One of my favorite things about human psychology is how a punishment can be turned into a reward just by changing the way it’s framed. A few years ago a friend of mine was serving on the boar…
Docprof Says: One of the more famous psychology lessons from World of Warcraft - framing is everything. Players hated the "rest" system when it was seen as a penalty for playing too long; they loved it when it was seen as a reward for spending time not playing.
Recently, your friend and mine Cliff Bleszinski wrote an essay defending microtransactions in general and EA in specific. There are a lot of things to be said about this essay - some of which are said expertly by Jim Sterling here, and some of which touch on concepts discussed by Shamus Young writing a couple of years ago about Bobby Kotick here and here.
Cliff’s main point is that game developers exist within an economic landscape, and as such they will do what makes them money and avoid what doesn’t. As consumers, our job is to vote with our wallets, supporting what we like and boycotting what we don’t.
In response to this, I’m going to finally post something I wrote back in October 2011. I never put it up before because I couldn’t find a way to turn it into a full article. It’s really just one simple idea. But as foreseen by Nathan Grayson and proved by the recent SimCity debacle, if anything it’s more relevant today than it was a year and a half ago.
Recently we discussed Blizzard’s announcement that they are saddling Diablo III with terrible DRM, which they say isn’t DRM, but which everyone knows is DRM. I mentioned that there was much to be said about the contemporaneous announcements of a real-money auction house and a ban on modding. Well, the time for that is now.
You may have heard that there’s been a bit of a kerfuffle recently in response to some news about Diablo III. I’ll walk you through it - but first, we need to talk about Ubisoft.
On July 28, Ubisoft reported that they consider their constant connection DRM scheme to be a “success.” This despite the uproar and backlash caused by the scheme, the fact that it was immediately cracked, the clear demonstration of the system’s flaws when denial of service attacks locked out paying customers and left pirates unaffected, and Ubisoft’s eventual scaling back of the DRM to a once-per-run validation. Their reasoning?
Part One is here.
Anonymous said…
Post an update….what do you think of the replies you’ve got here?
Okay. You’re on.
I quit World of Warcraft in June of 2009. I quit hard. I donated my assets to the guild bank and deleted all of my characters. I didn’t want to leave the door open to come back. I wanted to burn it down and salt the earth.
Why? Well, that’s a bit complicated.
Are you on the fringes of gaming? Do you want to get in deeper, but find yourself unsure where to start? Do conversations with experienced gamers leave you feeling lost? Is “sorry, but our princess is in another castle” your freshest gaming joke? When it comes to gamer culture, are you on the outside looking in?
Have no fear: Doctor Professor is here!