from life, where different rules apply. How many people who enjoy, say, social basketball, enjoy it _precisely_ because in that game (as compared to being an office drone) they get to actually score some baskets?
StGabe said on March 4th, 2007 at 3:54 pm:
I’ve been posting about how “tricking the user into thinking they are special” is the really the primary goal having a successful MMO for well, years.

Seems to an error causation and correlation going on here. I think it requires a bit of a self-inflated sense of importance for games to take responsibility for this trend. I think, in fact, that we are finding that it is consumers who are demanding “make me special” experiences. In the MySpace generation the #1 commodity is attention and ego-boosting. Games are just finding better ways to cater to that.

Arguably, games should be more conscious of the results of the mindsets they cater to (although actually I’m not sure that this is completely horrible — another way to read high vanity is that at least these kids are getting over their self-esteem issues). However, it’s unclear how games are going to do this without being, first and foremost, appealing to the culture they are targeting.

For a while now you’ve been going on about finding new ways to reward players and new things to teach them. What if no one is interested in those rewards and things you want to teach? MMO’s started out with far more competitive roots and have shied away from that, not because people didn’t want go that way, but because consumers didn’t bite.