I think yr discussion of like the appeal of mmos like warframe — when they also mostly replicate forms of work is really interesting. I guess when I look at it, I wonder if the rise of games that grind to a certain extent appeal to people because like they do promise and deliver actual progress? I’d be interested in the rise of these games in an era of decreased social mobility IRL and how these games kinda provide substitute experiences of “moving up” that either no longer or never were real
Yeah that’s a really good point!
Power fantasies have long been a part of the like, explicit narrative of games - you’re the cool badass space marine killing hundreds of demons, you’re the hero who’s saving the world and romancing the cool people etc. - but I guess like, grinding puts that on the meta level as well. You put in the time, the numbers go up, and eventually you will be stronger than everything.
I remember reading somewhere about Minecraft servers which strip that down to its barest essentials - you have a room and you have to mine away the blocks, and if you spend real-world money you can get special privileges on the server. And people play these for some reason - not just people who buy the privileges, but people log in and clear the rooms!
MMOs are not quite so nakedly… that thing, like the moment-to-moment gameplay is (at least in principle) more fun than clicking on a series of rocks, but there’s definitely some sense of accomplishment in being a Warframe player with a high MR, all the gear, the most meta frames, unique skins etc. Likewise being an endgame player in an MMO.
This is leading me to think like… players often speak of games making you ‘work for’ your various accomplishments as a positive thing, that you’ve ‘earned’ them, and speak disparagingly of ‘pay to win’ games.
I remember SWTOR players getting upset when the devs decided to make an item that was only available from a highest-tier raid available to people in general. It wasn’t even a particularly special item - it was just a recolour of another pet I think - but it meant they could no longer boast of being a higher tier of player or whatever by showing off their cool pet. And partly that did reflect some like measure of ‘skill’ to coordinate well enough to do the raid, but it also reflected they spent the time grinding gear from lower tiers of raid until they had the numbers they needed to do the high-tier raid.
So compared to other grind-heavy games like JRPGs which are purely single-player, MMOs give you an ability to like… as you say, “move up” and get more status than other players.
I don’t really know that much data on the demographics of who plays these games. Of course the (self-reinforcing) stereotype is of a young white man with loads of time and disposable income, but I’m not sure how far that image reflects actual demographics.
I think it’s also interesting to compare MMOs with other games/modes of engagement that demand a vast investment of time, such as esports and speedrunning. While esports and especially card games to some degree overlap with MMO-style grinding and accumulation - in a MOBA you will often start with only a subset of heroes and have to unlock the others - there is also the whole element of demonstrating skill and one-upmanship. Which is also like, a status/consumption thing - “look, I spent the time to get good at this”.
But that is more restricted I guess. Most people are not going to be able to play esports on a pro level or learn a speedrun well enough to compete with the top players. And playing a game like Overwatch or DotA at a beginner level of skill is often a frustrating experience, whereas MMOs are designed to offer a steady progression and clear evidence that you’re getting ‘better’ - you’re killing higher level enemies, you unlock new abilities etc.
It’s funny to look at speedruns from this angle actually. We’re taking a game that (usually) does not have a grind and creating one. You only get good at a speedrun by practicing runs and tricks over and over again, until muscle memory sets in. Speedruns also feature a level of community research to find new tricks and understand the game on a deeper level, but for the runners, there’s a massive time investment involved of doing the same thing over and over again… we’ve decided to invent a new grind, not one imposed by the devs to make money, but just… because we like practicing and getting ‘better’ at something?
In the case of a speedrun the result is a kind of artistic expression - a run that makes you go ‘wow!’ and shows off tricks that you wouldn’t have imagined were possible. A polished run isn’t just the work of one person but a kind of collective project. In MMOs on the other hand, you are ‘growing’ down tracks laid down by the developers. But theoretically on the other end of the grind is the ‘endgame content’ like difficult raids.
The developers of e.g. World of Warcraft don’t have to put the raids at the end of a content grind. They could give everyone the numbers they need to do the raids when they make an account, and let everyone get on with learning the intricate dance of getting through the raid without the busywork of ‘getting the gear’ first. There are a few indie single player games that do this - games like Titan Souls and Furi which are just a progression of bosses. But I’m not aware of any games that offer ‘nothing but’ MMO-style raids.
Somehow it seems like we find that ‘endgame’ content more satisfying when it comes on the end of a long repetitive grind?
And like… it’s a different thing than a game like Dark Souls, which is also a struggle to make its way through but is about adapting to new areas and enemies, getting better at timing your sword swings and rolls, etc. Fighting high level enemies in an MMO like SWTOR is hardly different to fighting low level enemies; you might press more buttons to activate more abilities but it’s still ‘walk up to enemies, do rotation’.
In Warframe the high-level content is almost completely identical to the low-level content: same enemy models, same missions. It’s just bigger numbers!
The more I think about the appeal of MMOs the more contradictory and weird it seems. Why is it I feel compelled to ‘earn’ the cutscenes/lore in games I am very conscious are very repetitive, by doing the grind, instead of just watching it on Youtube?
One of the things you can do in a lot of MMOs is build a virtual house and walk around in it. This is often an excellent ‘money sink’ to balance the economy - players will spend a lot of money for in-game furniture.
But if I really wanted to build a 3D environment, I know how to use Blender, there’s loads of free game engines now - I could make something much more uniquely ‘mine’, and have a much more interesting set of challenges than wrestling with a limited interface/grinding up money for more furniture.
Why does doing the same rotation over and over in an MMO feel like ‘fun’, while creating an entirely new thing with unique challenges and genuine learning in Blender feels more like ‘work’?
The more paragraphs I write the more lost I am lol…
I guess maybe partly it’s that in a game there’s a very clear instruction - a quest marker, a list of subtasks - and a clear sense of progression. I recall a post recently on here about capital and demotivation in depression, ADHD, etc. - the OP gave it the grandiose term of ‘breaking of the will’. A computer game tells you what to do, and says ‘well done’ when you do it.
But then, work is also like this, isn’t it? Nobody particularly enjoys working in a factory, even though their boss is very clearly telling them what to do. So perhaps it’s the combination of ‘clear direction’ and ‘just diverse enough to be interesting’ and ‘nominally a voluntary activity’ that makes it so effective at getting people to keep playing.
With procedural generation, developers are coming closer and closer to that minimum level of ‘interesting’ for the fewest developer hours. Older MMOs had handcrafted 3D worlds, albeit made of a much smaller handful of art assets. Warframe can build its levels out of handful of tiles, and even though you’re fighting the same enemies in the same tiles, it will somehow feel like you’re doing something new. (Though Warframe’s latest updates are moving towards larger handcrafted open-world areas.)
Anyway I think I lost track of my point, whatever it might have been, somewhere along the way but I hope that’s also interesting ><
