If you do want to lose yourself in a brief and (in my opinion, pretty edifying) game, try World of Goo. It’s a $20 no-DRM bridge and tower constructing puzzle game, and I loved it. I haven’t had so much fun since The Incredible Machine in 1995.

MMORPGs are much like being in a hall with a glass wall that slowly moves to the other end. There is a rumor that if you push on the wall it speeds up, but not perceptibly.

Two things, not directly in response to what you said:

Real life, unfortunately, doesn’t always provide immediate or even obvious rewards for the best possible activities. I’m currently banging my head against the wall of my own inadequacies at a certain skill I’ve made integral to my career. Ouch. While I’m doing a better job in some instances, it’s simply not a linear progression, whereby I accumulate a skill and never lose it and always have it at hand. Goddamned if I wish it were. Part of the problem is discreteness vs. continuity. Part is just how human beings truly must live: in particular instances, constantly making each moment good or bad.

Second, I’ve been heartened by how much better of a poker player I have become, or at least how I have finally learned how not to follow certain bad habits, after playing an iPhone poker game for about a week. I still make mistakes, but now I know when I have made them and can tell myself to fold, dammit, on Q9 off-suit, and actually do it. So, to the extent that this computer game has made me better at playing a game, it’s been a helpful computer game, and I suspect much of the credit has been the immediate punishment and reward. Plus, playing with a full table helps. In any case, as I’m sure lots of people around here can explain, poker is something of a useful skill in itself, and playing it well is a skill that can help you evaluate other practical situations. I’m sure much has been written on this subject, but I’m glad to be coming to know it better. Perhaps now I won’t embarrass myself nearly as quickly when I play with real people!

I wonder what difference it makes for video “games” to be in some ways effectively puzzles, or complexes of puzzles, how the challenges and process of puzzle-solving, and the particular satisfactions it brings, act in your analysis.

Some few video games do evoke aesthetic experiences, but this is unusual, I think. Some are enjoyable for the exploration they allow, others for appealing to a kind of basic, twitchy competitiveness (which I almost completely lack — so when I say they’re enjoyable, I don’t necessarily mean for me), and others for some or other sort of puzzling. These last may be the most diverse type of game, and, for me, the most interesting.

I can usually solve a Rubik’s Cube in about five minutes, and there’s not a reward for the effort so tangible as leveling-up in a game, at least not after the first time you do it. But completely apart from any sort of “accomplishment” satisfaction, just doing it, doing it smoothly, doing it at half-attention, is practically meditative. (I only say “practically” because I’m not courageous enough to come right out and assert it otherwise — not to hedge on the power of the feeling.) I sometimes do it on breaks from writing papers. It can be like smoking a cigarette. I doubt that most people who play with Rubik’s Cubes formulate it quite like that, but once you become basically competent at it, it is no longer difficult, and yet it seems like most people who ever do it enough to reach the end just keep doing it and doing it and doing it, which is peculiar.

That’s just one very particular kind of puzzle, but I wonder about “puzzles”, and why they’re good for or important to us. I suspect strongly that they are (or should be) both.

Also, the interesting thing to me about MMORPGs is not the playing of them, but the managing of their economies. That is fascinating.

Nate, as a video game lover, I share your ideas about the way they operate. A good video game makes the player feel rewarded for simply staying in the game. Meanwhile, the best games build like any other craft: they steadily increase in difficulty as the player becomes accustomed until, suddenly, the player realizes they are capable of accomplishing something they could not before. Classic NES video games like Ninja Gaiden and Castlevania really drive this point home. They both begin at a novice difficulty level. If you can finish them, you are no longer a novice. This is why some psychologists worry about video games and the human mind: the reward to risk ratio is through the roof.

Meanwhile, the current trend in video games (especially first-person shooters) is to simply amp up the difficulty in unfair ways, while maintaining a standard difficulty level that isn’t very hard at all. I’ve never played World of Warcraft, but I’m not surprised by your experience.

Further, I think you hint that the work/reward system of the video game contributes to a culture of instant gratification. In our post-information age, I don’t find this surprising. Technology and media have cultivated in us an obsession with data. If we can’t measure the payout immediately, we may just quit.

Back in the days when only smart people owned computers, it was not unusual to find games that were intellectually challenging. I recall one game that actually simulated the operation of a nuclear reactor! Today though, everyone has a computer, and the IQ of the average computer user has correspondingly declined. That’s where the market is at, and there’s where the programmers get paid to go.

This is exactly the reason why I quit World of Warcraft.

Sullivan linked. Run for the hills.

Which is also to say, “Congratulations.”

Yeah, makes me wish Sullivan would link to my blog. Now if only I displayed anything approximating talent…

Anyhow, I understand what you mean about WoW. I go through stages where I’ll play it for a couple-three months and then leave it alone for several more months. When I do play, it’s mostly to socialize. These days I play online with a friend in Seattle. We sit around and chat on our cell phone (thank goodness for the My Faves thing!), and go on quests together. It’s pretty enjoyable!

I like video games, but there’s a limit, and I tend to lately prefer ones like Civilization IV, Rise of Nations and Sims 2. MMORGPS without the social stuff would leave me completely uninterested.

::curiously clicking through, from The Dish::

This is simply one of the most graphically satisfying and elegant weblogs I’ve seen (and I’ve been reading and writing in this medium for almost 10 years!).

Oh, and the organizing theme, too, deeply intriguing. I bet I’ll linger here quite a while, and will return to it frequently. :-) Thanks for crafting such a space on the web… these are farther and fewer apart than one would suppose.

Aloha,
L.

::bookmarks site::

The real fun in games like WoW comes in the end game; the pre-60/70/80 levels are basically all training levels (and, incidentally, the weed-out levels - without them top levels would be of an even more dreadful quality than they are now). Admittedly, it is a rather long training process, and some players of more limited means enjoy these levels as a game in themselves, but for most they are just a prelude. Endgame raiding, where you have 10 or 25 (previously 40) players who all have to execute their tasks perfectly and instantly adapt to changes in the situation, is where a lot of the challenge comes in. Some of the encounters are such that if you have only a few people who aren’t with the program, you’re almost guaranteed to wipe. It becomes a fascinating exercise in leadership and morale management if you are a raid leader, or in perfecting your assignments - much like, to use a rather wayward analogy, a professional (American) football player needs to perfect his specialized task, be it route running or blocking or passing or what have you - if you are a grunt.

But, for me, raiding isn’t even the best part of WoW. That would be PvP. Where you actually get to pit your skills in real time against other players or teams who may have been training together for months or years. Or simply meeting other players in the game world and having an impromptu brawl. Previously, there was a lot of abuse of the PvP system in that totally over-equipped teams could just roll over everyone else, but Blizzard is getting better with that in refining their arena system. And, hey, even if you do out gear them, one can derive satisfaction in seeing their hours of effort (in acquiring the gear) translated into dominating performances on the battlefield.

It’s really quite fun, if you’re willing to devote at least a part-time job chunk of time to it weekly. But I understand most aren’t willing or able to commit to that degree, and that’s perfectly understandable. Personally, the strategy I use is I play solidly for a chunk of time and then make sure to break for at least an equal block of time. It prevents burn out and allows one to pursue other hobbies or whatnot more freely.

/first person to both kill Nefarian and hit Grand Marshal on his server (vanilla WoW).. haven’t played in a while :D

Personally, I enjoy the sheer size of the Warcraft world; it is fun to see new terrain and new bosses. The PvP games are quite enjoyable too.

There is definitely way too much repetition and running around though. And once you get to the top level, all there is to shoot for is better loot which means joining a raiding guild - about as much fun as working a monotonous full time job with no paycheck.

There is gratification, and then there is gratification.

I think World of Warcraft is, by design, like an onion. The first few layers are easy to peel (solo play, questing, running along the character level treadmill). As the other poster noted, however, World of Warcraft has an “endgame”… and as the game progresses, new and more difficult content is released.

So, deeper in, it does get harder. Lots of content requires a group to access. The difficulty of that content can require (or at least significantly benefit from) a group of a particular composition, or player skill, in order to access effectively. It becomes very social, and situational/experiential, learning about the environment, your companions, and how they interact.

At the higher levels of difficulty, aka “raiding”, it can take months for an in-game guild, working cooperatively, to “conquer” an “instance” (or dungeon). These “instances” can take on the nature of puzzles, trying this tactic or that tactic in order to succeed and progress. The whole process equates to collaborative problem solving. Leadership and communication skills are beneficial.

All of these are are useful muscles to develop and exercise in this day and age.

Having done some of this in my time, and working professionally in a technical field, I can vouch for how enjoyable (and relevant, in many ways) it can be “conquering content” in this sort of collaborative fashion.

Of course, this process also includes that “glass wall” that the other poster described. Once the puzzle is solved, you have to re-execute it repeatedly and distribute the rewards among your collaborative group, as an issue of capabiliy-maturity (push against the glass wall in order to get it to move and collectively progress to more difficult content).

But even if the “instant gratification” issue is not 100% accurate, I agree there are of lots of other things wrong with computer games in general (that creativity and good design could mitigate). indeed, rewards are very carefully calibrated to risk. they are very repetitive, the same thing done the same way redundantly, perhaps with slight incremental refinement over time… but only slight. Knowledge is obtained essentially by rote, and reintegration of or extrapolation from the knowledge-base in new situations is generally not required. Once an area has been explored or an encounter successfully negotiated, there is no variation in it on subsequent access (the landscape and its occupants never change). Creativity is largely reserved for the game designer, the player doesn’t get to express any.

Personally, I find myself becoming apathetic towards computer games in general. Nothing all that new, as a paradigm, has emerged in decades. Technology progresses, and they become more sophisticated visually and can incorporate more realistic detail of various forms. But the play experience (and that is what we are all after, in the end) seems to have stagnated.

1) MMOs all boil down to: if all you’re gonna do is pve, there’s no reason to start in the first place.

2) If you’ve satisfied 1), and plan to pvp, play EVE.

Interesting. A bunch of disparate thoughts:

The meat of the game for players who demand a real challenge in World of Warcraft is the group stuff at the end of the game. Unlike earlier MMO’s, which required grouping pretty much all the time, WoW has a huge solo component up front that it takes a phenomenally long time to get through. What I find interesting is that this simplistic solo component has made WoW wildly popular. What does that say about us as a culture?

I’ve picked up and put down the game in 1-2 month bursts about a half dozen times over the last two and a half years, and I seem to reach the same conclusion every time. Other than that reward rush you get the first few weeks of the game, the reward feedback isn’t that strong. (Maybe I just have a non-addictive reward system… there are obviously people who play tens of hours a week). If you don’t play with lots of real life friends, if WoW is something you putter around with now and then when other hobbies/jobs/social life etc. are slow, as is the case for me, it’s very hard to get through the game. Blizzard has shortened the climb a bit and tried to lower the accessibility barriers to the grouping game, but it still takes a few hundred hours to get there. I can’t think of many games that are so much fun that I want to play them for a couple hundred hours.

I can say that I have definitely found it much easier to level up on a new/recommended server where lots of people at my level running around. Indeed, when I get drawn back in, it’s usually by reading about the community around the game. I don’t find the gameplay all that engaging, but I do find it interesting how small changes in game design can produce massively different responses in the broader community. Right now I find myself pushing to level through content just so I can see the new stuff everyone else is going on about.

Anyway, not sure where I’m going with all of this. If you’re looking for a new RPG where environmental details matter and some substantial problem-solving comes into play (well, more than WoW anyway), you might check out Fallout 3. Still, I agree with the poster upthread who hasn’t seen much new in video games in years. I find myself unable to care about most sequels, even to well-reviewed series like Mario and Zelda. Been there, done that. Show me some new problems and new forms of social interaction.

(Beautiful design.)

Joe S., I’ve been using computers since we had to chip our 0s and 1s out of flint, and there was never a time when “only smart people” used or owned computers; it certainly isn’t true that the entertainment-to-smarts ratio has become woefully disparate. Unless you’re going to argue that Castle Wolfenstein and Russki Duck were their era’s equivalent of Riven.

The real achievement in MMORPGs, and why they’re so addictive, is that they’re social enterprises. It’s not so important that you beat the bad guy as that people you know are aware you beat the bad guy; otherwise MMORPGs wouldn’t be multi-player, they’d just be instances or individual games that play without any interaction with others. (I remember when epic mounts came out, and people sat around in Ironforge doing nothing but showing off their mounts.) The reward, somewhat like in blogging, is the approval of others - but it’s the approval directed towards Tildesmar the Night Elf, not towards you, the real-life person playing him.

I tried the WoW trial and it was absolutely horrible. Due to fear of goldfarmers, it nearly completely eliminated all the social functions! And those people who I did chat with all informed me to solo until I hit a higher level, around 20. I don’t think so. The staid formula of WoW’s early levels was definitely not worth doing without some companions.

On the other hand, LOTROnline was quite fun, and the atmosphere was great. If I get into an MMORPG (besides City of Heroes, which I’ve played before), it will be that one.

To the poster above who said they have not seen progression in video games… I’m sorry, but I think you’re wrong. Online coop is becoming more and more standard. Look at the just-released Left 4 Dead. While it is limited, the 4v4 PVP option is outstanding at recreating a Hollywood zombie film. Bioshock had so many options to defeat your opponents, that all three of my friends and I chose completely different weapons to utilize. And the just-released Mirror’s Edge holds the promise of cinematic escape scenes.

And if you want ridiculously oldschool hardcore action, you can always play the new Mega Man 9…

WOW pre-level 60 is much different than post 60. That said, it took about 3-4 months for me to get a good character to 60 and another 8 months of enjoying 60-lvl content. And then I cancelled my account. Sure it was still fun, kinda, but there were other things to do.

Also, if you are looking for a WOW-like game with focus on PVP, get Warhammer Online or (my favorite) Guild Wars. GW is cheap to buy, free to play, and you can ditch the questing altogether if you want.

This blog post made me realize some things about the challenges I’m facing in my life. Thanks, Nate.

I just wanted to re-emphasise something another poster said: if you’re going to play exclusively against AI enemies there’s no reason to play MMORPGs. You may as well play a single-player game that requires no connection to the internet. Try the Orange Box by Valve software.

Otherwise, you could try Eve Online. The levelling up is handled by real-time skill training so you can advance your character without actively playing, good for those with irregular schedules. Unlike WoW, it really does reveal it’s complexity gradually (begrudgingly, even); and interactions with other players actually have real costs and benefits. If you can get over the cliff of a learning curve, it’s the best there is.

If you played God Hand you wouldn’t be complaining about lack of challenge.

Thousands of people quit various video games every day for a myriad of reasons - yours is different/interesting.. how? Tweet it next time.

One thing I should make clear: there’s no question that I didn’t manage to hook into the part of World of Warcraft that attracts so many people. I didn’t get involved in the kind of deep, inter-personal social gaming that many people talk about happening in the later levels. And my friend Bryan (whom I mentioned in the original post) does, indeed, seem most interested in the kind of complicated maths, game dynamics, and general economics that some of you rightly point to as an extremely interesting aspect of MMORPGs. I meant to talk a bit about why I felt reluctant to kick in the kind of investment that would be required to play WoW the way it needs to be played.

I’m a web designer by trade, so I meant to use drawing as a very specific example: I could spend a significantly greater amount of time getting playing WoW regularly and at greater length and probably get to the later levels (I’m only level 40 now) where I could participate in something larger, more complicated, more interesting, and more worthwhile than the increasingly boring PvE that some commentators have rightly derided. OR: I could get out of the world of designed challenge/reward scenarios and into the less predictable and infinitely interesting world that I live in. With a probably comparable amount of time invested, I could “level” myself as a designer and artist and end up satisfied and capable in ways that would be tied up in my mind and body, rather than in numbers on a server.

I don’t mean to simplistically deride the pleasures of gaming; I love video games, and don’t mean to slip into the kind if ignorant perspective that doesn’t understand or appreciate the pleasures of others. I’m just trying to examine the deepest reasons for my temptation to one kind of challenge (and ensuing pleasure) over another.

Many people have commented about the merits of particular video games (especially puzzles) over others. I think this may be quite right, and it concerns me that I seek games that give the most reward for the least exertion. I love tower defense games, for example. I can think of few other things where the challenge is as linear, as contained, and as predictable. For such a reliably pleasurable rush! If I were the kind of person that sat down and treated games like chess, as complex systems to understand and master against worthy opponents, I probably wouldn’t have written the entry I did.

You say with a comparable amount of time you could “level” your web design skills, but like you say - the real world has no guarantee of success.

Clearly not for you, but for many of the players, the real world is fraught with these little ‘quests’ that inspire not hope for opportunity, but fear, and this fear is a rational response to a lifetime of social rejection and failure.

If I’m understanding the gist of your post and subsequent commentary (which is not a sure bet at all), I think you’re decrying the separation of achievement and the pleasurable achievement rush. You get the rush from tower defense maps, and you could get it from WoW with enough time invested, but you see the real world as full of adventure and wonder and want to use this pleasurable rush to motivate actual progress for your actual life.

But for many WoW players, WoW was only found after years of failure in the real world at one level or another. Its pleasurable rush of achievement is one of the few sources of such a thing, and is perhaps the only reliable source of it in their life.

I’m not sure if this is a horror of horrors or a testament to human progress - of WoW’s millions of subscribers, I’d estimate a million of them fit this bill, and have found in a life described by a crappy job, a crappy apartment / living situation, and a crappy social and romantic situation, and have still managed to find an arena in which they are competent, liked, and have a good time.

So I definitely understand your wariness at the separation, and in fact your description of it puts words to a pretty nebulous goo of ideas that’s been oozing through my mind since I quit WoW years ago, and then again months ago, but I guess I’d ask if you have anything to offer the people who don’t have a skillset such as web design to which to turn in lieu of killing Illidan week after week with 24 people they’ve never met.

For an easy game, try “You have to burn the rope.”

BCG is spot-on.

I quit WoW a few months ago, but before I did, I was in one of the top raiding guilds in the world. During the peak of my playing, I had nothing worth mentioning in so-called ‘Real Life’. In WoW, I was living like a rock star. Thousands of people gave me respect automatically, simply because of my reputation, my gear, and the guild tag under my name. Having quit, I am fully aware that nothing I do, no matter how hard I work, will give me even a remotely similar experience in ‘Real Life’. That I did so anyways represents a moral decision, not a pragmatic one.

So I guess I’m saying that I understand why you quit, but I wonder if you’d acknowledge that, for many people, the ‘invisible meters’ in the real world don’t fill up - at least, not the meters they may care about.

Some may be interested in this response to this entry over at Fidgit. It boasts an awesome sketch of Leibniz on a couch, as well as some pointed criticism of yours-truly from the perspective of a more avid gamer.

@ Andrew: That Burn the Rope game is so spot-on as an indictment of me-as-a-gamer that it’s not even funny.

@ Dan: I certainly hear where you’re coming from. I felt pretty similar things about my time on Pern MUSH during junior high and high school, where I was a pretend adult with responsibilities, rank, and a social milieu that was ordered and engaging. My ability to craft text well earned me friends and status (though it didn’t exactly make me a rock star).

I guess I question the ability to make easy comparisons, though, between that in-game experience and experiences in real life. Names, after all, are just names. You may have felt like you were “living like a rock star”, but it’s not really comparable to living like a rock star, is it? Let’s look at it from a data standpoint.

Let’s pretend we’re programming the two things as a video game. It takes a certain amount of data to describe your life in WoW, a number we could actually arrive at, given access to WoW’s servers, some reasonable guesses, and a lot of time on our hands. We’d list all the chat archives that show how people treated you, describe how they moved their characters, and recreate the visual world you were interacting in.

How much of your real life would that much data describe? Could it fully describe the sensory data you take in and process in even a few minutes? Could it describe the vast amount of information you are privy to in something like brushing your teeth?

Real life is analogue… playing a chord or two on your guitar floods you with an experience that is richer than we usually stop to experience. Part of what I intended to suggest is that a real life experience that is named something rather humble (holding hands with someone, drinking coffee, &c) may have more actual substance in it than a more grandly named experience in a game, where the resolution is fixed, so to speak.

It strikes me as Pascalian, frankly, to prefer the name of greatness (though we know it to be hollow) to a reality of substance. That is to say, it’s like Pascal’s explanation of vanity: we seek to craft a false vision of ourselves through others’ eyes, since we cannot help but see ourselves more accurately.

You seem to have the same “Veiws” as I do about playing a MMORPG or any video game. I found WoW to be the same way you did. I think MMORPG’s should be for the “Excape” value of a hobby or past time, and not something that you have to make alot for. It’s the whole “It a Great Place to visit but you wouldn’t want to live there” sort of thing.

Honestly, and this isn’t a fan boy plug, but you might want to try The Lord of the Rings Online some time. It has a Beautiful vast and changing landscape and is great for the “Escape on the computer alittle while, just when your board” type of thing.(you have to get through the starter instance though) It ended up selling well to me because I didn’t feel like I had to spend vaulable hours of my life just trying feel like I did anything or had fun. :)